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THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES SY THI THOM SUMMARY OF DOCTORAL DISSERTATION SEASON METAPHORS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SONGS: A COGNITIVE STUDY Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 9220201 DANANG – 2021 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Lakoff and Johnson mark a revolution for cognitive linguistics by their grounding-breaking Metaphor We Live By (1980) when they present metaphor from the cognitive perspective The idea that metaphor needs viewing as a conceptual phenomenon and not just as a linguistic one has been argued at length by Lakoff and his fellow researchers (notably Kövecses, 2002, 2010; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a, 1999; Lakoff & Turner, 1989) Consequently, their theory has become a foundation for a good research by other authors In Vietnam, basing on Lakoff and Johnson’s theory, a number of scholars have formulated a variety of reviews, overviews, research related to conceptual metaphor In addition, a great number of studies have been conducted to examine conceptual metaphors of both concrete and abstract concepts around our human worldwide, as well as in Vietnam Particularly, significant attention has been paid to abstract concepts as target domains in investigating conceptual metaphors, which can be easily understood because conceptual metaphor is a process of conceptualizing a more abstract domain in terms of more concrete domains (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980a) Remarkably, time, an abstract concept, is also widely investigated by both foreign and Vietnamese However, TIME in the works is treated as a target domain in a metaphorical mapping In other words, there has been no research conducted to investigate the concept TIME as a source domain which is exploited to map onto other concepts In short, this topic is not adequately investigated in Vietnam although it is interesting and meaningful Hence, this study entitled “Season metaphor in English and Vietnamese songs: a cognitive study” is carried out to fill the literature gap and to provide useful implications to the practice of teaching, learning, and translating English in Vietnam Moreover, it helps to promote metaphor competence for users of Vietnamese as a foreign language 1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Study The thesis aims at examining the metaphors of season in English and Vietnamese songs in the light of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) Subsequently, a comparison is made to find out the similarities and differences between the conceptual metaphors of season in English and Vietnamese song lyrics when SEASON is treated as a target domain as well as a source domain Simultaneously, several explanations are given as causes for these similarities and differences In addition, to obtain these aims, this study is to pursue the following objectives: - To describe how season is mapped through concrete entities in English and Vietnamese song lyrics - To describe how season maps onto abstract entities in English and Vietnamese song lyrics - To identify the similarities and differences between conceptual metaphors of season in English and those in Vietnamese song lyrics - To provide possible explanations to these similarities and differences through physical embodiment from both physical environment and sociocultural environment 1.3 Significance of the Study The present thesis is to examine how people in the English -speaking countries involved in the Inner Circle (Kachru, 1985), and Vietnamese people conceptualize the entity of season Accordingly, the study has both theoretical and practical significance Theoretically, it contributes to the effectiveness of CMT, which is continuously updated, by combining blending theory in the analysis and understanding of conceptual metaphors It is also hoped that the study will contribute to the understanding of the nature of human language in general, motivate our investigation of conceptual metaphors and their characteristics in particular, and encourage further research in the cognitive linguistic field as well Methodologically, the thesis suggests a novel approach to metaphor for investigating metaphors as a cross-linguistic comparison, namely between English and Vietnamese Practically, the study could provide useful implications to the practice of teaching and learning languages Specifically, the study contributes to improving language competence of Vietnamese learners and users of English as well as foreign learners of Vietnamese CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEWAND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Theoretical Background 2.1.1 Traditional Metaphor Theories Metaphor has been an object of study which has been discussed for a long time in different views worldwide Traditionally, the studying of metaphor has been regarded as a figure of speech, i.e., as more or less ornamental devices used in rhetorical style (as cited in Ungerer & Schmid, 2006, p.114) Besides, in the West, metaphor has been approached in various ways such as Aristotle's methodologies study metaphors as transference names; traditional linguistic methods approach metaphor is a linguistic deviance leading to incorrect or illogical sentences; in terms of pragmatic approach, metaphor is considered as an unusual speech act, from which a set of special principles are called for; and from perspective of interactive approach, metaphor is understood as the interaction between the two subjects Hence, the method of interaction opens the recognition for the value of metaphor in cognition It creates the groundwork for the appearance of cognitive theory, especially, with the classical well-known work Metpahors we live by (1980) by Lakoff & Johnson that this study is mainly based on 2.1.2 Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), proposing that metaphor is not a type of stylistic use of language but primarily a systematic cognitive model of concepts, has given rise to a major revolution in the study of metaphor Consequently, CMT is widely applied to metaphor analysis by a great number of cognitive linguists (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a; Lakoff, 1993; Kövecses, 2010; Gibbs, 2011) CMT not only highlights the pervasive nature of metaphor in everyday life but also suggests that metaphor influences how people think, speak and act (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003; Deignan, 2005; Littlemore 2009; Kövecses, 2010) More important for linguists is that CMT can be considered to be a conceptual explanation for the metaphorical part of language use The term metaphor used in this study refers to conceptual metaphor, which one conceptual domain is understood in terms of another conceptual domain Conceptual metaphors can be given by means of the formula A is B or A as B Specifically, A denotes the target domain and B the source domain as in the metaphor time passing as a moving object, where the concept of moving object is mapped to the concept of time passing (Lakoff & John, 1980a; Lakoff, 1993, 2003; Kövecses, 2010) Components of Conceptual Metaphor When discussing mentioning metaphor in culture, Kövecses (2005) notes that ‘metaphor is seen as being constituted by a variety of parts, aspects, or components that interact with each other.’ (p.5) He also outlines 11 components of conceptual metaphor, namely, (1) source domain, (2) target domain, (3) experiential basis, (4) neural structures corresponding to (1) and (2) in the brain, (5) relationships between the source and the target, (6) metaphorical linguistic expressions, (7) mappings, (8) entailments, (9) blends, (10) nonlinguistic realizations, and (11) cultural models (ibid, p.5) Characteristics of Conceptual Metaphor To refine the definition of metaphor, some main characteristics of conceptual metaphor, including isomorphism, systematicity, ubiquity, partiality, and duality are presented 2.2 Review of Related Studies Time is treated as target domain in most of the famous work Lakoff and Johnson (1980a, pp.7-9), provide the conceptual metaphors of time via a number of metaphorical expressions, i.e., TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS LIMITED RESOURCE, TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY Besides, they give another conceptual metaphor of time which is TIME IS MOVING OBJECT Similarly, Kövecses agrees and gives the metaphor TIME IS MOTION However, he extends this metaphor when adding that “TIME IS MOTION conceptual metaphor exists in the form of two special cases in English: TIME PASSING IS MOTION OF AN OBJECT and TIME PASSING IS AN OBSERVER’S MOTION OVER A LANDSCAPE.” (2010, p.37) In addition, Goatly (1997) finds out TIME IS SPACE Moreover, discussing personification, a metaphorical device used commonly in literature, i.e., in poetic language, Kövecses finds more conceptual metaphors of time, namely, TIME IS A THIEF, TIME IS A REAPER, TIME IS A DEVOURER, TIME IS DESTROYER, TIME IS AN EVALUATOR, and TIME IS A PURSUER Developing the conceptual metaphor of time by Lakoff and Johnson (1980a), Evans (2004) present the conceptual metaphor approach to time Particularly, he clarifies the metaphor TIME IS MOVING OBJECT by two sets of mappings in terms of which time is metaphorically structured by motion In other words, space-to-time mappings in this case have been subcategorized on the basis of the moving object These are the MOVING TIME mapping and the MOVING EGO (or OBSERVER) mapping (ibid, pp.60-61) “A Corpus-Based Analysis of Metaphorical Uses of the High Frequency Noun Time: Challenges to Conceptual Metaphor Theory” by Li (2014) Using the Bank of English (BoE), this study analyses the frequentlyoccurring linguistic expressions of time that are associated with two conceptual metaphors of time (TIME IS MONEY and TIME IS MOTION) Especially, the concept of time is frequently used as the topic to exemplify the existence of conceptual metaphor in CMT Interestingly, its result reveals that the list of the frequently-occurring linguistic metaphors found here seems to be quite different from the list of examples given by Lakoff and Johnson (1980a, b) for these two sets of conceptual metaphors In Vietnam, conceptual metaphors of time are investigated in Nguyễn Thị Quyết’s research (2015) Through the manifestation of time: day, parts of day, night, month, season, and time in general as the target domains, beside the conceptual metaphors of time shown above (by Lakoff and Johnson, 1980a, b; Kövecses, 2010; Goatly, 1997; Evans, 2004), the study discovered conceptual metaphors of time In addition, the research, which was conducted by Bạch Thị Thanh Phượng (2014) investigated the conceptual metaphors of spring and xuân denoting seasons in English and Vietnamese poems The study shows the interesting findings and reveals its limitations Another study by Hồ Trịnh Quỳnh Thư’s (2018) entitled a cognitive study of expressions of metaphor of love in English versus Vietnamese, one of rare studies whose findings are related to time metaphors in which time is treated as a source domain In brief, a great number of studies have been carried out to investigate the conceptualization of time as a target domain On the contrary, little research shows time is employed to express other entities which are considered as target domains In other words, time as a source domain used to map onto other domains is an immense vacationland or the promised land welcoming scholars of cognitive metaphors to discover CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research Questions This dissertation makes attempts to answer the following overarching research question: What are the similarities and the differences between the conceptual metaphors of season expressed in English and Vietnamese song lyrics? To obtain this overarching aim, the study answers two research questions as follows: What are the similarities and the differences between conceptual metaphors of season expressed in English and Vietnamese song lyrics regarding SEASON as a target domain? What are the similarities and the differences between conceptual metaphors of season expressed in English and Vietnamese song lyrics regarding SEASON as a source domain? 3.2 Research Methods This dissertation is a comparative study conducted to identify metaphors of SEASON in the light of CMT in which the comparative method is mainly used combining the descriptive method, and with the assistance of some techniques of qualitative and quantitative methods 3.3 Data Collection Procedure 3.3.1 Sources of Data The data collected comes from English and Vietnamese song lyrics from the 20th century onward As an investigation of conceptual metaphors of season, the samples selected come from song There are several sources, namely, Internet-based records, CD/DVD-based records, and printed publications The process of data collection follows some procedures to build the two corpora in the two languages The built corpora contained 1646 and 1897 metaphorical expressions related to season in English and Vietnamese respectively 3.3.2 Conceptual Metaphor Identification Identification of metaphors (including identification of linguistic metaphors and conceptual metaphors) is a crucial step in the procedure of any metaphor research As can be seen, identification of conceptual metaphor depends on the meaning of expression (i.e., linguistic metaphors) which points to the conceptual metaphors in discourse Identification of Linguistic Metaphor The study applied the approaches to linguistic metaphor identification raised by Charteris-Black, Pragglejaz Group and the extension of Pragglejaz’s procedure by Wittink Identification of Conceptual Metaphor The five-step procedure of conceptual metaphor identification by Steen (1999, 2007) was applied 3.4 Data analysis 3.4.1 Analytical Framework The concept season in this research is denoted with the lexemes, namely mùa, xuân, mùa xuân, hè, mùa hè, hạ, mùa hạ, thu, mùa thu, đông, mùa đông in Vietnamese, and season, spring, springtime, summer, summertime, autumn, autumntime, fall, winter and wintertime in English The analytical framework of this study can be visualized in Figure below: Figure Analytical framework of conceptual metaphor of SEASON in English and Vietnamese 3.4.2 Data Analysis Procedure The analysis procedure of this study combined between CMA (Charteris-Black, 2004) and the FSM (Steen, 2011) with assistance of Context- induced Creativity (CIC) (Kövecses, 2010), which is re-mentioned in the book Extended conceptual metaphor theory (Kövecses, 2020) when he discusses metaphor in context, can be visualized via stages as follows: Figure Analysis procedure of conceptual metaphor of season CHAPTER 4: THE ENTITY OF SEASON MAPPED THROUGH THE CONCRETE DOMAINS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SONG LYRICS This chapter presents the results of our analysis of English and Vietnamese season metaphors when SEASON is considered a target domain Followed Zheng’s (2017) classification, the concrete domains which are used to conceptualize SEASON have been found with the great total numbers of metaphorical expressions in both English and Vietnamese, holding 1.275 and 1.359 respectively from the two corpora with the distribution of animate and inanimate entities as source domains seen in the following figure: Figure The distribution of animate and inanimate entities mapped onto SEASON in English and Vietnamese 4.1 Inanimate Domain Regarding SEASON AS AN INANIMATE ENTITY, the findings uncover metaphors of season as in the figure below: Figure The distribution of source domains in terms of inanimate entities mapping onto season in English and Vietnamese It is apparent that the metaphor SEASON IS ENTITY IN SPACE is the most common in the both languages It means that both Westerners and Vietnamese people perceive SEASON as an entity which is manifested the correlation in space Similarly, the entities, namely, concrete entity, natural substance, characteristic of natural are densely employed to depict SEASON These metaphors are conventional because these domains are familiar with all people in the Earth Specifically, everybody considers themselves as an entity, and they embody themselves as a container of contained things in a certain space Moreover, people experience their living environment with weather pattern, temporal units every day Besides, the research findings reveal novel metaphors, i.e., conceptualization SEASON as a social entity and a social activity In fact, when TIME is investigated as a target domain, no findings show that MUSIC is utilized to portray TIME However, the results of this thesis uncover the metaphor SEASON IS MUSIC which is applicable in the both languages It can be concluded that people share the same way to perceive the world in general, SEASON in particular when they have the same physical experiences no matter where they live in the Earth 4.2 Animate Domain Animate entities here consist of animals and plant, in which animals include lower animals and higher animals (namely human beings), which is followed the Zheng’s classification (2017, p.28) The collected data statistics reveal that the metaphor SEASON IS AN ANIMATE ENTITY is rather common in both English and Vietnamese Precisely, there are 201 expressions, with 336 frequencies in English and 268 expressions in Vietnamese, holding 285 frequencies Like above domains, the number of expressions supporting each case in each language is not the same It can be illustrated in the figure below: 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Conceptual Metaphors SEASON IS MOTION SEASON IS A CONTAINER SEASON IS A CONTAINED OBJECT SEASON IS A CORPOREAL OBJECT SEASON IS A COLORED OBJECT SEASON IS AN OLFACTORY OBJECT SEASON IS A TASTY OBJECT SEASON IS EXISTENCE SEASON IS POSSESSION SEASON IS LOCATION SEASON IS PATH SEASON IS A FORCE/CHANGER SEASON IS PLACE SEASON IS HEAVEN SEASON IS SEA SEASON IS A RIVER SEASON IS FIRE SEASON IS HEAT SEASON IS LIGHT SEASON IS SUNSHINE SEASON IS WIND SEASON IS COLDNESS SEASON IS LIQUID SEASON IS SOUND SEASON IS TEMPORAL CYCLE SEASON IS MUSIC SEASON IS MONEY SEASON IS MAGIC SEASON IS FOOD SEASON IS COSTUMES SEASON IS COSMETICS SEASON IS A SOCIAL EVENT SEASON IS A HOLIDAY/VOCATION SEASON IS CHARACTERISTIC OF CLIMATE SEASON IS CHARACTERISTIC OF GALACTIC ENTITIES SEASON IS CHARACTERISTIC OF TEMPORAL UNITS SEASON IS A LIVING ENTITY SEASON IS A PERSON SEASON IS AN ANIMAL SEASON IS A PLANT Note: + = existent; - = nonexistent English + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Vietnamese + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + CHAPTER THE ENTITY OF SEASON MAPPING ONTO THE ABSTRACT DOMAINS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SONG LYRICS 5.1 Natural State Domain State here refers to the shapes and facial features of objects, or the conditions of the material system Besides, according to Longman Dictionary English (LDE), it is defined as a “condition which a person or thing is; way of being” Specifically, natural state in this paper includes vitality, decline, perpetuation, life, beauty, and youth 11 Figure The distribution of natural state domains mapped through SEASON in English and Vietnamese Season is widely utilized to conceptualize the natural states in both English and Vietnamese It is remarkable that positive states such as good life, beauty, and youth are conceived through SPRING while negative states, i.e., decline is metaphorically understood via two seasons: autumn and winter In addition, in terms of sub-mappings, beside the two domains: vitality and decline the two languages share, the findings show that there are three target domains, i.e., life, beauty, and youth mapped from season in Vietnamese data only, and there is only one domain, namely, perpetuation which English people map season onto It seems that SEASON is used to conceptualize natural states more widely in Vietnamese than in English 5.2 Social Domains The social domain, a fundamental domain in cognitive linguistics, consists of a great number of relationships which are inseparable with people’s lives The findings of this research expose that SEASON is exploited to view the social domains, such as reunion, separation, victory, etc., which is synthesized like in the figure below: Figure The distribution of social domains mapped through SEASON in English and Vietnamese 12 5.3 Emotional Domain As a matter of fact, emotion has become a common object in the studies related to metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: Ning Yu, 1998; Kövecses, 2000, 2005, 2010) Lakoff and Johnson (1980) assert that metaphors play essential part in the conceptualization of emotion Additionally, when discussing common target domains, Kövecses shares that emotion is a superior target domain, with a great number of subordinates such as anger, fear, love, happiness, sadness, shame, pride, etc., which are primarily understood by means of conceptual metaphors (2010, p.23) Intriguingly, the findings of the research uncover that SEASON is exploited to express emotions, with the domains of love, happiness, sadness, and loneliness whose distribution like in Table below: Table Emotional domains mapped through SEASON in English and Vietnamese Emotional domains English Vietnamese Number of Number of expressions expressions Love 94 124 Happiness 31 34 Sadness 49 97 Loneliness 54 51 Total 228 301 In brief, SEASON is considered as a source domain to map onto emotion It is noteworthy that positive emotion, i.e., happy love, happiness is metaphorically manifested through two seasons, namely spring and summer Conversely, the two other seasons are utilized to express negative emotions such as sadness, and loneliness 5.4 Concluding Remarks To sum up, regarding a source domain, people deploy SEASON to express abstract domains, which are classified into natural state, social, and emotional domains With three superior target domains mapped through the source domain SEASON, there are 18 subordinate domains found in English and Vietnamese in total They can be synthesized in the following table: Conceptual Metaphors VITALITY IS SEASON DECLINE IS SEASON PERPETUATION IS SEASON 13 English + + + Vietnamese + + - 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 LIFE IS SEASON BEAUTY IS SEASON YOUTH IS SEASON REUNION IS SEASON SEPARATION IS SEASON MEMORY IS SEASON HOPE IS SEASON DIFFICULTY IS SEASON VICTORY IS SEASON FREEDOM IS SEASON PEACE IS SEASON LOVE IS SEASON HAPPINESS IS SEASON SADNESS IS SEASON LONELINESS IS SEASON Note: + = existent; - = nonexistent + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Like the case of SEASON treated as target domain, the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors for SEASON as source domain are found in the both corpora Regarding the degree of linguistic exploitation, the metaphor EMOTION IS SEASON is the most common, compared with the others, in the both languages in detail, there are 228 and 306 expressions supporting this metaphor in English and Vietnamese data respectively Besides, some entailments such as LOVE, LONELINESS, VITALITY are widely applicable in both corpora, with 94 and 124, 54 and 51, and 48 and 55 in English and Vietnamese respectively Conversely, some metaphors are less common in the two languages, for example, REUNION IS SEASON, with and 10 expressions in English and Vietnamese, and HOPE IS SEASON, with in English, and 10 in Vietnamese corpus Apart from these similarities, the two languages have the differences in harnessing SEASON to conceptualize the abstract entities VICTORY and PERPETUATION are typical cases Precisely, there are 15 expressions supporting the metaphor VICTORY IS SEASON in Vietnamese, meanwhile no metaphorical expression is found in English corpus Inversely, PERPETUATION IS SEASON is drawn out from expressions in English, but there are not any expressions found in Vietnamese data In terms of the themes of domain, the two languages share 10 subordinate domains which are mapped through SEASON They are VITALITY, DECLINE, REUNION, SEPARATION, MEMORY, HOPE, LOVE, HAPPINESS, SADNESS, LONELINESS In contrast, the two subdomains: PERPETUATION, DIFFICULTY are existent in English corporal 14 while other domains, namely, LIFE, BEAUTY, YOUTH, PEACE, VICTORY, FREEDOM which is metaphorically understood via SEASON are applicable in Vietnamese data In regard with types of conceptual metaphor, the study reveals a number of interesting findings As mentioned earlier, as regards SEASON treated as target domain, most of the metaphors found are conventional However, in the case of SEASON as source domain mapping onto abstract entities, the metaphors of SEASON here are novel (new) in the both languages As a matter of fact, the related studies carried out to investigate the metaphors of season regarding SEASON as target domain Therefore, in the beginning, the author of this research tended to examine the target domain SEASON mapped through source domains Surprisingly, the data uncover that SEASON is exploited to express other entities, particularly, abstract domains In other words, the conceptualization of abstract entities through SEASON domain has not found in the prior studies, except for the metaphor SEASON IS LOVE (Phan, et al (2018) Therefore, 18 conceptual metaphors, which are found in this study, may be considered novel metaphors It is noticeable that although SEASON can be used to express other abstract domains in general, each season tends to be harness to imply certain concepts Particularly, SPRING and SUMMER are often utilized to conceptualize positive concepts, meanwhile negative concepts seem to be comprehended via AUTUMN and WINTER in the two languages VITALITY, HOPE, or HAPPY LOVE are expressed through SPRING and SUMMER It can be understandable because in two seasons with sound conditions, living things in general, human beings in particular, experience good things Accordingly, people employ these seasons to describe the positive things On the contrary, DECLINE, BROKEN LOVE, LONELINESS, SADNESS, etc., are associated with AUTUMN and WINTER CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION 6.1 Recapitulation In the light of the CMT, 3175 expressions of metaphor season, 4105 times of appearance have been identified and collected from 854 English and Vietnamese lyrics of songs The data analysis is based on the frameworks suggested by Steen (2011) The qualitative method of CMA is used to code 15 the data manually to identify the metaphors of season Subsequently, they are quantified to assist the process of comparing and contrasting between the two languages From the data analysis process, the major findings of the study can be summarized as regards the answer for the overarching research question above-mentioned as follows: The aim of the study is to identify the metaphors of season in English and Vietnamese in terms of season treated as both a target domain and source one In total, there are 58 metaphors of season found from the two corpora, with 40 metaphors regarding season as target domain, and 18 ones in terms of season mapping onto other domains Remarkably, the number of metaphors with SEASON as target domain is far higher than that when SEASON is treated as a source domain TIME, as a matter of fact, has been considered as a target domain in the studies related to conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Evans, 2004; Kövecses, 2005, 2010; Li, 2014; Walinski, 2014, etc.,) Therefore, that SEASON, a concept of time, is metaphorically perceived with widespread application in both languages is understandable Simultaneously, it is inferred that finding out 18 metaphors via the source domain SEASON is relatively novel In addition to the target and source domains found, the findings uncover the similarities and differences in metaphorizing SEASON between English and Vietnamese In terms of the degree of linguistic exploitation, the statistics data show that Vietnamese corpus has more metaphorical expressions than English does, with 1717, and 1458 respectively However, regarding frequencies, English corpus predominates, with 2777 times of appearance, meanwhile there are 2061 times of appearance in Vietnamese It can be inferred that the metaphorical expressions are densely repeated in English lyrics of songs In terms of the sense of domains, the two languages share 40 metaphors when considering SEASON as both source and target domains Particularly, classified into two main domains: animate entities and inanimate entities, the same 30 source domains are found Moreover, SEASON is a target domain mapping onto 10 other abstract domains in the two languages On the contrary, the findings uncover sub-domains regarding SEASON as target domain, and sub-domains regarding SEASON as source domain in English only Inversely, there are source domains and target domains found in Vietnamese corpus, but they are absent in the other language In short, the source and target domains that map 16 onto or are mapped through the entity SEASON are synthesized in Table below: Table 6.1 Map of domains SEASON mapping onto and mapped through The findings are coherent with Lakoff’s statement (1993): “metaphorical mappings vary in universality; some seem to be universal, others are widespread, and some seem to be culture specific.” (p.245) However, it is obvious that the concept SEASON, as it is shown through the corpus data, is conceptualized with much more complexity than the Lakoffian thesis of CMT assumptions (Khajeh, 2013) 6.2 Discussion 6.2.1 Degree of Four- SEASON Exploitation Regarding SEASON treated as a target domain, data from the both languages reveal that SEASON is conceptualized as inanimate and animate entities evenly for four seasons, namely, spring, summer, autumn/fall, and winter In other words, the number of metaphorical expressions supporting 17 the metaphors with season as target is quite equal in metaphorizing the four seasons in English and Vietnamese as well While most of the conceptual metaphors with regard to season as target domain are available in the four seasons fairly equally, the conceptualization of season as a source domain is rather different for each season It means that although SEASON can be used to express other abstract domains in general, each season tends to be harness to imply certain concepts Particularly, SPRING and SUMMER are often utilized to conceptualize positive concepts, meanwhile negative concepts seem to be comprehended via AUTUMN and WINTER in the two languages For example, VITALITY, HOPE, or HAPPY LOVE are expressed through SPRING and SUMMER It can be understandable because in two seasons with sound conditions, living things in general, human beings in particular, experience good things Accordingly, people employ these seasons to describe the positive things On the contrary, DECLINE, BROKEN LOVE, LONELINESS, SADNESS, etc., are associated with AUTUMN and WINTER, which is elaborated in the previous sections In addition to the shared similarities in harnessing the four seasons for the metaphors, the two languages expose the dissimilarities Firstly, in terms of the metaphor expression quantity, summer is deployed most productively in English; however, autumn is used the most densely in Vietnamese Whereas, autumn and summer are borrowed with the lowest rate compared with the other seasons in English and Vietnamese data respectively, which is significantly surprising to the author of this research because the results differ from the predictions and suppositions the researcher thought before data collection and process had been done More specifically, I at first thought that people would utilize spring for conceptualization most in the both languages Secondly, some seasons are used to metaphorize certain entities, which is applicable in one language, yet absent in the other, and vice versa For example, that SUMMER is used to talk about perpetuation, and AUTUMN and WINTER are harnessed to express difficulty is existent in English In contrast, SPRING is utilized to reflect beauty, victory, freedom, etc., which is found in Vietnamese data only 6.2.2 Degree of Conceptual Metaphor Type Exploitation In terms of types of conceptual metaphor, the findings show that some types of metaphors of season are dominant in both languages Basing 18 on SIL International and Lakoff and Johnson (1980a), Sandström (2006) groups sub-types of metaphor into a superior one Particularly, conventional metaphors include ontological, orientational, and structural metaphors In ontological metaphors, there are containers, entity metaphors, and substance metaphors In fact, these metaphors are ubiquitous in the two corpora with a great number of linguistic metaphors For instance, SEASON IS A CONCRETE ENTITY has 152 and 137 expressions in English and Vietnamese respectively Accordingly, it can be concluded that in terms of SEASON treated as the target domains, the conceptual metaphors of season are mainly conventional metaphors Similarly, regarding schematicity hierarchy (Kövecses, 2020), most metaphors with SEASON treated as target domain belong to the high schematic level, namely image schema, and domain For example, the conceptual metaphors SEASON IS A MOVING OBJECT, SEASON IS CONTAINER, SEASON IS A CONTAINED THING, SEASON IS SPACE, etc., are at image schema level On the other hand, in the case of SEASON as source domain mapping onto abstract entities, the metaphors of SEASON here are novel (new) in the both languages Unlike the case of season as target domain, here most of the metaphors are at low schematic level, i.e., frame and mental space from the perspectives of Kövecses’ (2020) schematicity In other words, these metaphors become more specific The case can be illustrated through some typical metaphors such as HOPE IS SPRING, LOVE IS SEASON, LONELINESS IS SEASON and so forth, which are construed and interpreted mainly based on specific context where these metaphors are created It is obvious that in regard to the types of metaphors, the research shows the findings which are various, compared with the previous studied earlier mentioned To be more specific, beside the source domains such as MOTION, CONTAINER, FORCE, MONEY, PERSON, etc, which were also found out in the aforementioned research related to investigating TIME conceptualization, the current study finds out more other domains mapping onto SEASON, for example, SOUND, LIGHT, LIQUID, PLANT, and so on Especially, the target domains which are mapped through SEASON found out here nearly new In other words, it is surprising that regarding SEASON as target domain, the data uncover that SEASON is exploited to express other entities, namely, abstract domains Thus, the conceptualization of 19 abstract entities through SEASON domain has not found in the prior studies, except for the metaphor SEASON IS LOVE (Hồ Trịnh Quỳnh Thư, 2018) 6.2.3 Bases for Metaphor Explanations Another objective of this study is to uncover the reasons to explain for these similarities and differences, based on the mechanism of conceptualization and human’s cognitive construction through physical embodiment Within this research the basement of reasoning for the phenomenon is grounded in terms of physical environment, and sociocultural environment mentioned above, which the two languages share the similarity and disclose the differences 6.2.3.1 Commonalities In actuality, the present study proves that metaphors of SEASON are motivated by human physiological and psychological responses to this concept of time This similarity is a result of the general cognition and conceptualization of SEASON based on the pervasive bodily experience when time is one of the essentials pertaining to human life For instance, the metaphors SEASON IS A CONTAINER and SEASON IS A CONTAINED OBJECT are common in the two languages In fact, every person in all over the world is a container when he is bounded via his skin, therefore they consider other things as a container or a contained thing, which is coherent with Lakoff and Johnson’s words (1980a) in their famous book named Metaphors We Live by: We are physical beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface of our skins, and we experience the rest of the world as outside us Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation We project our own in-out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces Thus, we also view them as containers with an inside and an outside (p.29) Thus, that the image schema container is employed to conceptualize SEASON is conventional Another case exemplifies that physical environment impact on formulating metaphors in general, metaphors of season in particular, is common all over the world The instantiation is manifested via the metaphor SEASON IS A RIVER/STREAM It seems that the images of rivers or streams are familiar for everyone in our earth People borrow these images to depict season by virtue of the association of flow of rivers with the flow of season This conceptualization of season is in line with Evan’s words: ‘…the motion event described by the lexeme flow, as 20 evidenced by the ubiquity with which it is likened to bodies of water such as streams or rivers which prototypically flow’ (2005, p.145) when he mentions the relationship of motion between river and time In addition, some research (Barcelona, 1986; Kövecses, 2003; Stefanowitsch, 2006; Polley, 2012) found out the metaphors HAPPINESS IS LIGHT, and SADNESS IS DARKNESS Western and Eastern countries, the sun shines brightly in spring and summer in, yet, in autumn and winter, there is little sunshine meaning it is often gray and dark That is maybe the reason why people associate positive emotion with spring and summer, and negative emotion with autumn and winter As a result, the metaphors HAPPINESS IS SPRING, and WINTER IS SADNESS are popular in both corpora In short, from the interpretations and explanations for some of above examples, it can be drawn out a conclusion that people who have the same physical and sociocultural environment can have the common way to conceptualize things around them, which is one of the reasons leading to the ubiquity and convention of metaphors mentioned in the earlier sections 6.2.3.2 Differences The differences of physical environment leading to the differences of conceptualization of SEASON in the two languages here are understood as the differences of geographical location and climate It is likely that natural living conditions influences the way people conceptualize things around them For example, SUMMER IS SUNSHINE is existent in Vietnamese The reason is maybe that Vietnamese belongs to the zone with the weather pattern of tropical climate, leading to intense sunshine in this season Therefore, the way Vietnamese people experience summer is similar to the way they experience the sunshine of summer Another metaphor, an instantiation to expose physical environment related to human’s metaphorization, is WINTER IS CHARACTERISTIC OF SNOW, which is applicable in English only This conceptualization of winter is maybe be grounded in the geographic feature, partially forming weather pattern In detail, many Western countries, Eastern European ones in particular, are in an area with continental climate In addition, they have many parts which are with high altitude As a result, it is very cold and there is a lot of snow falling in winter in these countries Snow becomes a relatively familiar image in the relation with the coldest time of a year – winter - for Westerners In contrast, Vietnam is in a tropical monsoon climate, the temperature is rarely below degree Celsius, so snow hardly appears in this Southeast Asia country, but in 21 the high mountains in Northern provinces such as Lào Cai, Hà Giang, where snow has fallen few times so far It means Vietnamese people hardly see snow in real life That is reason why this snow conceptualization is existent in English data, but nonexistent in Vietnamese one Besides, socio-cultural environment is an importance factor influencing human’s cognition The preceding analysis of the metaphors in English and Vietnamese proves this statement Specifically, SEASON IS MONEY and SEASON IS POSSESSION mentioned earlier are available in English, but totally absent in Vietnamese data As a matter of fact, Western countries belong to industrialized societies with developed economy, so TIME for them is valuable thing and considered as MONEY and POSSESSION, which is coherent with Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980a) claim: Time in our culture is a valuable commodity It is a limited resource that we use to accomplish our goals Because of the way that the concept of work has developed in modern Western culture, where work is typically associated with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified (p.8) Simultaneously, it can be explained why these metaphors are not applicable in Vietnamese Although Viet Nam is growing in economy with the presence of industry at present, it is not deniable that Viet Nam is a developing country, an agricultural country, even it was known as underdeveloped country in the early 20th century As a result, the concept of commodity is not familiar for Vietnamese people, and they not consider time as a valuable thing Accordingly, they not associate SEASON with MONEY or POSSESSION The metaphor SPRING IS FREEDOM/INDEPENDENCE is found in Vietnamese corpus only The social background impacts on Vietnamese’s conceptualization for SEASON here In fact, Vietnam was colonized for a long time In other words, they must be dominated by Western countries Therefore, Vietnamese people desire getting their freedom from other nation’s control Accordingly, they use spring which often denote positive things to express freedom they wish to have The metaphor is created through the expressions from the Vietnamese lyrics written in wartime Another case evokes culture is dominant for human cognition It is selection of lexeme to metaphorize SEASON AS MOTION Specifically, in terms of motion verbs, is highly frequently exploited in Vietnamese corpus as discussed above when the verb is defined as “di chuyển trở lại chỗ mình, nơi ở, nơi quê hương mình”, ‘moving back to your home or where you 22 are from’ The selection becomes common for Vietnamese people maybe because Viet Nam has an agricultural economy, farming was the main method of survival, so settling down with a stable life is a familiar thought for Vietnamese people Hence, the verb is widely used in conceptualization, including application for the metaphor SEASON IS MOTION The application of this metaphor reflects the more introverted character of east Asian, (Kövecses, 2005), including Vietnam, compared with Westerners who seem to be more extroverted In conclusion, it can be drawn out from the findings that SEASON is a dynamic domain in conceptual metaphors when it can be both source and target domains In addition, the physical and socio-cultural environment takes part in constituting metaphors of season as analysis above 6.3 Implications In terms of theoretical and methodological basement, the study follows the CMT proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980a), developed by Kövecses (2005, 2010, 2020), combining with the extended theory related conceptual metaphor, such as conceptualization, categorization, blending, etc, Besides, the study builds a method of metaphor identification, and a metaphor analysis procedure by adapting the different methods, namely MIP, MIPVU, CMA, FSM Thus, these frameworks seem to be significant when subsequent metaphor studies can apply them Regarding practice, the outcomes of this study may serve as guidance for teaching, learning, and translating With the assistance of a conceptual metaphor awareness method, teachers can help learners gain metaphoric competence More specifically, teachers can employ metaphor teaching as a useful method for their students, especially in teaching idioms, phrasal verbs, and collocations, one of the complicated aspects in languages in general and in English and Vietnamese in particular Specially, Vietnamese learners of English comprehend conceptual metaphors means it is easier for them to master idioms and collocations in English Simultaneously, it helps foreign learners of English learn Vietnamese better.Danesi ever claims that conceptually fluent in a language is to know how that language reflects or encodes its concepts on the basis of metaphorical structuring (1992b, p.490) For translators, acquiring good competence of metaphors is relatively significant for their work Wallerstein ever states: 23 If an individual reader misreads, he suffers the consequences individually If a translator misreads, he leads innumerable others astray, all of whom pay the consequences as well (as cited in Schaffner, 1997, p.130) In fact, it is known that translators are not told here to 'reproduce' the metaphorical mappings of the source text It means that the issue is the business of the translators themselves (Polley, 2012) Therefore, it is implied that translators should not ignore metaphor interpretation because this neglect can have serious results for which translators themselves can be responsible as Schaffner’s statement above Besides, the findings of the study could be significantly meaningful for listeners and writers of songs Namely, thanks to the interest of metaphors in the lyrics, listeners can enjoy their songs better; young composers can write song lyrics more attractively and profoundly 6.4 Limitation and Suggestions for Further Studies The present study attempts to investigate English and Vietnamese metaphors of season Apart from the contributions, this thesis reveals limitations that other researchers can take into consideration for their future research As the name suggests, the thesis is conducted to uncover the metaphors of season from the English and Vietnamese songs As a matter of fact, songs are manifested underlying their different modes such as, lyrics, visual, and melody However, the present study only focuses on lyrics of songs, verbal language, but excludes the other modes of songs Furthermore, although this research employs a method for metaphor identification and analysis that is empirical instead of intuitive, while being as transparent and as detailed as possible, all the steps of data process are done manually, which is time-consuming Therefore, it is suggestible for further researchers to conduct interdisciplinary studies which examines metaphors of songs in terms of music, written language, and images following the corpus-based approach, even the multimodal corpus-based approach, with assistance of software for time-saving in data processing In addition, it cannot be denied that not a small number of new English metaphors have not been construed profoundly enough compared with Vietnamese ones due to the researcher’s limitations for Western culture Therefore, the differences of season conceptual metaphors between the two languages are not fully discussed and well explained Accordingly, it is expected that these problems will be resolved in future research 24 25 ... Accordingly, the study has both theoretical and practical significance Theoretically, it contributes to the effectiveness of CMT, which is continuously updated, by combining blending theory in the analysis... foreign learners of Vietnamese CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEWAND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Theoretical Background 2.1.1 Traditional Metaphor Theories Metaphor has been an object of study which has been... identification by Steen (1999, 2007) was applied 3.4 Data analysis 3.4.1 Analytical Framework The concept season in this research is denoted with the lexemes, namely mùa, xuân, mùa xuân, hè, mùa
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