Institutional Repository

An investigation in anthroponyms of the Shona society

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.author Makondo, Livingstone
dc.date.accessioned 2010-01-21T10:26:08Z
dc.date.available 2010-01-21T10:26:08Z
dc.date.issued 2009-06
dc.identifier.citation Makondo, Livingstone (2009) An investigation in anthroponyms of the Shona society, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/3045> en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10500/3045
dc.description.abstract Given names, amongst the Shona people, are an occurrence of language use for specific purposes. This multidisciplinary ethnographic 1890-2006 study explores how insights from pragmatics, semiotics, semantics, among others, can be used to glean the intended and implied meaning(s) of various first names. Six sources namely, twenty seven NADA sources (1931-1977), one hundred and twenty five Shona novels and plays (1957-1998), four newspapers (2005), thirty one graduation booklets (1987-2006), five hundred questionnaires and two hundred and fifty semi-structured interviews were used to gather ten thousand personal names predominantly from seven Shona speaking provinces of Zimbabwe. The study recognizes current dominant given name categories and established eleven broad factors behind the use of given names. It went on to identify twenty-four broad based theme-oriented categories, envisaged naming trends and name categories. Furthermore, popular Shona male and female first names, interesting personal names and those people have reservations with have been recognized. The variety and nature of names Shona people prefer and their favoured address forms were also noted. The study reckons that Shona first names came as a result of unparallel anthroponomastic and linguistic innovation exuded by the Shona people in their bid to tame their reality. The study uses an anthroponym-pragma-semio-semantic decompositional theory, approximation model, contextualized implicature, maxims of brevity and tactfulness as the best approaches for explaining the varied meanings personal names embody. The study argues that it has made significant contributions to the body of knowledge in disciplines such as semantics, semiotics, pragmatics, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, history, geography, religion, education, philology, morphology and syntax, among others. en
dc.format.extent 1 online resource (xiv, 387 leaves)
dc.language.iso en en
dc.subject.ddc 929.4096891
dc.subject.lcsh Names, Personal -- Shona
dc.subject.lcsh Shona language -- Etymology -- Names
dc.subject.lcsh Names, Shona (African people)
dc.title An investigation in anthroponyms of the Shona society en
dc.type Thesis en
dc.description.department African Languages
dc.description.degree D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)


Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search UnisaIR


Browse

My Account

Statistics