6. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa)
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Felix K. Ameka
Abstract
Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Ghana-Togo Mountain, and Tano, which includes Akanic and Guang languages. These languages share several features, but it is not always easy to detect which features are inherited and which are diffused from one language to the other (Ameka 2006a; Ellis 1984). Taking a cue from earlier studies (e.g. Ameka 1994), where some widespread interactional routines are either inherited, such as agoo ‘attention getter’, or diffused from one language, such as ayikoo ‘well done, continue’ which seems to have spread to the other languages from Ga, I investigate some shared maledicta and taboo expressions in the area. I focus on the performance, perlocutionary effect and uptake as well as the cultural scripts that govern the use of two invective multi-modal embodied utterances in the area. One is an emblematic gesture involving a pointed thumb and its accompanying verbal representations. A common expression that accompanies it comes from Ga “obscene insults” sɔ́ɔ̀mi! ‘inside female genitalia’, onyɛ sɔ́ɔ̀ mli ‘inside your mother’s genitalia’ whose equivalents are also used in the other languages. The Ewe-based accompanying verbal expression is literally: ‘I defecate in your mouth’. A second form is the one commonly called “suck teeth”, which is spread beyond the Lower Volta Basin to the Trans-Atlantic Sprachbund (Muysken and Smith 2015, van den Berg et al. 2015). Drawing on the representation and categorisation of how the enactment of these linguistic practices are reported, I demonstrate that they are viewed as insults or ways of “swearing at” other people because of something bad they may have done to the speaker. I call into question the universality of “swearing” and argue that crosslinguistic studies of “swearing”, “cursing” or “cussing” and such phenomena should extricate themselves from the English language labels and attend to the “insider” and indigenous ways of understanding acts of saying bad words to another (cf. Wierzbicka 2014a; Haugh 2016).
Abstract
Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Ghana-Togo Mountain, and Tano, which includes Akanic and Guang languages. These languages share several features, but it is not always easy to detect which features are inherited and which are diffused from one language to the other (Ameka 2006a; Ellis 1984). Taking a cue from earlier studies (e.g. Ameka 1994), where some widespread interactional routines are either inherited, such as agoo ‘attention getter’, or diffused from one language, such as ayikoo ‘well done, continue’ which seems to have spread to the other languages from Ga, I investigate some shared maledicta and taboo expressions in the area. I focus on the performance, perlocutionary effect and uptake as well as the cultural scripts that govern the use of two invective multi-modal embodied utterances in the area. One is an emblematic gesture involving a pointed thumb and its accompanying verbal representations. A common expression that accompanies it comes from Ga “obscene insults” sɔ́ɔ̀mi! ‘inside female genitalia’, onyɛ sɔ́ɔ̀ mli ‘inside your mother’s genitalia’ whose equivalents are also used in the other languages. The Ewe-based accompanying verbal expression is literally: ‘I defecate in your mouth’. A second form is the one commonly called “suck teeth”, which is spread beyond the Lower Volta Basin to the Trans-Atlantic Sprachbund (Muysken and Smith 2015, van den Berg et al. 2015). Drawing on the representation and categorisation of how the enactment of these linguistic practices are reported, I demonstrate that they are viewed as insults or ways of “swearing at” other people because of something bad they may have done to the speaker. I call into question the universality of “swearing” and argue that crosslinguistic studies of “swearing”, “cursing” or “cussing” and such phenomena should extricate themselves from the English language labels and attend to the “insider” and indigenous ways of understanding acts of saying bad words to another (cf. Wierzbicka 2014a; Haugh 2016).
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Foreword VII
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Part I: Othering and abjection as deep practice
- 1. “I will kill you today” – Reading “bad language” and swearing through Otherness, mimesis, abjection and camp 1
- 2. Ten issues facing taboo word scholars 37
- 3. “Damn your eyes!” (Not really): Imperative imprecatives, and curses as commands 53
- 4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania 79
- 5. Aesthetics of the obscure: Swearing as horrible play 103
- 6. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa) 121
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Part II: Cultural mobility as context of transgression
- 7. The linguistics of Jamaican swearing: Forms, background and adaptations 147
- 8. ‘Don’t say it in public’: Contestations and negotiations in northern Nigerian Muslim cyberspace 165
- 9. Mock Chinese in Kinshasa: On Lingala speakers’ offensive language use and verbal hostility 185
- 10. The name of the wild man: Colonial arbiru in East Timor 209
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Part III: Disruptive and trashy performance
- 11. Found and lost paradise: Bad language at a beach in Diani, Kenya 239
- 12. The sexy banana – artifacts of gendered language in tourism 259
- 13. English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers’ use of rude vocatives 281
- 14. “He shall not be buried in the West” – Cursing in Ancient Egypt 303
- Afterword 327
- Index 333
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Foreword VII
-
Part I: Othering and abjection as deep practice
- 1. “I will kill you today” – Reading “bad language” and swearing through Otherness, mimesis, abjection and camp 1
- 2. Ten issues facing taboo word scholars 37
- 3. “Damn your eyes!” (Not really): Imperative imprecatives, and curses as commands 53
- 4. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania 79
- 5. Aesthetics of the obscure: Swearing as horrible play 103
- 6. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa) 121
-
Part II: Cultural mobility as context of transgression
- 7. The linguistics of Jamaican swearing: Forms, background and adaptations 147
- 8. ‘Don’t say it in public’: Contestations and negotiations in northern Nigerian Muslim cyberspace 165
- 9. Mock Chinese in Kinshasa: On Lingala speakers’ offensive language use and verbal hostility 185
- 10. The name of the wild man: Colonial arbiru in East Timor 209
-
Part III: Disruptive and trashy performance
- 11. Found and lost paradise: Bad language at a beach in Diani, Kenya 239
- 12. The sexy banana – artifacts of gendered language in tourism 259
- 13. English- and Spanish-speaking teenagers’ use of rude vocatives 281
- 14. “He shall not be buried in the West” – Cursing in Ancient Egypt 303
- Afterword 327
- Index 333
