The Cultural Conceptualization of ‘Yii’yam “Blood” in Fulfulde

Abstract

This paper studies the cultural conceptualization of the body part term ‘yii’yam ‘blood’ in Fulfulde from a cognitive linguistic approach. The embodiment hypothesis rightly assumes that bodily experiences significantly influence linguistics conceptualization and, therefore, form a great part of linguistics expressions. Even though Fulfulde has been extensively described, most of the works were structural in nature, leaving the cognitive aspects largely unexplored. Based on various metaphors and metonymies, the term ‘yii’yam ‘blood’ has been found to be extended into various linguistic domains, such as kinship/relations, character trait, behaviour, among others.