LV Metonymy in English & Vietnamese

1 Chapter INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE It seems that an effective reading or communication is an important process in our everyday life Not only we need to identify the possible interpretation allowed by the grammar, but also to discover the implied meanings that the speaker or writer want to covey In each case, it is also highly interesting to analyze how we try to convey the information we want to get across Naturally enough, we make use of conventional language but we are also creative and constantly invent new words, phrases and formulations This, according to Andreas Blank [15] is due to the fact that: “Linguistic communication can be seen as a process whereby people try to maximize their communicative success by minimizing their linguistic effort” One of the effective ways concerned here is the act of naming one object or one concept or idea by using another name for the related parts of the referent without using the exact name for it Metonymy is a response to both demands Metonymy is an important way of expressing ideas, a cognitive process, consisting in transference of meaning base on associations In literature as well as in short stories, metonymy was seen as a nature phenomenon with which writers dressed up their language to make it more effective, economic, and sometimes to clarify the meanings they wanted to convey The use of metonymy enabled the writers to replace generalities and abstractions with concrete and vivid images Let us have a look at the following sentence from O Henry’s short story “Soapy and the Cops” He threw the umbrella away angrily and said some words that were not very nice about men who wear blue uniforms and carry clubs Because he wanted to be arrested, they seem to regard him as a king who could no wrong [43, P.123-124] In the example mentioned above, we can see that “blue uniforms” and “clubs” is used to stand for policemen, the cops This expression employs the mechanism of metonymy In Vietnamese, in the story “Trong bóng rừng” by Hồ Dzếnh the metonymic expression is used successfully in the following sentence Ở vùng đây, ba chiếm địa vị khả quan Không phải người có quyền tước gì, người buôn bán phát đạt nên đầu to, mặt lớn nể [21] It can be noted that the metonymic expression “những đầu to, mặt lớn” refers to highly authorized people in the region From my own teaching experience, I have found that learning to analyze and interpret the metonymic expressions in short stories is not an easy task for Vietnamese learners of English as well as for foreigners who study Vietnamese language and culture Awareness of the meaning shifting of metonymy will not only help learners get a better understanding of implied meanings of metonymic expressions, but also provide some necessary strategies in their communication All these things have taken my focus of attention and aroused my interest in researching the topic: “An investigation into metonymy in English and Vietnamese short stories” Hopefully, this study will be a contribution to present linguistic knowledge Also, similarities and differences findings on the analysis between English and Vietnamese metonymy will be of great benefit for Vietnamese learners of English and foreign students of Vietnamese 1.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study will observe and describe some commonly used types of means for expressing metonymies in English and Vietnamese short stories The metonymic expressions will be analyzed in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects basing on cognitive process In our study, however, we are only concerned with identifying the metonymic expressions at noun phrase (NP) level 1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES 1.3.1 Aim This study aims to examine metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese short stories and to conduct a contrastive analysis of the metonymies in both languages The cognitive relations and pragmatic functions of metonymies will be concerned in the study The findings of the research are expected to improve the knowledge and ability to use successfully metonymic expressions in teaching and learning of English and Vietnamese as foreign languages 1.3.2 Objectives This study is carried out - To identify, describe and compare the types of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese short stories; - To describe the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese; - To compare and contrast metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese to clarify the similarities and differences of these metonymic expressions in literature and spoken discourse in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects; - To suggest some possible solutions to use metonymy successfully 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS To achieve the aims and objectives of this study, I attempt to answer the following research questions: Which are the commonly used types of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese short stories? What are the typical characteristics of metonymic expressions in terms of syntactic, semantics, pragmatics and cognitive process? What are the differences and similarities of metonymic expressions used in English and Vietnamese short stories? 1.5 ORGANIZATION OF STUDY The study is presented in five chapters as follows Chapter One, Introduction, includes the rationale for the research, aims, objectives, research questions, the scope and organization of the study Chapter Two, Theoretical background, briefly reviews the literature of metonymy, previous studies to metonymy Concepts of linguistic devices related to metonymy such as reference, metaphor or synecdoche, transfer of meanings will also be included in this chapter Chapter Three, Research Methodology, presents the research design as well as research method, data collection and data analysis Chapter Four, Findings and Discussions, presents the linguistic features of metonymy in English and Vietnamese - describes and contrasts the types of metonymic expressions in the two languages This chapter presents the similarities as well as differences in terms of syntactic, semantics and pragmatics of metonymy The cognitive process and pragmatic functions of metonymies will also be discussed in this chapter Finally we present the potential difficulties that the learners may encounter with interpreting and expressing metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese Chapter Five, Conclusion and Implications, briefly summarize the results obtained from the analysis and put forward some implications for teaching and learning English concerning metonymy This chapter also mentions the limitations and suggestions for further research Chapter REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES For centuries, the study of metonymy traditionally has been put only second to the phenomenon of metaphor However, things have changed a little over the past decades and metonymy is now considered in new perspectives Metonymy was traditionally regarded as a figure of speech that involves a process of substitution one linguistic expression for another, i.e., metonymy was viewed as a relation in which one linguistic expression “stands for” another R.Galperin in his work “Stylistics (1971)” states “Metonymy is based on a different type of relation between the dictionary and contextual meanings, a relation based not on affinity, but on some kind of association connecting the two concepts which these meanings represent”[13, p.140] According to Galperin, metonymy used in language-in-action or speech, i.e contextual metonymy, is genuine metonymy and reveals a quite unexpected substitution of one word for another or even of one concept for another, on the ground of some strong impression produced by a chance feature of the thing Within the pragmatic literature, the first extensive studies of metonymy belong to Nunberg (1978, 1979) and Fauconnier (1985) According to Nunberg, metonymy is a case of “deferred reference” in which a speaker uses a description of A and succeeds in referring to B Metonymic uses are considered a subcategory of “local” word uses, i.e uses which “a speaker believes are generally perceived as rational against a system of beliefs that is available only to a sub-section of the community” To illustrate this point, Nunberg gives the following classic example: E.g The ham sandwich is getting restless [64] When this sentence is uttered among waiters in a restaurant, the metonymic expression can be used to identify a customer who has ordered a ham sandwich This use is justified only against a specific set of beliefs shared by the waiters, according to which customers can be identified through their orders Nunberg’s analysis is largely adopted by Fauconnier (1985) who also sees metonymy as a sub-case of deferred reference, which is enabled by the establishment of links between objects “for psychological, cultural, or locally pragmatic reasons”, these links are capture by pragmatic mapping which Fauconnier terms “connectors” Le Guern (1973) also stated that “referential metonymy involves a mechanism of language reduction” [64] According to him the type of reduction characteristic of metonymy is an ellipsis at a phrasal level More recently, with the advent of cognitive linguistic, it has been recognized that the traditional view of metonymy was too narrow and that metonymy, like metaphor, is a conceptual tool that operates with relations between entities rather than with substitutions Metonymy was first described in cognitive terms by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) as a process which “allow us to conceptualized one thing by means of its relation to something else” [64] According to Lakoff, metonymy is not a linguistic object, but a conceptual or cognitive organization expressed by a linguistic object In a more refined account, Lakoff and Turner (1989) have described metonymy as a conceptual mapping within a single domain which involves a stand for relationships and has mainly a referential function In Vietnamese, some researchers have investigated metonymy Nguyễn Thiện Giáp [2] has mentioned metonymy as the transference of name from one object to another basing on the relations between these two objects Cù Đình Tú [8] in “Phong Cách Học Đặc Điểm Tu Từ Tiếng Việt” (1983) studied metonymic expressions based on logical relations between objects In theory, we can produce many metonymic expressions In his work, he gave out kinds of different metonymic expressions He recognized that the main function of metonymy is cognition From the analysis of his research, he comes to the conclusion that metonymic expressions are frequently found in Vietnamese styles: conversational, political commentary and literature Vietnamese writers like using metonymies in their work They see metonymy as a way expressing their own creative talent Đinh Trọng Lạc and Nguyễn Thái Hoà [7] in “Phong Cách Học Tiếng Việt” considered metonymy as the transference of meanings by using objective features for its name Conventional metonymic expressions are produced in a communicative context and therefore metonymy can be described as a language phenomenon which can create an unlimited number of expressions with this function Metonymy in “Phong Cách Học Tiếng Việt” by Hữu Đạt [1] was described as a change of name from one object to another based on the relationship of a part for the whole to enliven expressing ideas As mentioned above, there have been a great number of studies on metonymy in English and Vietnamese However, so far no reported research has been found on the contrastive analysis of metonymy in English and Vietnamese in general and in short stories in particular 2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.2.1 Definition Many researchers in the field of cognitive science agree that we humans think and express ourselves in non-literal way In particular, we make use of metonymies in order to understand or explain a concept in term of others Researchers have given out a variety of definitions of metonymy As Tom Mc Arthur [9] has defined in Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English “Metonymy is the use of a phrase which describes one thing by referring to something which is near to or part of it Writing is often called “the pen” that is metonymy” [9, p.46] In Collins English Dictionary by Harper Collin Publishers (1992) [12] metonymy is “the substitution of a word referring to an attribute for the thing that is meant, as for example the use of the crown to refer to a monarch” Webster’s New World Dictionary [15, p.38] gives the following definition of metonymy in the traditional view: Metonymy is a figure of speech in which the name of one thing is used in place of that of another associated with or suggested by it Our working definition is based on the definition of metonymy proposed Kovecses and Radden [15, p.39] as the followings: Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same domain, or ICM 10 Basing on this definition we can conceive of metonymy as a process with an assumption that “metonymy is better understood as a reference point” However, to facilitate our expression of the characteristic function of metonymy, we will use both the working term “refer to” in the sense of pointing or talking about an object or thing and the traditional term “stands for” in the sense of rather symbolic relation throughout this paper Let us take the following sentence from the short story “Jimmy Valentine” by O Henry “At the end of a year the situation of Mr Ralph Spencer was this: he had won the respect of the whole town; he had an excellent business; he and Annabel were engaged and were to be married in two weeks” [43, p.98-99] In this sentence, the noun phrase “the whole town” refers to all the people living in the town It is a place-for-inhabitant metonymy in which reference to the place is used to stand for the people 2.2.2 Figures of speech Metonymy was traditionally regarded as a figure of speech, so an account of figures of speech is indispensable in our study In Literary Terms – A Practical Glossary by Brian Moon [10] “the term “figurative” language has traditionally referred to language which differs from everyday, “non-literary” usage” Figure of speech is used for words or expressions that have a secondary, more figurative meaning It may help paint a more vivid and colorful picture of the message that the speaker or writer wishes to express It can often also be used to emphasize or clarify a statement Figures of speech are usually divided into tropes and schemes Tropes are language uses with some kinds of secondary meaning, while schemes are 77 Table 4.15 Common metonymic mapping patterns in English and Vietnamese: PLACE-FOR-PERSON Example Types of Source Target mapping Matrix domain Subdomain HOUSE FOR PERSON the sea persons who live in this Broadicea, aged twenty, was the eldest daughter of house the house nhà persons who live in this Người ta ngỡ hai vợ chồng nhà house đông anh em bên dốc Lùng Chùng the whole town persons who live in this Our whole town went to her funeral town Những đêm sáng trăng mùa hạ, phố bắc chõng persons who live in this ngồi đường nhà nóng lò hàng vạn muỗi vo ve town TOWN FOR PERSON phố VILLAGE FOR PERSON SPECIFIC CITY FOR PERSON DISTRICT STREET FOR PERSON the West all the villager of Milford The next day, the whole village of Milford talked of little else than Parson Hooper's black veil Vu Dai village Vu Dai villager Cả làng Vũ Đại nhao lên Họ bàn tán nhiều vụ án không ngờ New York Persons who live in New York A man gets dull in New York But the West makes him sharp Hanoi Persons who live in Hanoi Rồi Hà Nội giàu lên nhanh District street persons who live in this The district was one that closed up early district street District street persons who live in this Trời trắng Nắng bừng bừng Cả phố huyện district street say nắng 78 Table 4.16 Common metonymic mapping patterns in English and Vietnamese: PLACE OF WORK-FOR-PERSON Types of Source Target Mapping Matrix domain Subdomain OFFICE FOR PERSON office persons who serve in the Some mornings he went to the phone box at the office terminus down at the bay and called his office to say he was sick Example Nhưng vào lúc phòng tổ chức Ban Thương Binh xã hội ngầm gởi lý lịch ông để sửa soạn sẵn điếu văn thật xứng đáng với đời đẹp đẽ ông, có tin từ bệnh viện bay HOSPITAL FOR PERSON PRESS FOR PERSON a hospital persons who serve in the He left most of his money to a hospital and some scientists who work there hospital hospital persons who serve in the Nhưng vào lúc phòng tổ chức Ban Thương Binh xã hội ngầm gởi lý lịch ông để sửa soạn sẵn hospital điếu văn thật xứng đáng với đời đẹp đẽ ông, có tin từ bệnh viện bay Press persons who serve in the Are you from the press? press persons who serve in the PhÝa b¸o ®μi ®ang dßm ngã Mét b÷a, hä Ëp vμo, quay phim, chop h×nh bóa la press In terms of pragmatics, it can be said that the addresser’s purpose to actualize his/her descripted entity in the domain and de-actualize the metonymic referent can be recognize in the use of metonymic expressions In doing so, he/she can bring more attention to the description of the entity in the source domain and at the same time help the addressee to avoice the distraction by decoding the supposed actualized entity in the target domain This pragmatic characteristic can be seen in the examples for the illustration in table below 79 (122) John stared round at the rows of grinning faces [68] (123) Dưới trời triền miên kinh động ngờ ngợ ánh sáng tối ẩm ướt rừng tị nạn đổ xuống đầu xanh ngậm chùm tóc vừa tơ mà nhuộm màu tang [37, p.113] Table 4.17 The information status of the explicit entity and implicit entity in English and Vietnamese Metonymic expression and the desired referent grinning faces persons with grinning faces Domain Source domain target domain Explicitness Explicit implicit Information status new/asserted given/presupposed Grounding Foregrounded Backgrounded Specificity more specific less specific đầu xanh the person with young hair ngậm chùm tóc vừa tơ As for the louctionary act of a speech act, we can find a similarity in the act of uttering a sentence from a language like English and Vietnamese As a description of what a speaker says in the act of using a referring expression and a predicating expression to express a proposition, it can be note that speakers/writers in English and Vietnamese often apply to nonlocutionary act This similarity can be seen in the illustrative examples in table 4.18 below 80 Table 4.18 Literal and Non-literal Locution in English and Vietnamese Example Literal reading Non-literal reading Gillian walked out of the theater to where his taxi was waiting the taxi itself was waiting (absurd) the driver in the taxi was waiting (intended message) Quan án Trần bị the boat itself took Lady Chieu Tan away (absurd) kích động, xúc cảm mạnh mà chết Cô Chiêu Tần, thuyền cướp mang the people on the boat took Lady Chieu Tan away (intended message) Breathing laboriously she tried I should with Mozard to explain to me what I should himself (absurd) with the Mozart I should with the musical peice of work by Mozard oney (intended message) Túng Séng Sụi làm lễ truy điệu Túng Séng Sụi itseself Chẩn Hồ xong thực vào mùa observed the memorial service trồng for Chan Ho The villagers in Túng Séng Sụi observed the memorial service for Chan Ho (intended message) 4.5.3 The syntactic differences As has been mentioned in section 4.2 English and Vietnamese have metonymic expressions in form of noun phrases with premodification and postmodification However, while metonymic expressions Vietnamese can make use of modification in both directions those in English is found to be more restricted to premodification Except for metonymic expressions with OF-CONSTRUCTION like the voice of the world, the sound of the waves, we rarely found instances of metonymic expressions with postmodification in English This may be because of the fact that postmodification in form of restrictive clause, particpal clause, adjective clauses or phrases can create more explitness for the antecedent and thus reduce the invoking of the subdomains in the domain matrix The matter is, in our view that the description of the entity in the source domain is just enough so that the 81 addressee can be invoked in the mapping process to access to the target referent and at the same time he/she can maintain the attention to partial scene that the metonymic expression figures in our mind What should be taken into consideration here is that the premodification in English and Vietnamese is not the same as far as its constraints are concerned We all know that the premodification in English can be syntactically realized in form of participle functioning like adjectives However, it should be noted that not all present participles or past participals can occur in the position before the head noun By Quirk [1975], the possibility of modification by a present participle depends on the potentiality of the participle to indicate a permanent or characteristic feature We can say “a bored face” but not a “bored man” Let’s consider examples 124 below (124) He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window; gazing with delight at the scene; rolling their white eye-balls, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear [59] (125) John stared round at the rows of grinning faces [68] (126) She looked back at the row of half hidden faces [65] In (124) “shining black faces” refers to “the black people”, “grinning faces” refers to the people who were grinning at the time However, it is impossible to replace “face” by the head noun “people” Such sentences like (125) and (126) below may sound odd because (124) and (125) can illustrate the crucial significance of the “permanent” or “inherent characteristics” of the face, the look, the hair or ssome other parts of the body (127) shining black people [59] 82 (128) John stared round at the rows of grinning people [66] Also, the meaning of “half hidden faces” will be different from “half hidden people” though “these half hidden faces” may stand for the people in a certain place of the context of the story As compared, it seems that the replacement of the explicit head noun in the metonymic expression by the actualized form of the implicit head noun in the target domain is possible The derived sentences not sound odd as in (127) and (128) above Let’s consider examples (129) below (129) Cái thang gỗ lim nặng, đóng khung lấy sáu cổ phiến loạn, đem bắc lên mỏ cân nặng đến bảy tám tạ [37, p.135] Cái thang gỗ lim nặng, đóng khung lấy sáu người/ tên phiến loạn, đem bắc lên mỏ cân nặng đến bảy tám tạ (130) Trong giới khuyển ưng, khuyển phệ, mặt quắc thước, nhẹ nhõm thực [37, p.134] Trong giới khuyển ưng, khuyển phệ, người quắc thước, nhẹ nhõm thực (131) Ở Huế, miệng tuổi tác bắt đầu theo thị hiếu mà nói đến ba Mộng xinh tắc: “Thần kinh hữu tam Mộng” [37, p.102] Ở Huế, người tuổi tác bắt đầu theo thị hiếu mà nói đến ba Mộng xinh tắc: “Thần kinh hữu tam Mộng” We assume that there is no constraint in shifting one of the characteristics of the entity in the target domain to the entity in the source domain Also, the active and passive meanings are not necessarily realized morphologically and syntactically as in English Thus while “shining” cannot 83 be shifted from “face” to “people” or vice versa such charctersitics as phiến loạn [rebellious], quắc thước [hale and hearty], tuổi tác [aged] can be shift from the head noun “people” to the head noun in the metonymic expression The illustration of the syntactic constraints in the above examples can be represented as follows Table 4.19 The syntactic representation of shifting of characteristics from entity domain in target to entity in source domain in Vietnamese SOURCE DOMAIN TARGET DOMAIN HEAD NOUN CHARACTERISTICS HEAD NOUN CHARACTERISTICS Sáu cổ Phiến loạn người/ tên phiến loạn mặt Quắc thước người quắc thước miệng tuổi tác người tuổi tác 4.6 SUMMARY In this chapter we have presented our findings about the characteristic features of metonymic expressions in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects The crucial points to be mentioned here are mapping relations of the entity in the source domain and entity in the target domain, the addresser’s motivation of using metonymic expressions concerning the information status, the locutionary act Similarities and differences in the number of ICMs and constraints in using metonymic expressions in terms of modification have also been discussed 84 Chapter CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS From what has been analyzed and presented in the foregoing chapter about the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese, we would like to draw some conclusions about the similarities and differences of these units and then put forward some implications to the English teaching and learning 5.1 A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE STUDY OF METONYMIC EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE Metonymy is more pervasive and important, cognitively and rhetorically than has usually been noted As we have analyzed, metonymies are matters of relatively inconsequential word substitutions such as the part for the whole, the container for the contained, the place for the people, and the like These substitutions supply elegant variation in speech and writing without seeming to alter meaning very much Syntactically, we have showed that the major function of metonymy is referential which is fulfilled typically by noun phrase structures In this syntactic structure, the modifier-head relations are a high precision feature for recognition of metonymic expressions In both English and Vietnamese, noun phrase structures can have modification in both directions though postmodification is hardly applied in English while this kind of modification is a predominant feature in Vietnamese metonymic expression Also, while this postmodification allows a fairly free shifting of the characteristics from the entity implicit in the target domain to the enity explicit in the source 85 domain, this characterstics seems to be a constraint in the use of participle modification in English noun phrases Semantically, metonymic expressions can make use of nearly all types of ideolaized conceptual models with relations between the source domain and target domain From the data analysis, we notice that there are many correspondences in conceptualizing and producing of metonymic expressions among English and Vietnamese writers In both languages, writers use a place-for-inhabitant metonymy most often when they come to describing people living in cities, towns or villages However, the most surprising result is the high number of the metonymic expressions denoting administration units such as “Trung ương”, “Tỉnh”, “Nhà nước”, “Chính quyền” are commonly used in Vietnamese short stories to refer to the people who actually make a decision or perform an act of referring As compared, low number of this type is found in our data from English short stories Both English and Vietnamese corpus also shows the predominant use of the body parts such as hand, face, head, eyes or voice standing for the whole person Pragmatically, we found that instances of metonymic expressions can be used according to the addresser’s motivation concerning the grounding of information for the vivid characterization of the scene in the source domain Also, the need to avoid a distraction in the distribution of addressee’s attention and focus more on the description of the entity in the source domain can be counted as a major cause for the literary locutionary act and nonlocutionary act in the use of metonymic expressions The conceptual relations between the entity in source domain and entity in target domain are well-defined as conceptual universals and they are encoded in English and Vietnamese for the application of a level analysis of literal and non-literal reading which will be futher discussed below concerning the pedagogical assumptions 86 5.2 IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING CONCERNING THE USE OF METONYMIC EXPRESSIONS Metonymy can present interesting challenges to the reader The comprehension process involves not only identifying the possible interpretation allowed by the grammar, but also using contextual clues to eliminate some interpretations Metonymy is also used to make sense of reference by association, so it forces the reader to work harder at making meaning in a text as well as in a short story Considering a metonymic noun phrase, the reader must have acquired knowledge of what they have referred to a predicate analysis, the ability to determine the properties of the implied meaning to the head noun With the general understanding of meaning transfer of metonymy, we can give some of its syntactic implication (132) Are you from the press? [62] In this sentence the predication “from the press” has a transferred meaning where the head noun phrase “the press” denotes the implied meaning However, this word can refer to the publication, the news media, to an edition of the publication or to the publishing organization itself Basing on the rule “sortal crossing” proposed by Geoffrey Nunberg [63] we can indicate which property of one of these sorts can be applied with the transferred reading Moreover, we can note that [63] have a possible reading if we take the subject to denote (133) Tôi may mầm hoạ đời chị, với cậu mợ tôi, thùng đồ từ Nga gửi nguồn sống năm Hà Nội ăn bo bo, hút thuốc quấn [37, p.132] 87 (I not know that is opportunity or disaster for her, but for my Uncle and Aunt the package from Russia was their life-spring while Hà Nội was eating bo-bo, smoking cheap cigar.) Hà nội, the capital of Vietnam, can neither have an animate characteristic of food consumption encoded by the verb “eat” nor smoke cheap cigar, but via the place-for-inhabitant metonymy we can say that It is possible because of the nature of the relationship between the place and the people living there In a comparative study of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese, we have found that we sometimes could not have a word-word translation of metonymic expressions “Nhà thường hay ăn trước tôi.”, for instance, the metonymic noun phrase “nhà tôi” is used to stand for one’s husband or wife in Vietnamese Obviously, it is difficult for a foreigner to understand its version literally as the following: - My house has had dinner already Such a literal translation may cause ambiguity with at least three possible interpreations: (1) All the members in my house have had dinner already (2) Some members in my house have had dinner already (3) I have had dinner already 5.3 SOME SUSGESTED SOLUTIONS FOR ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING From what has been presened about the potential difficulties that the Vietnamese learners of English in the foregoing section and about the similarities and differences of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese we would like to have the following suggestions 88 First, to express the metonymy in English the Vietnamese learners of English can have much freedom in the language transfer by making use of the similarities in the mapping relations with ICMs For the assumptions that English and Vietnamese have much in common in the ICMs as the universals both in the representation of the conceptual structures as well as the representation of these ICMs in language In the two languages the learners can have at their disposal linguistic means to express the mapping relations between the entity in the source domain and entity in the target domain Also, the ways the addressee’s attention to be directed to the desired target are similar in the two languages according to the principles of cognitive salience With these assumptions in mind, we suggest that this essential knowledge should be provided to the Vietnamese learners of English as far as the need of using metonymic expressions is concerned With knowledge about the ICMs and the language resources to express the metonymy, learners of English can have more confidence to perform language transfer and apply some of the transfer patterns For example CONSTITUENTS Vietnamese English PROPER NAME Rồi Hà Nội giàu lên nhanh Then, Hanoi was booming QUANTIFIER + N Cả nhà soi The whole family has been looking gương at themselves in that mirror 89 Types of Source Target mapping Matrix domain Subdomain CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR PERSON Central committee persons who serve in Central committee Example Đầm Môn vui mở cờ bụng hay tin Trung ương cho tỉnh liên doanh với công ty nước mở xưởng đóng tàu Đầm Môn is very happy when the Central Committee allows the province to joint venture with a foreign company in building a shipping plant STATE FOR PERSON State persons who serve in the State Ít họ hy vọng Nhà nước mở đường cho dân ba xã vùng biển At least they still hoped the State would have the roads built up for the three coastal village COURT FOR PERSON the court persons who serve in the court Tiền bán nửa hộ án chia cho anh Đản số tài sản anh lại từ mười năm xây dựng tổ ấm tan The money inherited from half-apartment selling divided by the law-court was my brother Đản’s only fortune from his broken family during past ten years PRESS AND BROADCASTING CORPORATION press and broadcasting croporation persons who serve in the press and broadcasting corporation Phía báo đài dòm ngó Một bữa, họ ập vào, quay phim, chớp hình búa la xua The press and radio television corporation is peering at us One day, they rushed in and took photograph, and took snapshots … Apart from the role in cognitive relations, metonymy fulfils mainly referential functions in communication In a common case where metonymy is used referentially, the problem is how the hearer moves from what was said to an obvious related proposition which contained the intended referent In Vietnamese literature, Nguyễn Tuân successfully has created metonymies in 90 his writing as well as in his short stories Let have a look at the following sentence in his story [37] (134) Một miệng cười, mười ngón tay tháp bút trước chung thiên hạ, sở cứ, trở nên riêng nhà [37, p.102] This is the value that is worth mentioning Obviously, what is really being talked about here a beautiful girl The metonymy in this sentence produced a rhetorical effect Consider the following example (135) Good! Wake up the whole country, and get the news through to the San Francisco police boat [44, p.56] It is clearly in (4) it was not “the whole country”, but all the people who living in the country The metonymy “the whole country” is normally used to avoid a long paraphrase like “Good! Wake up all the people who living in the country, and get the news through to the San Francisco police boat” in order to achieve successful reference In Vietnamese, we have a similar case Let have a look at the following sentence (136) Chuyến bay hạ cánh lúc hai Cậu có trở ngại không? [38 , p.103] - The plane will arrive at o’clock Any questions? In this case, it is not the plane can arrive by itself, but the pilot who will control the plane to land The metonymy “chuyến bay” is also a way of avoiding the use of a longer, heavier to process 91 5.4 LIMITATION OF THE THESIS AND FURTHER STUDY The study has just discussed the issues of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese in terms of ICMs under the framework of cognitive linguistics Details of the relationships between the the source domains nadthe target domains have not been clarified Also, little has been discussed about the constraints of metonymic expressions concerning the use of constituents of the noun phrase structures Our corpus was built with samples of PMs mainly from short stories but these are not sufficient for us to make generalizations about the styles of English authors and Vietnamese authors in using metonymy For a better insight into metonymy in English and Vietnamese, the following issues should be further studied: - Cultural reflections from the conceptual structure of ICMs; - Linguistic constraints for the use of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese [...]... samples: instances of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese were identified and collected in some short stories - Presenting, describing and analyzing the types of metonymic expressions in English in comparison with those equivalents in Vietnamese - Finding out the cognitive relations and pragmatic functions of metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese - Detecting any possible interferences... selecting and collecting instances of sentences containing metonymic expressions in English and Vietnamese short stories 3.3.2 Instrument For the purpose of collecting sufficient data for the study, we use samples taken from various short stories in English and Vietnamese The means for collecting data here is survey and observation 22 3.4 PROCEDURE The following steps will be involved - Collecting samples:... happen in the speaker’s performance - Suggesting some implications for English teaching and learning 3.5 DATA ANALYSIS In analyzing and interpret the data we took these following assumptions into consideration First we looked into how an entity expressed by a certain metonymic expression could be mapped onto to another entity in the target domain The interpreting of the metonymic expression was judged in. .. container Moreover, it is a rule that we are more interested in the container than the things contained in the container so we commonly have container-for-contained metonymy (24) We were soon joined by friends and connections, all eager and excited, and each provided with a colored glass for the occasion [52] In (24) a colored glass stands for the liquid, i.e mineral water, wine or beer contained in. .. family during past ten years.) In (23) the administrative unit “toà án” refers to the people who actually make the decision 4.1.5 Container for contained We all know that a container and things contained in it are contiguous or closely associated The conceptual relationship which holds between a container and the thing contained in it may produce the metonymies container for contained and contained for... different functions Traditionally, metonymy is about referring; a method of naming or identifying something by mentioning something else which is a component part or closely or symbolically linked In contrast, metaphor is about understanding and interpretation; it is a means to understand or explain on phenomenon by describing it in terms of another In cognitive linguistics, metaphor has been studied... relations In analyzing metonymic relationships based on conceptual notions, we find down the similarities and differences in pragmatic functions of metonymies in English and Vietnamese 4.1 TYPES OF METONYMIC EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE In order to go further into the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of metonymy, we assume that the identification of the types of metonymic expressions in. .. other hand, involves only one conceptual domain (mapping occurs within a single domain, not across domains) and is used primarily for reference Via metonymy, one can refer to one entity in a schema by referring to another entity in the same schema This point can be illustrated by Lakoff & Johnson’example: The ham sandwich is waiting for his check [64] Lakoff & Johnson suggest that ham sandwich actually... For Lakoff & Johnson, then, the defining characteristic of metonymy is referential, as metonymy fundamentally involves the use of one entity to refer to another, related entity 13 2.2.4 Metonymy in cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics has dealt in depth with conceptual metaphor for more than two decades, but has only very recently started to pay attention to conceptual metonymy Metonymy, like... bowls In Hanoi I had three bowls only." “bốn bát”, (four bowls), “ba bát” (three bowls) is used metonymically to stand for the rice contained in the bowls 4.1.6 Contained for container In case of the pattern Contained for container we found instances of the following examples (27) Billy takes a long draught of the bitter golden liquid [41, p.260] In (27) the metonymy used is that of contained for container ... contained in it may produce the metonymies container for contained and contained for container Moreover, it is a rule that we are more interested in the container than the things contained in the... a conceptual mapping within a single domain which involves a stand for relationships and has mainly a referential function In Vietnamese, some researchers have investigated metonymy Nguyễn Thiện... and collected in some short stories - Presenting, describing and analyzing the types of metonymic expressions in English in comparison with those equivalents in Vietnamese - Finding out the cognitive