An Overview of Arusa Maa Visual Semantics

Through a triangulated analysis of the relation between language, culture, and environment, this talk aims to present the visual semantics (Wierzbicka 1998, 2008, 2014) of Arusa Maa. Arusa Maa is spoken by approximately 100,000 speakers in the Arusha and Meru districts of Northern Tanzania (Andrason and Karani 2022). It is a variety of Southern Maa (ISO 639-3 mas), which belongs to the Eastern branch of Nilotic languages (Sommer and Vossen 1993). Arusa Maa expresses a rich vocabulary for colours, patterns, and pattern(s)+colour(s). The study of Arusa Maa's visual semantics shows language-specific tendencies that were not studied before. It enlights an emic system of categorisation based on the cattle culture and the surrounding environment, which is enriched with terms that lexicalise the visual experience of designs spread through female craft activities. The latter shows the meeting of traditional Maasai crafts with contemporaneity, leading to innovations in the lexicon.

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Mignanti, Cecilia. 2026. An Overview of Arusa Maa Visual Semantics. Talk given at The Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 04/02/2026.