Cognitive Linguistic Studies 2:1 (2015), 79–93. doi 10.1075/cogls.2.1.04gat issn 2213–8722 / e-issn 2213–8730 © John Benjamins Publishing Company When romantic love in Gĩkũyũ becomes a human body part A cognitive approach Moses Gatambuki Gathigia, Ruth W. Ndung’u and Daniel Ochieng’ Orwenjo Karatina University, Kenya / Kenyatta University, Kenya Studies in Cognitive Linguistics show that metaphors are fundamental to the structuring of people’s thought and language (Sweetser 1990; Kövecses 2009). It is against this backdrop that this study discusses human body parts as metaphors of conceptualizing love in Gĩkũyũ. 1 To achieve this objective, an interview sched- ule was administered to 48 respondents of diferent gender by the researcher as- sisted by four research assistants. Te Conceptual Metaphor Teory (CMT) and the main principles of the Metaphor Identifcation Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) (see Steen et al. 2010) were used in this study. Te principles of the MIPVU were employed to fnd out whether the lexical items collected were met- aphorical or not. Using three annotators and the researcher, the study identifed 100 Metaphor Related Words (MRWs) as per the annotation guidelines adapted from the MIPVU procedures and three lexical units which were annotated as Discard From Metaphor Analysis (DFMA). From the MRWs, the study identi- fed eight metaphors of human body parts which play an indispensable role in the conceptualization of love in Gĩkũyũ. Further, the study noted that gender is a vital variable that provides people with the prism through which they view love since males registered more lexical frequencies for LOVE IS A HUMAN BODY PART than females. Te study concludes that metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics is not only a creative device, but an important mental facility and cognitive instrument. Keywords: Love, metaphor, body part, Conceptual Metaphor Teory, MIPVU 1. Gĩkũyũ is a language in the Central Bantu branch of the Niger — Congo family spoken pri- marily by the Agĩkũyũ of Kenya (Mbaabu 1996: 1). In the classifcation system of Guthrie (1967), Gĩkũyũ is part of Zone E and is labelled E51