Amelioration and demelioration of words and names: contemporary discourse in Zimbabwe

Abstract

When the second liberation war guns died down in Zimbabwe, a cease fire, and a Lancaster House Agreement and independence followed. Post-colonial Zimbabwe has been another country in terms of what transpired in the dispensation that set in. Of interest has been how the different events strewn in the contemporary era that has seen words changing their meaning. In common use, almost every word has many shades of meaning and, therefore the need to interpret meaning cannot be over emphasized. Meaning has been influenced invariably in the context of gender, generations and historical epochs which are sometimes driven by politics, the economy, socio-cultural and religious happenings. Using different events in contemporary Zimbabwe as its background, this research sets out to identify and trace how meaning of words has been altered over time. Purposive convenience sampling was used to collect data from different parts of Zimbabwe, at each particular time depending on the event that occurred in Zimbabwe, for example, words on diamonds were gotten from informants in Chiadzwa, words on „Operation Drive Out Dirty‟ were mostly from informants in Harare and other towns. The research discovered that words continue to mutate depending on the events taking place and how people want to use them. Observation was also used to explain the changing of meanings over time and space.