She is a female-rooster’: The conceptualisation of GENDER as SEX in Ghanaian discourses.

Abstract

Gender, from social constructionist perspective, is socially constructed – i.e. fluid and context-specific so that the same individual can behave in ways that are considered either masculine or feminine in various contexts. This may be interpreted from a binary, essentialist or traditional perspective as that individual metaphorically having two sexes. Speakers of Akan (in Ghana) tend to talk about people who behave in ways considered as contradictory to socio-cultural norms and expectations about gendered behaviour for their sex as metaphorically having two-sex bodies: Kojo besia (a male born on Monday who is a female), ɔbaa barima (a man-woman) and ɔbaa akokɔnini (a female-rooster). In this paper, I discuss how the analysis of such metaphoric expressions contributes to theoretical perspectives on gender and language and to our understanding of metaphor. Although the interpretation of these metaphors appears quite essentialist, I argue that it also can be read as lending support to the understanding of gender as a social construction.