MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN THỊ THANH XUÂN A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPERS ON SOCIAL VIOLENCE FIELD: English Linguistics CODE: 8220201 Supervisor: HÀ THANH HẢI, Ph. e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN THỊ THANH XUÂN NGHIÊN CỨU SO SÁNH ĐỐI CHIẾU PHÉP ẨN DỤ Ý NIỆM TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT VỀ BẠO LỰC XÃ HỘI Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS. Hà Thanh Hải e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby confirm that the thesis entitled A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPERS ON SOCIAL VIOLENCE is submitted to complete fulfillment for my degree of master of English Linguistics at Quy Nhon University and has not been submitted elsewhere in any other form for the fulfillment of any other degree or qualification. This thesis does not contain any materials which have been written by another person except where referenced within the text.
September 2020 Nguyễn Thị Thanh Xuân e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my appreciation to several people for helping me through my master thesis. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Hà Thanh Hải, for his continuous support and advice as well as his excellent guidance to help me complete this thesis. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the lecturers of my master’s course for their valuable lectures that help me cultivate and gain a deep knowledge of linguistics and research skills.
In addition, I would like to thank my friends for their concern, love, and moral support. Special thanks from the bottom of my heart go out to my dear husband who stayed beside me through all the stages of my study in the postgraduate program and encouraged me to finish this thesis. Last but not least, some special words of gratitude go to my parents who took care of my sons so that I could spend more time concentrating on my thesis. I could not have finished this thesis without their continued supports and encouragement that gave me strength and confidence to fulfill my dream.
September 2020 Nguyễn Thị Thanh Xuân e iii ABSTRACT Conceptual metaphor, which is a cognitive device, reflects the way people conceptualize the surrounding world. The capture of conceptual metaphors plays a vital role in facilitating journalists to convey their information to readers vividly and effectively. This is what prompted the present study. Based on the cognitive perspective of Lakoff and John (1980, 2003), 176 samples from four English newspapers and four Vietnamese ones were intentionally collected to indicate how conceptual metaphors were employed as well as compare the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese conceptual metaphors.
This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of cognitive linguistics in general and analyze English and Vietnamese conceptual metaphors collected from online newspapers regarding social violence between a three-year period from the beginning of 2018 to August 2020 in particular. The result reveals that English and Vietnamese share many conceptual metaphors in common while various features of the two cultures still come into existence. All three types of conceptual metaphors comprising structural, ontological, and orientational metaphors are found in the collected data with the different frequency of occurrences and percentage. The finding also indicate that the English media writers tend to use more conceptual metaphors than the Vietnamese ones.
Despite the limitations of a small-scale study and time shortage, the researcher does hope that the findings would shed more light on the whole picture of conceptual metaphors. Keywords: Cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphors, source domain, target domain, structural metaphors, orientational metaphors, ontological metaphors, online newspapers, social violence. e iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF TABLES. vii LIST OF FIGURES. Aim and Objectives. Aims of the Study.
Objectives of the Study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Organization of the study.
Introduction to cognitive semantics. Conceptual metaphor theory. Classification of conceptual metaphors. Previous studies on conceptual metaphors.
The online newspapers on social violence. Definition of violence and social violence. 33 METHODS AND PROCEDURES. Data collection and data analysis.
Validity and reliability. 39 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Metaphor in English newspapers on social violence. Metaphor in Vietnamese newspapers on social violence.
The similarities between conceptual metaphors in English and Vietnamese newspapers on social violence. The differences between conceptual metaphors in English and Vietnamese newspapers on social violence. 78 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION. Suggestions for further research.
83 e vii LIST OF TABLES Table 4. The Occurrences and Percentages of Conceptual Metaphors in English. The Occurrences and Percentages of Conceptual Metaphors in Vietnamese Newspapers. The Occurrences and Percentages of Conceptual Metaphors in English and Vietnamese Online Articles.
The Conceptual Metaphors Sharing the Same Meaning in English and Vietnamese Newspapers. The Most Commonly Used Conceptual Metaphors in Both Languages. The Differences of Same Conceptual Metaphors in English and Vietnamese Newspapers. The Absence and Presence of Conceptual Metaphors in English and Vietnamese Newspapers.
74 e viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. The mappings of conceptual metaphor ANGER IS FIRE. The mappings of conceptual metaphor ANGER IS HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER. The mappings of conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY.
The Source-Path-Goal Schema in LOVE IS A JOURNEY. The Source and Target Domains of Ontological Metaphor. Eight Online Articles in English and Vietnamese…. The mappings of conceptual metaphor VIOLENCE IS A PLANT….
The mappings of conceptual metaphor A CRIMINAL RECORD IS A BUILDING…………………………………………. The Total Conceptual Metaphors in English and Vietnamese Online Newspapers. The Occurrences and Percentages of Ontological Metaphors in English and Vietnamese Online Newspapers.Error! Bookmark not defined.The Occurrences of Structural Metaphors in English and Vietnamese Online Newspapers. Rationale In our daily lives, metaphors are used as one of the stylistic devices to express our thoughts and beliefs naturally and effortlessly.
Metaphors exist everywhere in our daily lives, so they have a strong impact on the ways of people’s recognition of the surrounding world. Take the myth of Oedipus in Kövecses 's (2010) book as an illustration of the pivotal role of metaphors. As part of the myth, Oedipus arrives in Thebes where he finds that a monster, called the Sphinx, is guarding the road to the city. She poses riddles to everyone on their way to Thebes and devours them if they are unable to solve the riddles.
So far, everyone has been devoured when Oedipus arrives. The Sphinx asks him the riddle: Which are the animal that has four feet in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening? Without hesitation, Oedipus answers: Man, who in infancy crawls on all fours, who walks upright in maturity and his old age supports himself with a stick. The Sphinx is defeated and kills herself. Oedipus has become the king of Thebes.
11) In this case, Oedipus is believed to have been able to successfully deal with the problem thanks to the knowledge of conceptual metaphors. Two metaphors are employed to solve the riddle consisting of THE LIFE OF HUMAN BEINGS IS A DAY and HUMAN LIFE IS A JOURNEY. In the former metaphor, life is considered as a day. The morning represents infancy, midday for maturity and, the evening for old age.
In the latter metaphor, feet evoke the concept of a journey, giving the solution to the riddle. e 2 Examples like the above conceptual metaphors are shaped by both our communication on a daily basis and literature. Conceptual metaphors, therefore, have received an enormous amount of attention from many linguistic researchers as well as scholars. Up to now, plenty of studies have been conducted to investigate metaphor usage.
However, since 1980, a new viewpoint of cognitive linguistics has been introduced by Lakoff and Johnson in the pioneering work entitled “Metaphors We Live By”, which introduces a major revolution of linguistics to study conceptual metaphors. They are of primary importance in cognitive linguistics, which is a key to decode the knowledge in mind and cognitive process. This contrastive study in search of conceptual metaphors can help to recognize similarities as well as differences between concepts in specific languages, i. English and Vietnamese.
Metaphor appears to be quite popular in daily life as well as in information transmission channels. Specifically, metaphors are linguistic expressions that give a simple definition or explanation of something that can often be extremely complicated. In newspapers, journalists always take metaphors into account to catch the reader’s curiosity and excitement. Additionally, thanks to the technology explosion, readers all over the world can easily approach information.
When social media is being rapidly developed, all up-to-date breaking news is available by one click or a tap. For example, in June of this year 2020, the hot news about the death of a black man caused by an American police officer was updated instantly on online articles. In addition to the outstanding advantage of the digital revolution, it is undeniable that the growing problem of social violence seems to appear at a considerable rate in most of the reports, which has gained widespread attention from local as well as international communities. Horrible things are heard and seen every day now on social media and the news.
Social violence e 3 in many forms such as school violence, domestic violence, racial violence, etc. is considered a social crime that exerts negative effects on each person and entire social development. Therefore, more and more people in the world deal with their problems by hitting, punching, stabbing, shooting, and killing. These are exemplars of acts of violence in social life; however, many different forms of social violence may occur every day all around the world.
The issue of social violence has been an alarming bell for the whole society. These above reasons show that mastering the employment of the metaphor in the news reports on social violence is of great significance to grasp accurately the information conveyed by newspapermen or women. Furthermore, it is also interesting to distinguish between English and Vietnamese metaphor, which reporters mainly use to attract the reader’s attention. To my knowledge, no prior studies have examined conceptual metaphors in newspapers on social violence although there is a variety of research about conceptual metaphors carried out in distinct aspects such as political discourse, climate change discourse, conceptual metaphors about food, moon, fire, and many things.
Besides, people from separate countries may have a different cognitive interpretation of one social phenomenon. That is why this study is conducted to identify and compare Conceptual Metaphors used in English and Vietnamese online newspapers on social violence from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Aim and Objectives 1. Aims of the Study The purpose of this thesis is to identify conceptual metaphors used in English and Vietnamese online news discourse on social violence in the light of cognitive semantics raised by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 2003) and Kövecses (2002, 2010).
Besides, the study also investigates the similarities e 4 and differences between English and Vietnamese conceptual metaphors in online news sources on social value. Objectives of the Study With the aims stated above, the detailed objectives have been set as follows: The first objective is to identify and classify the conceptual metaphors used in both English and Vietnamese electronic journalistic texts on social violence. The second objective is to figure out the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in social violence reports between the bilingual data. Research questions To achieve the above aims and objectives of the study, the following questions have been raised and answered: (1) What types of conceptual metaphors are employed in English and Vietnamese online articles on social violence?