Browsing by Author "AGUNDA PAMELA AWINO"

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    SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS USED BY THE SAMIA SPEAKERS OF SAMIA NORTH, BUSIA COUNTY, KENYA
    (THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN AFRICA, 2025-09) AGUNDA PAMELA AWINO
    This study sought to examine idiomatic expressions and their semantics within the cultural contexts of the Samia speech community (SSC) as the main objective. Idiomatic expressions, or idiomaticity, are a higher level of language use that defines a native speaker’s proficiency and resiliency to a specified language and its culture. Idiomatic expressions are a type of figure of speech that, in most cases, are fixed statements; that is, their meaning is not drawn from the meaning of each word in the statement’s composition but from the whole statement. The knowledge and resilience of Lusamia language and culture seem to be diminishing, and that was the reason for this research. The study aimed to navigate the Lusamia language and culture to (i) describe different types of idiomatic expressions, (ii) determine the contribution of individual linguistic items to the meaning of idiomatic expressions, and (iii) evaluate the influence of cultural contexts on the meaning of these expressions. The study is grounded on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by Kovecses (2015) and the Relevance Theory (RT) by Sperber and Wilson (2002). Koveces’ two key principles; contextual influence on meaning and systematic mapping of source and target domains mark CMT as a crucial theory to this research. Contextual influence on meaning is Koveces’ tenet that guided the objective of evaluating how context influences the meaning of Lusamia idioms, while the tenet of domain mapping guided the objective of describing the types of idiomatic expressions. RT, on the other hand, complemented CMT in the research by its communicative and cognitive principles. The communicative and cognitive principles backed the objective of determining the contribution of individual linguistic items to the meaning Lusamia of idiomatic expressions (LIEs). A descriptive research design was used for the investigation. Unadulterated Lusamia is spoken in the Nambuku sub-location of Samia North, which served as the study’s locale. The target population of the study was LIEs. A total of 10 participants, fluent in Lusamia and conversant with the culture, both male and female aged between 60 and 75 years, were selected through purposive and snowballing techniques. One participant was purposively selected, who helped to snowball the others to form one focus group of 8 participants of 5 males and 3 females. The remaining two participants were a male and a female aged between 72 and 75 years, purposively selected as well for an in-depth interview for detailed information. Language natives of the aforementioned age are believed to have more experience of language and culture. To accomplish the study goals, 121 Lusamia idiomatic expressions (proverbs and non- proverbial) were collected from the participants: 70 from the focused group discussion (FGD) and 51 from the two individual participants. The researcher sampled 73 idiomatic expressions from the total collection for investigation dependent on the study’s objectives and their relevance to the study. Interview guides were employed as an appropriate data collection tool for the focus group discussions, while in- depth interview guides were used to collect data from the two individual participants for more detailed explanation. Note-taking and tape-recording, were done to record the raw data and for the validity of the research. The recorded data was transcribed, translated, coded and analysed in line with the tenets of the theories that guided the study. The study findings established that the LIEs are categorized based structural variation, Morphological agglutination is a major defining linguistic feature of LIE and Basamia idioms are deeply rooted in social life reflecting individuals in the family and community and at large. The Basamia community is anticipated to gain from this research in terms of preserving and promoting Lusamia-specific linguistic and cultural quirks. Additionally, the study is expected to support language learning and teaching materials in the field of education as well as linguistic comparative studies in general, without forgetting that it could be the upcoming researchers’ resource.