A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Metaphorical Conceptualization of Sadness in Modern English and Vietnamese
Main Article Content
Abstract
Abstract: Metaphor is extremely ubiquitous in language (Paprotte and Dirven [1]) and we are especially dependent on it when we discourse on abstract concepts. The revolutionary argument of conceptual metaphor theory is that “abstract thought is only possible through the use of metaphor” (Goatly, [2]). For this reason, metaphor is necessary and frequently utilized to express emotions (Fainsilber & Ortony, [3]). Emotion, as a fundamental component of the human psych, involves a complex subjective experience, a combination of feeling and thought. This paper shows how sadness, an abstract concept, is metaphorically conceptualized in English and Vietnamese. The paper also discusses the commonalities and mismatches in conceptualizing Sadness between the two languages.
Keywords: Conceptual metaphors, sadness, cross-cultural, English metaphors, Vietnamese metaphors.Article Details
References
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[43] Khừu, B., & Khánh, Đ. Q., Những học thuyết cơ bản của y học cổ truyền [Fundamental theories in Vietnamese traditional medicine], Hà Nội Press, Hà Nội, 2002.
[44] Geeraerts, D., & Grondelaers, S., Looking back at anger: Cultural traditions and metaphorical patterns. In J. R. Taylor & R. MacLaury (Eds.), Language and the cognitive construal of the world (pp. 153-179), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1995.
[45] Horwitz, V. A., & Wakefield, C. J., The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 2007.
[2] Goatly, A., The language of metaphor, Routledge, London, 1997.
[3] Fainsilber, L., & Ortony, A., Metaphorical uses of languages in the expression of emotions, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 2(1987), 239.
[4] Johnson, M., The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1987.
[5] Lakoff, G., Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987.
[6] Lakoff, G., The invariance hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image schemas? Cognitive Linguistics, 1 (1990), 39.
[7] Lakoff, G., The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 202-251), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.
[8] Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M., Metaphors We Live By, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1980.
[9] Monti, E., Translating the metaphors we live by. Intercultural negotiations in conceptual metaphors, European Journal of English Studies, 13(2009), 207.
[10] Lakoff, G., & Turner, M., More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989.
[11] Barcelona, A.,On the concept of depression in American English: A cognitive approach, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 12 (1986) 7.
[12] Deignan, A., Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2005.
[13] Anshen, F., & Aronoff, M, Using dictionaries to study the mental lexicon, Brain and Language, 68 (1999) 16.
[14] Neumann, C., Is metaphor universal? Cross-language evidence from German and Japanese, Metaphor and Symbol, 16(2001), 123.
[15] Kövecses, Z., Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000a.
[16] Barcelona, A., On the systematic contrastive analysis of conceptual metaphors: Case studies and proposed methodology. In M. Pütz, S. Niemeier & R. Dirven (Eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics II: Language pedagogy (pp. 117-146), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York, 2001.
[17] Soriano, C., Some anger metaphors in Spanish and English. A contrastive review, International Journal of English Studies, 3(2003), 107.
[18] Beger, A., & Jäkel, O., Anger, love and sadness revisited: Differences in emotion metaphors between experts and laypersons in the genre psychology guides, Metaphorik.de, 16 (2009) 87.
[19] Kövecses, Z., The scope of metaphor In A. Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective (pp. 79-92), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York, 2000b.
[20] Peña, M. S., The role of the event structure metaphor and of image-schematic structure in metaphors for happiness and sadness. Miscellanea, A Journal of English and American Studies, 18 (1997), 253.
[21] Peña, M. S., The image-schematic basis of the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor, Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2(2004), 127.
[22] Tissari, H., On the concept of sadness: Looking at words in contexts derived from corpora. In B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Ed.), Corpus Linguistics, Computer Tools, and Applications-State of the Art (pp. 291-308), Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2008.
[23] Yu, N., Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10(1995), 59.
[24] Stefanowitsch, A., Words and their Metaphors: A corpus-based approach In A. Stefanowitsch & S. Gries (Eds.), Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy (pp. 63-105), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2006.
[25] Krupa, V., Nature metaphors for emotions in Maori confronted with other languages, Asian and African Studies 5(1996), 132.
[26] Dobrovol'skij, D., & Piirainen, E., Figurative Language: Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspectives, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2005.
[27] Sherwood, P, Emotional literacy. ACER Press, Camberwell, Victoria, 2008.
[28] Izard, C., The psychology of emotions, Plenum, New York, 1991.
[29] Kövecses, Z., Are there any emotion-specific metaphors? In A. Athanasiadou & E. Tabakowska (Eds.), Speaking of Emotions. Conceptualization and Expression (pp. 127-151), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York, 1998.
[30] Palmer, B. G., & Occhi, J. D. (Eds.), Languages of sentiment, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999.
[31] Plutchik, R., Emotions and life, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2002.
[32] Moon, R., On specifying metaphor: An idea and its implementation, International Journal of Lexicography, 17(2004), 195.
[33] Gibbs, R., Taking metaphor out of our heads and putting it into the cultural world. In R. Gibbs & G. Steen (Eds.), Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 145-166), John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999.
[34] Charteris-Black, J., Second Language Figurative Proficiency: A Comparative Study of Malay and English, Applied Linguistics, 23(2002), 104.
[35] Greenberg, L., & Paivio, S., Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy, The Guilford Press, New York, 1997.
[36] Greenberg, S. L., & Goldman, N. R., Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2008.
[37] Knowles, M., & Moon, R., Introducing metaphor, Routledge, London & New York, 2006.
[38] Niemeier, S., Straight from the heart – metonymic and metaphorical explorations. In A. Barcelona (Ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: A cognitive perspective (pp. 195-213), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York, 2000.
[39] Meier, B. P., & Robinson, M. D., The metaphorical representation of affect, Metaphor and Symbol, 20(2005), 239.
[40] Wierzbicka, A., Semantics. Primes and universals, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, 1996.
[41] Kövecses, Z., Language, mind, and culture: A practical introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.
[42] Barcelona, A., & Soriano, C., Metaphorical conceptualization in English and Spanish, European Journal of English Studies, 8(2004) 295.
[43] Khừu, B., & Khánh, Đ. Q., Những học thuyết cơ bản của y học cổ truyền [Fundamental theories in Vietnamese traditional medicine], Hà Nội Press, Hà Nội, 2002.
[44] Geeraerts, D., & Grondelaers, S., Looking back at anger: Cultural traditions and metaphorical patterns. In J. R. Taylor & R. MacLaury (Eds.), Language and the cognitive construal of the world (pp. 153-179), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1995.
[45] Horwitz, V. A., & Wakefield, C. J., The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 2007.