VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES *****@***** NGUYỄN THỊ QUYẾT METAPHORS IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE POETRY: A STUDY FROM COGNITIVE APPROACH ẨN DỤ TRONG THƠ HIỆN ĐẠI TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT: NGHIÊN CỨU THEO ĐƯỜNG HƯỚNG NGÔN NGỮ HỌC TRI NHẬN Major: English Linguistics Code: 62 22 1501 A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Assoc. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm, Ph. Ngô Đình Phương, Ph. HANOI, 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my thanks to my supervisors, Assoc.
Nguyen Xuan Thom, Ph. Ngo Dinh Phuong, Ph., for their generous and insightful guidance while I was writing this dissertation. They encouraged me to carry out the dissertation on cognitive linguistics and poetry. I have been so fortunate to have them as supervisors.
I would be indebted to the other members of committees for their willingness to share their time and knowledge. Ha Cam Tam for her valuable comments and suggestions when I first showed my understanding of the field, and her critical ideas on my writing are so valuable for me. Nguyen Quang for his deep understanding on methodology frame, his guidance has helped me much in completing the dissertation. Ngo Huu Hoang for his knowledge of cognitive theory has pushed me up into a deeper scrutiny of the field.
Practical ideas suggested by Dr. Le Thanh Ha on the literature review led me to get better understanding of the issue. Nguyen Duc Hoat’s comments on scope of the study were also of great help for me in completing the thesis. Many thanks should also go to Prof.
Hoang Van Van, for patiently reading and commenting on this dissertation as an unofficial committee member. I would like to show my deep gratitude to Dr. Ilicia Sprey, a Fulbright American scholar and Ms. Marilyn Nagano Schlief, an English professor from Michigan State University, in helping me clarify the meanings of English poems which were so challenging that without their help, I could not have understood them thoroughly.
I would also like to express my thanks to the administrators of the Graduate Department who have greatly supported me in doing my research. Last, my thanks are also spent for all members of my family and colleagues at Hong Duc University who have so enthusiastically supported me during the time I was writing this dissertation. Hanoi, April 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii ABSTRACT Meaning construction is conceptualization which is based on embodiment (Evan & Green 2006; Evan, 2007). The conceptualization creates metaphors which mark the meditation between people and the environment.
Comparison of metaphors between English and Vietnamese therefore, shows not only a great deal of similarities, but also many differences. In this dissertation, we study metaphors in modern English and Vietnamese lyric poems. The identification of metaphors was adopted from Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) created by the Pragglejaz Group (Pragglejaz Group, 2007; Steen, 2010) which supports the comparison between English and Vietnamese linguistic metaphors and conceptual metaphors uncovered in our data. The results contribute to and enforce the findings by previous researchers of the field, they also supplement variation of conceptualization in the two languages.
Conceptual domains are put under 8 broad themes: the world; natural aspect; animal; time; action, body and character; person, life and death; inner feeling; and relationship. Through the analysis and interpretation, the findings show variations in the conceptualization in language and it is realized that different conceptualizations are rooted from different beliefs, living condition, and philosophy of life. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. v LIST OF FIGURES.
vi PART A: INTRODUCTION. 1 2 Contribution of the study. 2 3 Objectives of the study. 2 4 Research questions and hypotheses.
3 5 Scope of the study. 3 6 Structure of the study. 6 CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 The relation between language, culture and thought .2 Poetry and poetic language .3 Lyric as a genre of poetry .1 An overview of Cognitive Linguistics .1 Metaphor: substitution view, comparison view, interaction view and pragmatic approach .2 Metaphor in cognitive linguistics .1 Approach to the study .2 Principal methods of the study .3 Identification of metaphors .4 Data collection and analysis .2 Data storage instrument. 42 CHAPTER 3: METAPHORS OF NATURE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE POEMS .1 Metaphors of the world and related entities .1 The world and event .2 Colour, object, and sound.2 Metaphors of natural aspects .3 Metaphors of animals.
68 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.4 Metaphors of time. 73 CHAPTER 4: METAPHORS OF HUMAN AND RELATED ASPECTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE POEMS .1 Metaphors of body, characteristics, action, saying .2 Characteristics of a person .2 Metaphors of person, life, and death .3 Metaphors of inner world: State, feeling and emotion .4 Metaphors of relationship. 131 PART C: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. 132 2 COMMON FEATURES IN THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE .1 Abstractness is mapped through concreteness .2 Non-human is mapped as human: embodiment.
Human is mapped through non-human domain .4 Container metaphor and the manifestation of anthropocentricity .5 Abstract concepts are mapped through other abstract domains .1 Basement of reasoning .2 Prominent differences in English and Vietnamese metaphors. 138 4 IMPLICATIONS FROM THE RESULTS .3 Suggestions for further study. 142 ARTICLES AND PROJECTS RELATED TO THE DISSERTATION. 153 WEBSITES OF ENGLISH POEMS.
155 WEBSITE OF VIETNAMESE POEMS. 159 INDEX OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN THE STUDY. I DATA SAMPLE OF ENGLISH METAPHORS OF LANDSCAPE .IV DATA SAMPLE OF VIETNAMESE METAPHORS OF LANDSCAPE. VII SAMPLE OF ENGLISH METAPHORS IN A POEM.
X SAMPLE OF VIETNAMESE METAPHORS IN A POEM .XI LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CL: Cognitive Linguistics MIP: Metaphor Identification Procedure OALD: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Illustration of Nvivo tree nodes. 37 Figure 3: Illustration of Nvivo quotations. 38 Figure 4: Sample of Coding Summary Report of LIFE IS A TRIP. 39 Figure 5: Sample of Coding Comparison Report in English and Vietnamese metaphor LIFE IS A TRIP.
39 Figure 6: The basic domains of conceptual metaphors. 133 Figure 7: Mechanism of conceptualization from the data. 134 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Metaphor is a great inspiration for researchers; as such, several studies have been carried out to deal with the matter. In the world, the study of metaphors in poetry by Lakoff and Turner (1989) gave a clear and critical consideration of metaphors in English poems.
They also generalized many conceptual metaphors of death, time, life, people, plants, nights, and days, etc. Anastasia (2008) studied metaphors in women college presidents’ inaugural addresses at Coed Institution’s; she studied 20 speeches and put them under 10 broad themes. Polley (2012) considered metaphors of happiness in English and Mandarin Chinese of which he uses corpus approach in dealing with the data. While Gomez-Moreno (2011) carried out a comparative study of metaphor in specialized language, also, he applied the corpus-approach in dealing with metaphors.
Picken (2007) studied metaphors in literature and their impact on foreign language learners, of which he focuses on the identification and interpretation, the evaluation of metaphors in literature as well as implications in designing curriculum, selecting materials and building up methodology in teaching language. In Vietnamese poems, metaphor is also worked on in several studies such as metaphors in English and Vietnamese proverbs by Tiến (2012), the application of conceptual metaphors in teaching English to Vietnamese students by Vũ etc. This tradition shows that there is a great interest in metaphors in general, and metaphors in poems in particular, and most of the above mentioned studies are indebted to the view of metaphor from cognitive approach that was initiated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) which stated that metaphors were mapped under concepts, and they constructed our thought and actions. However, a study focusing on comparing between English and Vietnamese poems in terms of metaphor application has not been so far carried out.
In this study, we decided to deal with it as an initial research of the issue. We borrow the idea that Lakoff and Turner (1989: 15) gave in setting up their study of metaphor in poetry as we choose poems “not to point out what is unusual about it but rather to introduce a range of common, unconscious, automatic metaphors which are parts of our cultural knowledge and which allow us to communicate with each other, whether in ordinary conversation or in poetry.” We set up the study entitled Metaphors in contemporary English and Vietnamese poetry: A study from cognitive approach. Therefore, we would like to focus on the concepts of linguistic metaphor, conceptual metaphor, conceptualization, mapping and domain, the key issues in cognitive approach to metaphor study. We would make an effort to analyse metaphors in modern English and Vietnamese poems, to explore metaphors in the light of cognitive approach, drawing LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 out similarities and differences in conceptual metaphors between English and Vietnamese and linguistic metaphors manifesting them.
From English metaphorical expressions, which are also called linguistic metaphors, this study would inductively contribute to the system of conceptual metaphors mentioned previously such as those by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Kovecses (2010), Tendah (2009) etc. enriching and expanding it. The source domain and target domain of each conceptual metaphor and their attributes are analysed to make transparent the similarities and differences in the manifestation of conceptual metaphors in English and Vietnamese. 2 Contribution of the study Significantly, the study focuses on comparing English and Vietnamese metaphors in poems, both at the conceptual level and linguistic level, from which relating to the cultural values in the two languages, it manifests three points.
Firstly, it blends different ideas into one in identifying and analyzing metaphors which can be used as a replica for other research of the same interests. The theory of linguistic and conceptual metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the so called MIP model in identifying metaphors by Pragglejaz group (2007), Steen (2010), the signals marking metaphors by Charteris-Black (2004, 2005) are blended. Secondly, it directly presents linguistic metaphors explored in modern English and Vietnamese lyric poems manifesting conceptual metaphors. By such, it shows clearly how linguistic metaphors in the two languages represent similar conceptual metaphors, making clear about what aspects of a specific conceptual domain are activated in the two languages.
As a result, it clarifies the why of certain activation. Thirdly, the study builds up a system of conceptual metaphors in English and Vietnamese poems, compares them, showing prominently similar and different linguistic and cultural characteristics in English and Vietnamese. It would help people to thoroughly view the hidden values underlying the conceptualization of metaphors in the two languages, from that, it gives recommendations for understanding and dealing with metaphors in English, especially in teaching and translation. 3 Objectives of the study Our study pursues the following goals: - To provide the evidence of linguistic metaphors manifesting the same conceptual metaphors in English and Vietnamese poetry to make clear what aspects of the mapping domains are activated in each language.
- To enrich the study of metaphors, especially those in poetry by introducing conceptual metaphors explored in the study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 - To give explanations of the the similarities and differences in the conceptualization between English and Vietnamese metaphors in terms of the factors regulating them. - To give implications to the teaching and translating of the English language. 4 Research questions and hypotheses The study is generated from the following questions: 1.