VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* PHẠM THỊ THÚY CHINH A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF TIME IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TEMPORAL IDIOMS AND PROVERBS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH TRI NHẬN THỜI GIAN TRONG NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ, TỤC NGỮ CHỈ THỜI GIAN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201 HANOI - 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* PHẠM THỊ THÚY CHINH A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF TIME IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TEMPORAL IDIOMS AND PROVERBS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁCH TRI NHẬN THỜI GIAN TRONG NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ, TỤC NGỮ CHỈ THỜI GIAN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan HANOI - 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I declare that the thesis titled A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF THE PERCEPTION OF TIME IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TEMPORAL IDIOMS AND PROVERBS has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification at this or any other university and that it is entirely my work.
I agree that the Library may lend or copy this thesis on request. Hanoi, 2017 Phạm Thị Thúy Chinh i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this study could not have been possible without the support of the people I would like to acknowledge as follow. First of all, I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan for his enthusiastic support, encouragement and profound guidance he gave me during the time of conducting research.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all my lecturers in Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their valuable instruction and assistance throughout the realization of this thesis. Last but not least, I am indebted to my beloved family and friends who have always inspired me to complete this study. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study is conducted to investigate how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived, from which the similarities and differences in how English and Vietnamese people perceive the concept of time are uncovered. Data for this study are 50 English and 50 Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time selected from three idioms and proverbs dictionaries, Oxford dictionary of idioms (2004), Oxford dictionary of proverbs (2004), Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary (Nguyen Lan 2011).
The idioms and proverbs are classified and grouped based on the similar source domains. The study adopts the Conceptual Metaphor Theory as its approach and contrastive analysis as the research method. The findings suggest that the similarities in how English and Vietnamese people perceive time are they both think of time as space, motion, a person, a thing that one can qualify. The prominent difference is that whereas English people tend to conceptualize time in terms of the tangibles such as a person, a container, an object, Vietnamese people have the tendency to perceive time as an abstract concept such as farming seasons, weather and the limit of human existence.
iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv PART 1: INTRODUCTION. Significance of the research.
Scope of the research. Organization of the thesis. 4 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW. Idioms and Proverbs.
Distinction between Idioms and Proverbs. Idioms and proverbs about time. Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics. Guiding principles of Contrastive analysis.
Previous studies related to the research. 19 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION. How the English people perceive through their idioms and proverbs about time. Time is perceived as space.
21 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Time is perceived as motion. Time is perceived as container .5 Time is perceived as a person .6 Time is perceived as an object. How the Vietnamese people perceive time through their idioms and proverbs about time.
Time is perceived as space. Time is perceived as motion. Time is perceived based on the continuity of action. Time is perceived based on the relationship between human and production.
Time is perceived as the limit of human existence. Time is perceived as an object that one can qualify. Time is perceived as a person. Similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived.
Limitations and suggestions for further researches. I APPENDIX 1: LIST OF ENGLISH IDIOMS/PROVERBS ABOUT TIME. I APPENDIX 2: LIST OF VIETNAMESE IDIOMS/PROVERBS ABOUT TIME. VI APPENDIX 3: FREQUENCY AND PERCENTAGE OF TIME PERCEPTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE IDIOMS AND PROVERBS ABOUT TIME.
IX v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Time is an abstract concept that belongs to the natural world. Human beings are born and develop depending completely on the nature so it is apparent that they must have a close relationship with nature in general and with time in particular. The relationship between human and time is clearly expressed through human beings‟ history.
It can be said that there is no human‟s historical event that is not involved in a concrete timeline. Also, due to the involvement, people need to perceive the abstract concept and try to convey those perceptions through their own languages. Therefore, language becomes one of the major devices to give expression to the time perception of human beings. Time perception can be investigated into many areas of a language such as in literature or in communication.
However, the focus of this thesis will be English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time because idioms and proverbs are considered special linguistic units with the very long existential time in which the traditional culture, national custom, praxis of thinking are contained (Huu Dat, 2011). The consideration of idioms and proverbs as the generalization of thinking through language of a nation may be the reason why people should study on its idioms and proverbs when they want to investigate into a nation and its language. On the ground of cognitive linguistics, there are many researches on time perception in English or in Vietnamese but few researches on it in both English and Vietnamese were conducted. Therefore, this study is conducted to delve into the similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived.
Research questions The purpose of this study is to investigate how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived so the findings of the research are hoped to bring some insights into cognitive process on time that occurs in English and Vietnamese people‟s mind. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com To achieve the aim of this study, the following research questions have to be answered: 1. How is the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time perceived? 2. What are the similarities and differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs is perceived? 3.
Significance of the research This study, to some extent, would like to shed light on the temporal cognitive mechanism happening on human mind by analyzing English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time on the basis of the conceptual metaphor theory (a subfield of cognitive semantics theory). Moreover, a contrastive analysis is conducted in this research with the aim of finding out the similarities and the differences in how the concept of time in English and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs about time is perceived in the two languages. This thesis is also hoped to make a small contribution to the overall stock of cognitive semantic investigation into time from a cross-linguistic perspective. The finding of this study will explore the way how people think of time and try to construe partially the reason why they perceive time as the way they do.
Scope of the research This thesis is restricted to investigating the time perceptions expressed in Vietnamese and English temporal idioms and proverbs. This investigation is based on my manual selection of 50 English and 50 Vietnamese idioms and proverbs related to the concept of time which are collected from three sources, viz. Oxford dictionary of idioms (2004), Oxford dictionary of proverbs (2004) and Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary by Nguyen Lan (2011). The conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Johnson and Lakoff (1980) are used as research approach in analyzing the time perceptions in the selected idioms and proverbs.
2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Organization of the thesis This thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part is INTRODUCTION which states the rationale of the study, the research questions, significance of the research, scope of the research and the organization of the thesis. The next and also most important part is DEVELOPMENT that is subdivided into three chapters: CHAPTER 1 is the discussion on the general theoretical background of the study; CHAPTER 2, the mainstay of the research, is the presentation on the methodology in which the research questions, research method, data and analytical framework is discussed; CHAPTER 3 presents data analysis and discussions.
The last part is CONCLUSION that will summarize all the major points of the thesis and also gives some implications together with limitations and suggestions for further researches. As a rule, the thesis will end with REFERENCE and APPENDIX. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART II. DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW This study is a contrastive analysis of the perception of time in English and Vietnamese temporal idioms and proverbs so this chapter reviews the literature in term of the following: - The definitions of idioms and proverbs; the distinction between idioms and proverbs; idioms and proverbs about time; - Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics, the guiding principles of Cognitive Semantics and its major theories; - Contrastive analysis and its guiding principles; - Previous researches related to the study.
Idioms and Proverbs In this section, some definitions of idioms and proverbs are presented, from which the distinction between idioms and proverbs is clarified, followed by the discussions concerning idioms and proverbs about time. Idioms There is a variety of definitions of idioms defined in many dictionaries. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2000:643) defines an idiom as „a group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of individual words‟. Collins Co-build Learner’s Dictionary (1996: 547) states “an idiom is a group of words which have a different meaning when used together from the one they would have if you took the meaning of each word individually”.
According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1988, p.711), an idiom is “a phrase which means something different from their meanings of the separate words from which it is formed”. Besides, in Vietnamese idioms and proverbs dictionary by Nguyen Lan (2011), he states that idioms are fixed phrases that convey certain concepts. Or, in English Idioms in Use Advanced by Cambridge University Press, the definition of idiom is given that „Idioms are fixed combinations of words whose meaning is often 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com difficult to guess from the meaning of each individual word.‟ All aforementioned definitions shows that idioms, at first, are fixed phrases whose structures cannot be substituted or rearranged otherwise their original meanings are lost. Secondly, the meanings conveyed in idioms are figurative so it is absolutely difficult to understand their meanings from the meaning of each individual word.
Proverbs Proverbs are defined in many different ways.