DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is original written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, December 23rd 2013 Approved by Candidate i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe the completion of this work to the following people: First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Tran Xuan Diep, for his encouragement and guidance throughout the research. Without his well-designed plan and meticulous review of the draft, this thesis would never have been completed.
I would like to acknowledge and express my appreciation to my colleagues at University of Transport Technology, English department for their enthusiastic supports and constructive suggestions in completing this research. I also wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, Hanoi Open University for giving me the possible assistance to complete my thesis. Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to my parents for their endless love, constant supports and encouragements. ii ABSTRACT This study investigates the use of the metaphors employing the names of the human-body parts in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese.
It is carried out with the aim of describing a number of the metaphors employing the names of the human-body parts in English and finding the similarities and the differences between those and the metaphors based on the same human- body parts in Vietnamese. In the thesis, eight names of the human-body parts are analyzed to find out the similarities and differences in the English and Vietnamese metaphors. The study is an initial investigation into a number of metaphors employing the human-body parts in English and Vietnamese, so the further studies are also presented. iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Some Examples of “Head” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese Table 2: Some Examples of Phrases Containing “Head” in English without Equivalents in Vietnamese.
Table 3: Some Examples of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Face” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese Table 4: Some Examples of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Eye” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese Table 5: Some Examples of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Mouth” and “Miệng” Table 6: A Number of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Mouth” but without equivalents. Table 7: A Number of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Nose” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. Table 8: A Number of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Body” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. Table 9: Some Examples of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Hand” but without Equivalents Table 10: A Number of Noun Phrases Containing the Word “Arm” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese iv Table 11: A Number of English Phrases Containing the Word “Leg” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese Table 12: Some Examples of English Phrases Containing the Word “Foot” and their Equivalents in Vietnamese Table 13: A Number of Phrases Containing the Word “Foot” and “Chân” v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
iii LIST OF TABLES .iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .vi PART I: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the Study. Objectives of the Study. Scope of the Study.
Methods of the Study. Design of the Study. 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT .6 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Language and Thought.
Concepts of Language. Relation between Language and Thought. Word and its Meaning. Concept of Word.2 Types of Word Meaning.1 Types of Lexical Meaning .2 Components of Lexical Meaning.
Metaphors in English. Concepts of Metaphor. Functions of Metaphor. Kinds of Metaphors.
Research Methods and Procedures. Description of Samples. Data Collection and Data Analysis. 29 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Metaphors Employing the Names of the Human-Body Parts in English and Vietnamese. The Metaphors Employing “Head” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. The Metaphors Employing “Face” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. The Metaphors Employing “Eye” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese.
The Metaphors Employing “Mouth” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. The Metaphors Employing “Nose” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. The Metaphors Employing “Body” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. The Metaphors Employing “Hand” and “Arm” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese.
The Metaphors Employing “Foot” and “Leg” in English and their Equivalents in Vietnamese. The Similarities and the Differences in English and Vietnamese. 54 PART III: CONCLUSION. Limitations of the Study:.
Suggestions for Further Studies:. 64 viii PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the Study Metaphor is a widely-used figure of speech in language. The word “metaphor” comes from Greek, meaning “to transfer” or to “carry over”.
This universal linguistic phenomenon can be found in the writings of Greek philosophers, as well as of contemporary linguists (cf. Richards, 1965; Leech, 1969; Dagut, 1976; and Maalej, 2002). The earliest definition of metaphor—quoted from Aristotle's The Poetics by Richard (1965: 89) is "a shift carrying over a word from its normal use to a new one." Under this quite broad definition, all other instances of semantic extension such as allegory, synecdoche, metonymy, etc. might be categorized as being metaphoric.
Studies of metaphor have been largely dedicated to issues such as the meaning, forms, components and the role of metaphors as speech ornaments. In this study, the English and Vietnamese meaning of a number of metaphors employing human-body parts will be looked at. The words/ phrases denoting parts of human body are used metaphorically but the way they are used varies from one language to another. This can be explained by the fact that the way metaphors are utilized is due to people's life experience, worldviews or people's cognition of the outside world.
In the broader terms, it is also due to the language users' culture. For this reason, cognitive process underlying metaphors varies from one language to another. 1 Therefore, it is necessary for many teachers as well as learners of English to understand how the words denoting parts of human body are used metaphorically in English and Vietnamese, how similar they are and how different they are from each other. For such reasons, the study of "An Initial Investigation into a Number of Metaphors Employing the Human- Body Parts in English and Vietnamese" is intended.
Objectives of the Study - To describe a number of the metaphors employing the names of human body parts in English. - To find the similarities and differences between those and the metaphors based on the same human-body parts in Vietnamese. Research Questions In order to achieve the objectives stated, the study is intended to find out the answers to the following research questions: 1. What are the metaphoric meanings of words/ phrases denoting the names of common objects derived from names of human-body parts in English and in Vietnamese? 2.
What are the equivalents in the metaphoric meanings of words employing the names of human-body parts between English and Vietnamese? 2 3. Scope of the Study The study is to compare the use of metaphors relating to parts of human body in English and those in Vietnamese. The words/ phrases denoting human-body parts used in metaphors can function as nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. However, due to the constraint of an MA thesis, the study limits itself to only words functioning as nouns in a number of metaphorical expressions.
Methods of the Study The major methods that the author has employed to find out the common as well as distinctive features in the use of metaphors relating to parts of human body between English and Vietnamese are: - Quantitative - Descriptive - Statistical - Inductive. The main supporting procedures are: - Reference to publications - Consultations with the supervisor - Discussion with colleagues - Discussion with students - Personal observation 3 5. Design of the Study The study is divided into 3 parts: PART I: INTRODUCTION – including Rationale, Aims of the study, Scope of the study, Methods of the study. PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.1 Language and Thought 1.
Word and its Meaning 1. Metaphors Chapter 2: Methodology 2. Research Methods and Procedures 2. Description of Samples 2.
Data Collection and Data Analysis Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions Chapter 4: Implications 4 PART III: CONCLUSION 1. Limitations of the Study 3. Suggestions for Further Studies REFERENCE APPENDICES 5 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Literature Review Conceptual Metaphor Theory was initiated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.
These two linguists present metaphor, any metaphor, as consisting of two conceptual domains, whereby a conceptual domain is understood as “any coherent organization of experience” (Kovecses, 2010: 4). For more conceptual theory of metaphor, as defined in Wikipedia, a metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object. Thus, the first subject can be described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second subject are used to enhance the description of the first. In “The contemporary theory of metaphor” (Lakoff, 1992: 31), metaphor is to be understood as any mapping between normally separate conceptual domains.
The purpose of this mapping is to structure an abstract, unfamiliar, or unstructured domain (the target) in terms of that is more concrete, familiar, or structured (the source). According to Galperin (1972: 13), a metaphor is a relationship between the dictionary and contextual logical meanings based on the affinity or similarity of certain properties of two corresponding concepts. He showed 6 that metaphor can be embodied in all the meaningful parts of speech, in nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and sometimes even in the auxiliary parts of speech, as in preposition. In the study “Body Part Metaphor: A Cross-cultural Survey of the Perception of Translatability among American and Japanese” carried out by Toshiyuki Sakuragi and Judith W.
Fuller (2003), it can be seen that the frequency of metaphoric expressions based on the human body and its parts in Japanese language and culture is great as well. The chief aim of this survey was to indicate what had been the degree of the similarity between the human body part and the metaphorical expression in appearance and function. In the article “Để giúp thêm cho việc dạy khái niệm ẩn dụ”, Professor Nguyen Duc Ton (2007) defined that “metaphor is a way of replacing names or substituting qualities, attributes of the first subject to a second object based on comparing the common qualities, attributes between them”. On the whole, these studies indicate that the notions of the metaphors employing the names of the human-body parts are presented in various languages, as well as in English and in Vietnamese.
In this regard, metaphoric expressions based on the human body and their parts should receive attention in order to explicate the reasons why they occur in such different languages, but are almost always controlled by similar conceptualizations 7 1. Language and Thought 1. Concepts of Language It is not difficult to see the language and thought are closely related to each other and the metaphor is one of the relations between language and thought. To have the clearer view of the relation between language and thought, it is essential to understand what the language is.
Based on the different viewpoints on language, different linguists have given the different definitions. In this study, only some related definitions or perceptions of language are mentioned. First of all, in Block and Trager’s “Outline of Linguistic Analysis” (1942: 5), language is defined as “a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co-operates”. This definition brings in the property of arbitrariness.
That is, there is no relatedness between the sound and the meaning of language. But it is not always the case as there are some aspects of language in which meanings are closely related to the sounds, for example, onomatopoeia and interjections.