an investigation into cultural meaning of love declarations in english and vietnamese folklores = tìm hiểu ý nghĩa văn hóa của lời tỏ tình trong các bài dân ca tiếng anh và tiếng việt

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LU'U THI THANH TU AN INVESTIGATION INTO CULTURAL MEANING OF LOVE DECLARATIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FOLKLORES TIM

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

LU'U THI THANH TU

AN INVESTIGATION INTO CULTURAL MEANING OF

LOVE DECLARATIONS IN ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE FOLKLORES

(TIM HIEU Y NGHIA VAN HOA CUA LOi TO TINH TRONG CAC

BAI DAN CA TIENG ANI1 VA TIENG VIET)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Part one: Introduction 5

1.1 Justification 5

1.2 A i m and objectives o f the study 6

1.3 Scope o f the study 6

1.4 Methods o f the study 7

1.5 Design o f the study 7

Part two: Development 9

Chapter one: Theoretical background 9

1.1 Introduction 9

1.2 The relationship between language and culture 9

1.2.1 Nature, culture, language 10

1.2.2 Communities and their effects on language users 11

1.3 Tropes 13 1.3.1 Simile 13 1.3.2 Metaphor 14 1.4 Folklore as a genre 14

1.4.1 Introduction 14

1.4.2 Love declarations in folklore as a genre 15

1.5 Summary 18 Chapter two: Love declarations in English folklores 19

2.1 Introduction 19 2.2 Nature, Culture and Language used in love declarations 19

2.3 Tropes o f love declarations in English folklore 25

2.3.1 Simile used in love declarations in English folklore 25

2.3.2 Metaphor used in love declarations in English folklore 25

2.4 Summary 26 Chapter three: Love declarations in Vietnamese folklore 27

3 1 Introduction 27

3 2 Cultural images used in love declarations 28

3 3 Tropes o f love declarations in Vietnamese folklore 36

3.3.1 Simile in love declarations in Vietnamese folklore 37

3.3.2 Metaphor in love declarations in Vietnamese folklore 38

3.4 Summary 40

Part three: Conclusion 41

3.1 Comparison between English and Vietnamese

love declarations in folklore 41

3.1.1 Similarities 41 3.1.2 Differences 42 3.2 Summary of the thesis 42

3.3 Implications from the study 43

3.4 Suggestions for further study 43

References 45

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1,1 JUSTIFICATION

The communication of love is an important aspect of interpersonal relationships

across cultures But saying "I love you" can be ver>' delicate walk, with much gra\ area, regarding what can and should be communicated about love, when, b\ whom and to whom Love is sometimes felt but not expressed, other times, love is expressed only nonverbally; and still other times, it is communicated verbally, with or without nonverbal manifestations

In English and Vietnamese, the way people choose to express love is not the same as

it is afTected by cultural values Love declarations include in themselves people's viewpoints which are presented quite differenth in the two languages Hence, what needs

to be carried out in this study will be an investigation of cultural meaning of love

declarations in folklores of the two languages in order U) llnd out the similarities and

differences between them, fhc thesis also attempts to explain what are behind the differences uncovered in the investigation

Our thesis is entitled "An investigation into the cultural meaning of love declarations

in English and Vietnamese folklores" The choice of the thesis is generated from two reasons: Firstly, as Swales (1990: 34) stated that "the concept of genre has maintained a central position in folklore studies ever since the pioneering work in the earl\ nineteenth century" The functionalist in folklore would rather stress socio-cullural value For Malinowski (I960, cited in Swales 1990:35) "folklore genres contribute to the maintenance and survival of social groups because the\ serve social and spiritual needs" Perhaps inevitably, to assign cultural \alue also requires the in\estigator to pa\ attention to how a community views and itself classify genre This idea will lead to the tact that love declaration is a mode of social communication and is onl\ a genre among others, therefore,

we would like to investigate love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores to see

the similarities and diftcrences of this genre in the two languages SecondK lo\e

declarations, as mentioned above, relleel human's ideolog\, so we wish to see how the ideologies represented in the two languages

We optimistically hope that the thesis will help students of English, and students of culture as it could provide an insight into the similarities and differences of love declarations in English and Vietnamese folklores

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

A popularized view of emotion is that it is a physiological process associated with the nervous system Located all the core of the nervous system is a universal and essential set of emotional states One of these could be said to be love Ever>body experiences the state of being in love at least once in a life time While the universality of some emotional state may not be in dispute, how person interprets and manifests those emotional experiences will differ across cultures Hence, this paper aims to advance an understanding

of emotion expression as a de-essentialised domain and to view it as "a cultural and interpersonal process of naming, justifying, and persuading by people in relationship to each other" (Lutz, 1998:5) We will take "love declaration" in Vietnamese and English folklores as a point of access into cultural communication systems

L3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Within cultural meaning, our anahtieal task was therefore: a) describing the locution

"I love you" in love declaration wiih reference to its occurrence and non-occurrence, where

it occurs, with whom?, in what language(s) and dialcct(s), in which verbal forms, about which topics, as part of what interactional sequences, and with what observable consequences; and b) interpreting the participants understandings of the lo\e declaration given the patterned contingencies under a) above It is through holding the phenomena of emotion expression as a constant that we will search the cultural \ariabilit> in order to understand the general forces and particular features of emotion expression Our focus here will be on the performance of communication patterns u ithin intimate personal relationships

Our interest then falls on the expression of lo\e within intimate/personal relationships Our expectation is that the expression of love will be of those communicative activities that give force and meaning to intimate personal relationships In intercultural relationship it is our h>pothesis that love declarations also function to locate and gi\e voice

to cultural idcntit\ Put simpl\ to say or not to sa\ "I lo\e you" can also be communicating much atx)ul communal understandings of socialit}, of person, and their strategic activities

Within the scope of the thesis, the author investigates 100 love declarations in English folklore and 100 love declarations in Vietnamese folklore

1.4 METHOD OF THE STUDY

To fulfill the aim of the study, the main methods used are descriptive and comparative

The study deals with love declarations in English and Vietnamese folklores, therefore, a great number of love declarations in English and Vietnamese folklore were collected then 50 love declarations in each language have been carefully selected, after that

we try to analyse the love declarations in terms of cultural meanings, genre and tropes and then synthesize the result to find out the similarities and differences of people's auitudes in the two languages In fulfilling the focuses of the study in comparing the two languages' love declarations, descriptive method has been applied to present prominent features of love declarations in the two languages, the results achieved, in turn, are then compared and contrasted to see the similarities and differences between the two languages in expressing love

The fundamental theories that are applied in the study is the cultural stud> of Robert Lado (I960): Claire Kramsch (2000): and the linguistic study of poetry by Leech (1968) and other Vietnamese researchers such as Dinh Gia Khanh Chu Xuan Dien and others

1.5 DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The study is divided into three parts

Part 1- Introduction- introduces the justification, the aims, the objectives, the method the scope and the design of the study

Part II- Development- consists of three chapters:

Chapter one presents the theoretical background to the stud\ the relationship of language and culture and language cultural identit> introduced b> Claire Kramsch (2000) and Robert Lado (1960) and some Vietnamese researchers such as Vu Ngoc Phan Lu Huy Nguyen, Dang Van Lung and Tran Thi An It also presents the theoretical background of tropes written b\ Leech (1969), Dennis Freeborn and some Vietnamese researchers such as Dinh Gia Khanh et.al (2003), Chu Xuan Dien (2003) Le Van Chuong (2004) etc This chapter also consider folklore as a genre based on the idea presented b\ Swales (1990) Chapter two describes love declarations in English folklore from two perspectives: culture, and versification In terms of culture, the description will be concerned with the

relationship between language used in love declaration and culture/cultural identit) And last but not least, in studying the versification, tropes are taken into consideration, and we bring about an insight into the aspects such as metaphor, simile Based on the above perspectives, we try to find out people's attitudes and feelings lying behind the expression

of love declaration in English folklore

The resources for love declaration in English folklore are taken from traditional ballads, tales, love songs and sayings

Chapter three describes corresponding perspectives of love declaration in Vietnamese Folklore

Part three- Conclusion- compares cultural meanings of love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores to establish the similarities and differences of emotion expressions across the two languages We also summarize the issues studied in the thesis, the implications and suggestions,for further slud>

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 INTRODUCTION

"Language is the principle means whereby we conduct our social lives When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways" (C Kramsch, 2000) As the study deals with love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores, this chapter is concerned with establishing a theoretical framework for the study, as a way to start, we will present some aspects of the theorj of language and culture such as the relationship between language and culture/ cultural identity etc Besides, as the thesis deals with love declaration in folklores, it will be better when other aspects of concepts such as genre, cohesion, tropes are also taken into consideration

1.2 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

According to Claire Kramsch language is the principle means we conduct our social lives When language is used in contexts of communication it is bound up with culture Firstly, the words people utter refer to common experience The> express facts, ideas, or events that are communicable because the\ refer to a stock of knowledge about the world that other people share Words also rellect their authors' attitudes and beliefs, their points of view etc In lx)th cases "language expresses cultural realit\" (C.Kramsch, 2000)

But members of a community or social group do not only express experience: they also create experience through language The\ give meaning to it through the medium the\ choose to communicate w ith one another, for example, speaking on the telephone or face

to face, writing a letter or sending an e-mail message The wa> in which people use the spoken, written, or visual medium itself creates meanings that arc understandable to the group the\ belong to for example, through a speaker's tone of voice, accents, conversational st\le, gestures and facial expressions Through all as verbal and non-verbal aspects, "language embodies cultural realit>" (C Kramsch 2000)

Finally, language is SNStem of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value Speakers identity themselves and other through their use of language: the\ \iew their language as a s>mbol of their social idenlit\ I he prohibition of its use is often perceived

by its speakers as a rejection o f their social group and their culture Thus we can say that

"language symbolizes cultural reality"

We shall deal with these three aspects o f language and culture by considering the following poem by Emily Dickinson

Essential oils- are The attar from the Rose

wrimg-Be not expected by Suns-

alone-It is the gift The General Rose- decay- But this- in Lady's Drawer Make Summer- When the lady lie

ofScrews-In Ceaseless Rosemary (Adaptedfrom C Kramsch, 2000)

L 2 I N a t u r e , c u l t u r e , language

One way o f thinking about culture is to contrast it with nature According to C Kramsch "Nature refers to what is born and grows organically; culture refers to what has been grown and groomed"

Emily Dickinson's poem expresses well the relationship o f nature, culture and language A rose in a fiower bed, says the poem, a generic rose is a phenomenon of nature Beautiful but faceless and nameless among others o f the same species Nature alone cannot reveal nor preserve the particular beaut) o f a particular rose at a chosen moment in lime Powerless to prevent the biological " d e c a \ " and the ultimate death o f roses and o f ladies, nature can only make summer when the season is right

Culture, by contrast, is not bound by biological time Like nature, it is a " g i f t " , but o f difTerent kind Through a sophisticated technological procedure, developed especiall\ to extract the essence o f roses, culture forces nature to reveal its "essential" potentialities The word "screws" suggests that this process is not without labour B\ crushing the petals, a great deal o f the rose must be lost in order to get at its essence The technolog) o f the

screws constrains the exuberance of nature, in the same manner as the teehnolog\ o f the

world Culture makes the rose petals into a rare perfume, purchased at high cost, for the particular, personal use o f a particular lad> fhe lad> ma) die but the fragrance o f the rose's essence can make her immortal, in the same manner as the language o f the poem

immortalizes both the rose and the lady, and brings both back to life in the imagination of its readers

The poem itself bears testimony that nature and culture both need each other The poem wouldn't have been written if there were not natural roses: but it not be understood if

it didn't share with its readers some common assumptions and expectations about rose gardens, technological achievements, historic associations regarding ladies, roses, and perfumes Similarly, let us consider the poem "Tat nuoc d^u dinh" a Vietnamese folklore

to see the relationship between culture, nature and language:

''Horn qua tat nm'rc ddu dinh

Bo quen chiec do tren canh hoa sen

Em duac thi cho anh xin Hay la em de lam tin irong nha

do anh sirt chi dmrng td

Vo anh dura co me gia dura khdu

do anh si'rt chi del Idu Mai nhd cd dy ve khdu cho citng

Khdu rdi anh se tra coiig, Den khi Idy chdng anh se giup cho

Giup cho mot gdnh xdi vd

Mot con Ian heo, mot vd nrau (dm

Giup em ddi chieu em nd/n, Ddi cinm em dap ddi chdm em deo

Giup em quan tdm tien treo, Quan nam tien cir&i Igi deo budng cau "

According to Vietnamese culture, "ganh xoi \6", 'con Ion beo' "vo rugu tam" 'doi chieu', 'doi chan', 'quan tam tien treo' 'quan nam tien ciroi' 'buong cau" are s\mbols of

a wedding Those who share Vietnamese culture ina> understand that the man in the poem borrows cultural s\mbols to express his love to his woman

So let us come to the next concept

L2.2 Communities and their effects on Language Users

According to C Kramsch, "Social conventions, norms of social appropriateness,

are the product of communities of language users" As in the Dickinson's poem, poets and

readers, florists and lovers, horticulturists, rose press manufacturers, perfume-makers and users, create meanings through their words and actions Likewise, the man and the woman

in ' T a t nuoc dau d i n h " use their words and actions to express their meanings

Kramsch said that '^people who identify themselves as member o f social group (family, neighborhood ) acquire common ways o f viewing the world through their interactions with other members o f the same group" (C Kramsch, 2000, 6) These views

are reinforced through institutions like the family, the school, the workplace through

their lives Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way members o f the group use language - for example, what they choose to say and how they say it (C Kramsch, 2000, 6) Thus, in addition to the notion o f speech community - "composed o f people who use the same linguistic code" (C Kramsch), we can speak o f discourse communities to refer to the common ways in which members o f a social group use language to meet their social needs Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features o f their language differentiate them from others, but also the topics they choose to talk about, the way they present information, the style with which they interact, in other words, their discourse accent For instance, English people often associate love with blindness:

"Love \s a blind, and those that folUnv him too often lose their way"

Collev Cibler Or:

"But love is blind and lovers can not see The pretty Jollies that themselves commit'

Shakespeare Or:

"If love he blind

It best agrees with night "

Shakespeare Whereas, Vietnamese people tend to associate love with the image of "irau cau"

For example:

Yeu nhau trdu vd cung say, Ghet nhau cau ddu day khay chdng mdng

Or:

Trdu hoc khan trdng cau tirai, Trdu boc khan trdng dai ngir&i xinh xinh

An cho no thod tdm tinh

An cho no thod sir minh sir ta

1.3 T R O P E S

In his book " A linguistic guide to English poetry" Leech (p.74) stated that "tropes have been defined as devices involving alteration o f the normal meaning o f an expression" and "tropes are foregrounded irregularities o f content" Freeborn (1996: 61) also said that

**a trope is a device that involves meaning" The most familiar tropes in literary criticism are simile, metaphor and metonymy However, in this thesis, we w i l l deal with simile and metaphor for these tropes manifest in love declarations

1.3.1 Simile The Oxford learner's dictionary (2003: 1526) detlnes that simile is a figure of speech

in which two things are compared using the word "like " or "as", or "as if Simile is like

a metaphor except that it makes the comparison explicit b\ using "like", or "as", or "av

/ / " In simile the comparison between the two things is made explicit b\ an indirect relationship where one thing or idea is expressed as being similar to another For example:

Love 's like the measles- all the worst when it comes late in life

(Douglas Jerrold)

Love is like the measles; we have to go through it

(Jerome K Jerome) Simile, according to Leech (1969: 156) is an overt comparison, simile can specif> the ground o f comparison Most similes are linked b\ " l i k e " , "as" Similes ma\ var\ from a

short, simple comparison to long, ^^extended similes" In Vietnamese, the corresponding

wordssuchas "nhu'\ "nhuld'\ "wZ/w/Ae" etc are used in simile For example:

Mieng cu&i nhir the hoa ngdu, Chiec khan doi ddu nhir the hoa sen

Or:

Doi ta nhir the con ong

Con qudn con quyt, con trong con ngodi

A simile, therefore, is explicit, the very circumstantiality of simile is limitation

1.3.2 Metaphor

Leech (1969: 151) argued that "metaphor is so central to our notion of poetic creation that it is often treated as a phenomenon in its own right, without reference to other kinds of transferred meaning" In considering a metaphor, we may consider the formula:

F = "Like L" This implies that, the figurative meaning F is deriving from the literal meaning L in having the sense "like L" However, the simplest kind of metaphor is the use

of "be" in clause structure, for example:

Love is a boy, by poets styled

Then spare the rod, and spoil the child

is generally more concise and immediate than the corresponding literal \ersion because of the superimposition, in the same piece of language, of tenor and \ehicle

In the above examples, the \ehicle are "bo\" "smoke" meanwhile the tenor is

of discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and st\'le In addition to purpose, the exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarit\ in terms of structure, style content and intended audience"

In folklore study, according to Swales (1990: 34) "the concept of genre has maintained a central position in folklore studies ever since the pioneering work in the early nineteenth century" The functionalist in folklore would rather stress socio-cultural value For Malinowski (1960, cited in Swales 1990: 35) "folklore genres contribute to the maintenance and survival of social groups because they serve social and spiritual needs Perhaps inevitably, to assign cultural value also requires the investigator to pa\ attention to how a community views and itself classify genres" Therefore, many folklore genres are not so labeled according to the form itself but according to how it is received by the community

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia defines folklore as a genre and it includes ballad, tales, epic poem, song and saying (proverb and aphorism)

Now we will consider love declaration in folklore as a genre

1.4.2 Love declaration in folklore as a genre

Love declarations, especially love declarations in folklore, are composed to express love between men and women

A love declaration has its diction (words and grammatical constructions used by certain person), rh\thm and versification (the principles of verse structure), figurative language (the use of figures of speech such as metaphor, simile etc) Primaril\ both English and Vietnamese love declarations are for expressing love, we can find out the love declarations such as:

In Vietnamese:

Qua dinh nga ndn trdng dinh

Dinh bao nhieu ngdi thmnig minh hdy nhieu

Lai day dap ddt, trdng cd vai anh

In English

Love imposes impossible tasks

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, But none more than any heart would ask,

I must know you're a true love of mine

Scarborough Fair

Or:

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,

To cast me off discourteously

For I have loved you well and long

Delighting in your company

Greenslceves Love declarations in both English and Vietnamese folklores are severed to propose a wedding We can find out the verses that have the functions of proposing a marriage:

In Vietnamese:

Cd kia cat co hen song,

Cd mudn an nhdn thi long sang ddy

Sang day, anh ndm cd tay, Anh hoi cdu ndy: Cd lay anh khdng.^

In English:

/ love you more than anything else in the world Come with me to my father's

castle You shall become my wife

Liule Snow-While Or:

Many thanks for redeering me You were the wife of an enchanted prince Xow

we can celebrate our wedding properly, for now I am the King of this land

The Bear Prince

In addition to the issue of expressing lo\e and proposing a wedding lo\e

declaration in relation to gender is the subject of the studies For instance, males seem to

express their love more often than females We can find love declarations said by men in

both English and Vietnamese folklores easily

In Vietnamese:

Gid dua corn buon ngii len b&

Miing ai cd rgng cho ngu nhd mot dem

Or:

7oc ngang limg vira chimg em bui,

De chi ddi bdi rdi da anh

In English:

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley, sage, rosematy and thyme

Without any seam nor needlework

And then she'll he a true love of mine

Tell her to wash it in yonder dry well

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Which never sprung water nor rain ever fell, And then she'll he a true love (fmine

Tell her to diy it on yonder thorn

Parsley, sage, rosemaiy and thyme

Which never bore blossom since Adam was horn, And then she'll he a true love of mine

it also brings an insight that the proposer is a delicate, polite and intelligent person We can find a lot of indirect love declaration in Vietnamese folklore:

Bdv gid man nidi hoi ddo

I 'irdn hdng dd cd ai vdo hay chira?

Or:

17

DAI HOC QUOC GIA HA NQl TRUNG TAM THONG TIN THLJVlEN

Bd chiec ghe sau cheo mau anh dai Keo khuc song ndy hd bui toi tdm

However, this phenomenon is not universally recognized in English folklores, many

of love declaration in English folklores seem to concentrate on the importance of love for

the establishment and maintenance of marriage and general attitudes For example:

/ love you more than anything else in the world Come with me to my father's

castle You shall become my wife

Little Snow-White Or:

Many thanks for redeering me You were the wife of an enchanted prince Now

we can celebrate our wedding properly, for now I am the King of this land

The Bear Prince

In a word, from the description of lo\e declaration above, it is suitable to consider love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores as the claims to feel an emotion, and

it is also a study of cultural life of English and Vietnamese people

1.5 SUMMARY

We have gone through chapter one in this chapter, we ha\e been concerned with

the establishing theoretical background for the stud> What ha\e been presented in this

chapter are the concepts of language and culture, language and nature that are given b> C Kramsch, Moreover, we have taken the concepts of tropes such as simile, metaphor Ihe notion of love declaration as a genre has also been considered Then we have attempted to

study the general meaning of love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores The

following chapter will be concerned with lo\e declarations in English folklore with their linguistic features Ixised on the theoretical background we ha\e presented in this chapter

CHAPTER TWO: LOVE DECLARATIONS IN ENGLISH

FOLKLORE

2.1 INTRODUCTION

Love declarations are frequently found in relationships of lovers, married couples and respondents of different ages In this chapter, we will study some linguistic features of love declarations of lovers in English folklore We also try to discover cultural meaning of love declarations through cultural images used in love declarations In our study, as mentioned in the methodology section, one hundred love declarations are taken into the investigation

2.2 NATURE, CULTURE, AND LANGUAGE USED IN LOVE DECLARATIONS

The study of cultural images used in love declarations can help to show the cultural meanings In studying love declaration in folklore, it is necessar\ to have a small investigation into natural and cultural images used b) people in composing the love declarations Within one hundred love declarations investigated, the common cultural and natural images can be found as follow:

When expressing love English people tend to associate love w ith the strongest power

of nature For example:

Love moves the Sun and the other stars

(Dante) Or:

Love conquers all

(Virgile) Or:

// ^s love that makes the world go round Without it human race will go to doom.sday

0

Or:

Love joined the two in sweet conjunction, death was powerless to sever such a bond

(Thomas Mann)

However, love can be seen as a big illusion For example:

Love 's a blind, and those that follow hint too (fien lose their way

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind

(Shakespeare) The author has found out that when expressing love, English people often think ol life, absence, happiness, relationship between man and woman, beauty, \outh the heart the kiss, marriage, family, jealousy, hatred and fidelity

When talking about love, people often think of their life beautilled with love:

For example:

Love, in my bosom, like a bee

Doth suck his sweet

(Thomas Lodge) Or:

We are all born for love It is the principle of existence and its only end

(Disraeli) Or:

Familiar acts are beautiful through love

(P.B Shelley) Or:

Oh, love will make a dog howl in rhyme

(Francis Beaumont and John l-letcher) Or:

The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love

If love were what the rose is

And I were like the leaf

Our lives would grow together

In sad or singing weather

(Swinburne) Or:

There are no ugly loves, nor handsome prisons

(Pierre Gringore) Beside that, when talking about love, English people often associate love with absence Within one hundred love declarations investigated, we can llnd many love declarations with the image of absence They use the image of absence to talk about the fully-hearted passions, to test love of those who have to apart

For example:

In every parting there is an image of death

(George Eliot) Or:

Or:

Or:

Absent in body, hut present in spirit

(St Paul)

I do not love thee.'- no' I do not love thee!

And vet when you art absent I am sad

(Caroline Norton)

Absence from whom we love is worse than death

(William Cowper)

Or:

Absence lessens half-hearted passions, and increases great ones, as the wind puts

out the candle and yet stirs up the fire

(La Rochefoucauld) Or:

Absence and time are nothing when one is in love

(Alfred de Mussel) Love often goes along with happiness Obviously, when giving love declarations people often have a built in need to make the person they are with really secure in their love Again, they know how their partner feels, what their partner longs for And happiness

is what people desire That is the reason wh> people are aware of affirming that the\ can bring happiness to their partner Within one hundred investigated love declarations by English people, the author has found out that there are many of them talking about the relationship between love and happiness For example:

There is only one hapjyincss in life, to h>vc and he loved

(George Sand) Or:

Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own

(Robert Ileinlein) When expressing happiness, life, absence of lovers in love declarations, English people often use a lot ol cultural images in showing the attitudes of man and woman about love The common attitude of woman is quite ditTerent from that of man Within a hundred love declarations, we can find Ihe common attitudes such as:

''Woman can '/ love man as much as man loves woman, for the love of a woman is in her eyes, and in the nipple of her breast, and in the toe of her fool, but the love of man is

planted in the heart where it can 7 escape "

For man at most differ as Heaven and Earth, But women, worst and best, as Heaven and He IL

(Tennyson) Or:

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more

(James Stephens) Or:

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph

of mind over morals

(Oscar Wilde) Or:

A woman is a foreign land

Of which, though there he settle young,

A man will never quite understand The customs, politics, and tongue

(Coventry Patmore) Happily, women are born to win men's heart and conquer men's land A lot of love declarations represent the ideas that women seem to be superior to men such as:

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and

stomach of a king, and a king of England too "

(Queen Elizabeth 1) Or:

Many a man has been a wonder to the world, whose wife and valet have seen nothing

in him that was even remarkable Few men have been admired by their serx'ants

(Michel de Montaigne) One of the most important cultural images that English people often use to talk about love is a kiss The author has found out man\ love declarations of English people with the image of a kiss in love declarations A kiss becomes a desire of both sexes, male and female For example:

Give me a thouscuul kis.ses then a hundred, then a thousand more

(Catullus)

Or: