MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY ------ NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG ĐIỆP CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS OF EMOTION IN HILLARY CLINTON'S PUBLIC TALKS MASTER THESIS FIELD : English Linguistics CODE : 8 22 02 01 Supervisor: HÀ THANH HẢI, Ph.D e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG ĐIỆP ẨN DỤ TRI NHẬN VỀ CẢM XÚC TRONG NHỮNG BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA HILLARY CLINTON Chuyên ngành : Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số : 8 22 02 01 Người hướng dẫn : TS. HÀ THANH HẢI BÌNH ĐỊNH, 2020 e i DECLARATION This thesis represents my own work and due acknowledgment is given whenever information is derived from other sources. No material which has been or is being concurrently submitted for any other qualification at any university is found, except where due reference has been made in the text. Quy Nhon, 2020 Nguyễn Thị Hồng Điệp e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A number of people helped me when this thesis was on its ways.
My grateful thanks in particular are to my supervisor, Dr. Ha Thanh Hai, who has supported me a lot during the time I work on my thesis. I thank him for his kind encouragements, his endless patience, his critical comments and his valuable materials. Special thanks are to my parents, and my husband for their love and kind support during the time I was engaged in this work.
I am also grateful to my friends and classmates for their warm encouragements, help and valuable materials. This thesis would not be possible without their contributions. e iii ABSTRACT Metaphor exists in our daily life, not just in our language, but also in our thought and action. Language expressions in most languages are largely shaped by conceptual metaphors, which results in a great number of systems of collocations in which a word could and should be followed by some particular words, not all.
This phenomenon of language causes difficulties in the study process of language learners with little knowledge on conceptual metaphor. This thesis, therefore, aimed to find out conceptual metaphors of different types of emotions in public talks of an English-native political figure to provide English learners with deeper insight in the formation and use of conceptual metaphors of emotion in daily life, thereby facilitating their English learning process. The analysis method of the thesis was based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory suggested by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and the Source-to-Target Mappings by Kovecses (2005). Data of the study were conceptual metaphors identified in public talks of Hillary Clinton, a political figure of the United States of America.
Results showed that “love” and “fear” were the two types of emotion that received the greatest number of conceptualization, while “sadness” and “surprise” received the least attention. Emotion in general was mainly conceptualized by Hillary Clinton via two metaphorical expressions, viz. “EMOTION IS LIQUID” and “EMOTION IS A PHYSICAL SENSATION”. Besides, each type of emotion was conceptualized with a wide range of conceptual metaphors.
The common appearance of ontological metaphors and structural metaphors in Hillary Clinton’s speeches was believed to enhance the e iv understandability and listener-friendliness of her speeches, resulting in a better chance for her to reach the acceptance and agreement of the audience. On the other hand, orientational metaphors were used very rarely, which were believed to make little contribution to her talks. One potential implication of this study was for proposing a teaching method to help Vietnamese students learn English phrases expressing emotion more effectively, thereby conveying their ideas in English more accurately. e v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES. Aims of the Study. Objectives of the Study.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY. 3 CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW. METAPHORS AND CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS.
Definition of metaphors and conceptual metaphors. Conceptual metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson. Classification of conceptual metaphors. EMOTIONS AND CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS OF EMOTIONS.
The concept of emotion. Language and emotion. Classification of emotions. SOME PREVIOUS RELEVANT STUDIES.
Studies on emotion conceptual metaphors in the world. 20 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY. 24 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Identified metaphor expressions in the study.
Statistics of the identified metaphors. Conceptualization of emotion in general. Conceptualization of love. Conceptualization of happiness.
Conceptualization of sadness. Conceptualization of fear. Conceptualization of hate. Conceptualization of anger.
Conceptualization of surprise. Contributions that metaphors made to Hillary Clinton’s talks. 60 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE STUDIES. IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY. SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE STUDIES .i Identified samples with categorization into metaphorical expressions. RATIONALE Although metaphor is deemed by most people as a matter of words rather than thought or action, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have found that metaphor is “pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action” (p.4), which means that metaphors are used in our daily life no matter we realize it or not. They also found that most of “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (p.
According to them, the concepts that govern our thoughts and actions are not just matters of the intellect, but they also take part in structuring “what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people” (p. Because communication comes from our thinking and acting, language is greatly dependent on the conceptual system related to that language. Therefore, in order to learn a new language, it is a good idea to start at finding out the conceptual system of people using that language with an investigation into the use of metaphors. In fact, conceptual metaphors have been investigated in the fields of literature, grammar, specific discourses, and also in second language teaching - where it has been argued that knowing the metaphor-based explanation for idiomatic and polysemic expressions can aid in their learning (Soriano, 2015).
There has been much research on the metaphors of emotions in English (Kovecses, 2005; Mashak, Pazhakh & Hayati, 2012; Patowari, 2015; Soriano, 2015), and there have been several investigations into similarities and differences in metaphors of emotions between English and Vietnamese (Huong, e 2 2011; Nguyen, 2013; Trao, 2014). However, data for analysis of these studies varied both in sources and in types of discourse. Thus, this thesis aimed to contribute to the crosschecking of the conceptual system of English established by previous studies. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 1.
Aims of the Study This paper aimed to recognize conceptual metaphors of emotional concepts in English in light of Lakoff and Johnson (1980)’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory via an investigation into 20 public talks of Hillary Clinton, an American political figure and find out what contributions the utilized metaphors had contributed to her talks. Findings of the study were expected to facilitate English-learning process of English learners in the world, especially in Vietnam. Objectives of the Study To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the thesis was designed to (i) identify conceptual metaphors of emotion in public talks of Hillary Clinton in English, and (ii) to figure out what contributions that the used metaphors made to Hillary Clinton’s public talks. RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to achieve the aims and objectives of the thesis, two major questions were raised to be answered: 1.
What are the conceptual metaphors of emotion in the investigated public talks of Hillary Clinton? e 3 2. What contributions have the metaphors contributed to the talks by Hillary Clinton? 1. SCOPE OF THE STUDY Due to the limitation of allotted time and accessibility to a wide range of data sources, the thesis examined only 20 speeches. The conceptual metaphors of those emotions would be recognized through public talks by Hillary Clinton, a present American political figure.
The study investigated public talks that Hillary Clinton had made since 2016 because it was the time she started her second presidential run in the United States of America. Her public talks in this period of her life were believed to be prepared carefully, word uses in these speeches were also considered to be chosen carefully, contributing to the reliability of the data. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The thesis was expected to contribute to crosschecking the Conceptual Metaphor Theory suggested by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Besides, the thesis helped to gain an insight into the conceptual system of English on different types of emotions via the investigation into the actual use of conceptual metaphors by a present American political figure.
In fact, there were phrases about emotions in English whose literal meaning was difficult to understand. In such a case, sometimes it was necessary to get the idea via the conceptual metaphor of that emotion. Understanding in the investigated conceptual metaphors was expected to facilitate the teaching and learning of English, as a foreign language in Vietnam and elsewhere. e 4 CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
METAPHORS AND CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS 2. Definition of metaphors and conceptual metaphors Metaphors appear very often in daily life language. Metaphors are used when people find it difficult to describe an abstract thing. At such an occasion, people tend to use a concrete thing which has similar characteristics to indicate such an abstract thing.
According to Aristole, the first scholar to elaborate a theory of metaphor, metaphorical language is not only a powerful means of persuasion but also a decorative linguistic toll which has no additional information to the discourse (Gibbs, 1994). Metaphor is conventionally considered as a device of poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish, and it is seemed as a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. However, according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action” (p.4) and metaphor can be considered as the understanding and experiencing of one kind of thing in terms of another. By stating “human thought processes are largely metaphorical” (p.
6), they go further to the claim that “the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined” and they finally call metaphor as metaphorical concept. The term “conceptual metaphor” was arguably mentioned the first time in 1980 by Lakoff and Johnson in their book called “Metaphors We Live By” in which they shared with each other about the views on “meaning” in western philosophy and linguistics and the “meaningful” in life. According to them, the heart of e 5 metaphor is inference and conceptual metaphor permits the use of inferences in sensory-motor domains to draw inferences about other domains (p. They also believe that the metaphors we use can determine the way we live our lives because we reason in terms of metaphors.
Thus, conceptual metaphor is not only the means for poetry, it can be used in everyday language. We still use conceptual metaphor every day and everywhere but we perhaps do not realize this fact. According to Kovecses (2002), metaphor is considered as understanding a conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain, and therefore is called conceptual metaphor. A conceptual metaphor comprises of “two conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms of another” (p.
A conceptual domain is defined by Kovecses as a “coherent organization of experience” (p.4) and the two domains that are included in conceptual metaphor are also given special names. The conceptual domain that we use to understand another conceptual domain is called source domain, while the conceptual domain that is understood via the use of the source domain is the target domain. To say it differently, the target domain is the domain that we try to understand via the use of the source domain.