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Common Akan Insults on GhanaWeb: A Semantic Analysis of Kwasea, Aboa and Gyimii

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Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication

Abstract

Generally, when language- and culture-specific terms are just glossed into their nearest English equivalents, their cultural significance and social impact are opaque. This is because such terms normally have more connotations than their English equivalents. To cultural outsiders who do not share similar background knowledge with cultural insiders, these terms may reflect a different meaning. Thus, there is a need to capture the semantic content of such terms. This study employs the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to state the meaning of three common culture-specific insults found in the Corpus of GhanaWeb Comments on Ghana’s 2016 Elections (CGCGE16): kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa ‘animal/beast’, and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’. These insults are used among the Akans to protest against a person who engages in inappropriate acts that challenge the values of society. The study establishes that in Akan culture, these insults are not just used for the purpose of abuse but to evaluate the prudence of human behaviour.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See http://www.ethnologue.com. Accessed 18 March 2017.

  2. 2.

    https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/fool_1. Accessed 25 January 2017.

  3. 3.

    The use of the pronoun ‘he’ in the analysis is for the sake of convenience and does not in any way suggest that all the commenters on GhanaWeb are males.

  4. 4.

    http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/rdi/kw-odds.htm. Accessed 27 April 2019.

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Acknowledgements

This study forms part of the author’s Ph.D. thesis titled Ethnopragmatic perspectives on online political discourse in Ghana: Invective and Insults on GhanaWeb, prepared under the supervision of Cliff Goddard and Andy Kirkpatrick, with the support of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. I am indebted to my discussants, to Bert Peeters and to the anonymous reviewers for their input.

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  1. Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

    Rachel Thompson

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  1. Rachel Thompson
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Correspondence to Rachel Thompson .

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  1. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Bert Peeters

  2. RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Kerry Mullan

  3. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Lauren Sadow

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Thompson, R. (2020). Common Akan Insults on GhanaWeb: A Semantic Analysis of Kwasea, Aboa and Gyimii. In: Peeters, B., Mullan, K., Sadow, L. (eds) Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_6

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