Sự ý niệm hoá cuộc sống trong khẩu hiệu tuyên truyền tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt
VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
153
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF LIFE
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE PROPAGANDA SLOGANS
Phi Thi Thu Trang*
Thang Long University
Dai Kim, Hoang Mai, Hanoi, Vietnam
Received 29 December 2020
Revised 14 January 2021; Accepted 29 January 2021
Abstract: This paper sets out to examine the conceptualization of life, one of the most complicated concepts
that require a number of domains to get mapped, in 600 English and Vietnamse propaganda slogans addressing
social policies and purposeful activities in life, mostly collected from street banners and the Internet. The
research is based on the principles of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003) and Metaphor
Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz group, 2007; Steen, 1999, 2009). The study aims at finding the conceptual
preferences that English-speaking people and Vietnamese people have for life and trying to justify the
similarities and differences in the way life is conceptualized in the two languages from social and cultural
perspectives. The results suggest that metaphors of life are frequently used in both English and Vietnamese
slogans on an almost equal basis. Specifically, life is conceptualized as A LIVING ORGANISM, AN OBJECT,
PATH-SCHEMA, BUILDING AND WAR/STRUGGLE and some other isolated domains. Though most source
domains are fundamentally similar, the distribution and frequency of use, the number of metaphorical linguistic
expressions and even the minor cases reveal a great deal of cultural variation, which is mostly connected with the
history of Vietnam and Western countries, and the lifestyles of their people.
Key words: conceptual metaphor, conceptualization, life, slogan
1. Introduction*
Turner (1989), the target domain of life can be
understood through different conceptual sources
like BUILDING, GAMBLING GAME, PLAY,
STORY, BURDEN, etc. There are two reasons
that account for this. First, Kövecses (2002)
explains that a single concept lacks the ability
of grasping all aspects of such a complex
concept as life, resulting in a system of concrete
source domains through which intangible things
are experienced. Second, metaphor is culture-
specific and contextually-influenced (Kövecses,
2005, 2015). He classifies possible causes for
different types of metaphorical variations as
In the famous poem The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost, there is a philosophical
statement about life: “Two roads diverged in a
wood, and I; I took the one less travelled by.”
Figuratively, the road is symbolic of life and the
fork in the wood represents the choices the
traveller has to make in his or her life. The
question is, why can one understand this poem
in this way but not another? That is because of
a conceptual metaphor that underlies the
expressions in the poem and thereby shapes the
way we think: LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Our life
is universally conceptualized as a journey in
which we start from a particular point (when we
are born) and travel to reach a destination
(where we want to be in life), and we only stop
moving when we die. This is one of the most
prevalent conceptualizations of life (Lakofff &
Johnson, 2003; Lakoff & Turner, 1989;
Kövecses, 2002, 2005).
differential
experience
and
differential
cognitive preferences or styles. It is believed
that metaphorical conceptualizations emerge
from the interaction of different contexts like
the physical environment, the social and
cultural setting and differential concerns and
interests (Benczes & Ságvári, 2018). As a
result, the same underlying conceptual
metaphor of life may be realized by a variety of
linguistic expressions, which is fundamentally
affected by cultures.
However, LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor
is only one of many possible ways to
conceptualize life. According to Lakoff and
Over the last twenty years, the
conceptualization of life has been investigated
from different angles and in different
languages. Most of the research deals with the
_______
* Tel: 0985.985.271
Email: [email protected]
154
P. T. T. Trang / VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
discrepancies between English and another
language, and aims at figuring out cultural
variations, or investigates how the concept of
life is experienced in different types of
discourse. A large amount of research on the
conceptualization of life has been done through
different genres of discourse like essays
(Kövecses, 2002, 2005), poems and plays (Tran
Thi Lan Anh, 2017; Nguyen Thi Quyet, 2012),
song lyrics (Nguyen Thi Bich Hanh, 2015),
Holy books (Al-Khaldi, 2014), advertising
slogans (Yu, 2009), and even through visual
became the subjects of many studies carried out
by the same writers (2003, 2008) and other
well-known researchers like Kövecses (2002),
Fauconnier (1997), Goatly (1997, 2007), etc.
The central point of this theory is to view
metaphor as a method of cognition, i.e. we
understand one conceptual domain, which is
usually more abstract, in terms of another more
concrete and familiar conceptual domain
(Kövecses, 2002, p. 4). This is realized by the
structure A IS B, in which A is the target
domain and B is the source domain; for
example, the concept of life is understood
through the metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY.
But in everyday life people do not often say to
each other that life is a journey; instead, this
metaphor is realized by metaphorical
expressions such as: We are at the crossroads
of life; He’s gone too far; Get out of my way.
However, what sources these expressions
are derived from remain a problem. According
to Lakoff and Johnson (2003), conceptual
metaphors are systematic mappings across
conceptual domains. These mappings are the
unidirectional correspondences between the
source and the target domains. Thanks to this
process, the relatively abstract target domain is
made more concrete (Kövecses, 2002). For
example, some features of the domain
JOURNEY are mapped on the the domain
LIFE: the travelers are the people, the starting
point is the birth, the obstacles encountered are
the difficulties met, different routes are
different choices, the destination is the goal,
and the end of the journey is the death, etc.
manifestations like paintings (Poppi
&
Kravania, 2019), etc. These studies about
metaphors of life reveal much of cultural
variety in the way life is conceptualized in each
language, and more broadly, each culture.
Since we believe that the genre has a great
influence on the way life is conceptualized, and
slogans are a special discourse genre, we would
like to investigate conceptual metaphors of life
in English and Vietnamese cultures through
propaganda slogans used to address social
policies and purposeful activities in life. The
concept of life is understood in three ways: the
state of being alive (sự sống), the period of time
between a person’s birth and their death (cuộc
đời) and the experience and activities that are
typical of all people’s existence (cuộc sống)
(according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary, 9th edition). Clearly, life does not
only refer to an individual but also a society
because people live in a community, which, to
some extent, shapes their ways of living. Thus,
in this study, the conceptualization of life
means that all metaphors related to different
aspects of and issues in both individual and
social life will be taken into consideration.
To address the conceptualization of life in
slogans, two questions are raised:
In conclusion, conceptual metaphor is one
of the forms of conceptualizing the world, a
cognitive process that functions as
a
representation and formation of new concepts
without which there will not be new knowledge
(Tran Van Co, 2007). As a cognitive tool, it is
believed to represent attitudes and convey
1) What conceptual preferences do English-
speaking people and Vietnamese people have
for life in slogans and to what extent are they
similar and different?
2) What social and cultural aspects could
justify those similarities and differences?
ideologies
and
other
socio-political
constructions through language (Charteris-
Black, 2012).
2.2. Conceptual metaphors and linguistic
metaphors
2. Theoretical background
Even though Lakoff states that “metaphor is
fundamentally conceptual, not linguistic, in
nature” (1993, p. 244), most of the evidence for
conceptual metaphor is based on linguistic data.
Even the well-known example taken in the
2.1. Conceptual metaphor
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) are considered
those who took initiatives in developing the
theory of conceptual metaphor, which then
VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
155
classic work Metaphors We Live by (2003)
ARGUMENT IS WAR supports the existence
of conceptual metaphors with a wide variety of
expressions in everyday language such as “Your
claims are indefensible”, “He attacked every
weak point in my argument”, or “His criticisms
were right on target”. Linguistic metaphors are
believed to underlie and motivate conceptual
metaphors (Lakoff, 1993).
Thus, it is important that linguistic
metaphors be identified in order to realize the
conceptual metaphor underlying them. Steen
(1999, p. 57) claimed that the linguistic
examples cited in traditional conceptual
metaphor theory literature were produced
intuitively and functioned as demonstration;
“they have not been systematically and
exhaustively collected from large stretches of
discourse.” Linguistic metaphors that are found
in a linguistic dataset play an important role in
the construction of conceptual metaphors. Steen
(1999, 2009) proposed a procedure to decode
conceptual mappings from metaphorical
expressions in discourse. The five-step method,
first introduced in 1999, then revised in 2009,
basically is as follows:
expression as part of a general systematic conceptual
metaphor, it is essential to analyse a huge amount of
data with numerous examples.
2.3. Cross-cultural variation in metaphor
Metaphor and culture have long been a
concern of many researchers such as Gibbs
(1994), Boers (2003), Lakoff and Johnson
(2003), Kövecses (2005, 2015), Li (2010), Phan
Van Hoa and Ho Trinh Quynh Thu (2017), etc.
Many studies that compare metaphors across
languages reveal that schematic metaphors are
more universally used than specific metaphors,
and the more specific a metaphor is, the more
culture-specific it becomes. For instance, in Li’s
comparative research of the metaphor of
happiness, besides some widely-used metaphors
like HAPPINESS IS UP or HAPPINESS IS A
FLUID IN A CONTAINER, Li finds that
HAPPINESS IS OFF THE GROUND is
popular in English while HAPPINESS IS A
FLOWER IN ONE’S HEART is only used in
Chinese. Also, Phan Van Hoa and Ho Trinh
Quynh Thu (2017, p. 62), in the study of poetic
metaphors of love in English and Vietnamese,
suggest that LOVE IS A PLANT is far more
popular with novel images in Vietnamese than
in English because “Vietnam is a country of
rice-based civilization.”
- Step 1: Metaphor focus identification,
whose aim is to identify metaphorical linguistic
expressions;
Kövecses (2005) and Gibbs (1994) argue
- Step 2: Metaphorical idea identification,
whose aim is to identify the relation between
linguistic expressions and the conceptual tenor;
that
cross-cultural
variation
in
the
conceptualization of a thing is the result of
different experiences in cultural-social aspects.
Moreover, though humans around the world
mostly share bodily experiences, their ideology
and political-social beliefs differ a great deal,
resulting in culture-specific characteristics of
metaphors. According to Ly Toan Thang
(2015), similarities among metaphors are basic;
they just differ in the aspects that are activated,
and this depends greatly on cultural variations.
-
Step
3:
Non-literal
comparison
identification, whose aim is to identify the relation
between target domains and source domains;
- Step 4: Non-literal analogy identification,
whose aim is to produce an analogy and
interpret the metaphor focus;
- Step 5: Non-literal mapping identification,
whose aim is to construct the source-target
domain mapping.
This procedure is claimed to help the
analyst avoid the trap of finding examples to
illustrate the well-known conceptual metaphors
in previous studies. However, the movement
from step 4 to step 5 still depends much on the
intuition of the analyst because a linguistic
expression may be indicative of more than one
conceptual domain. For example, such
expressions as attack, win, strategy, etc. may
suggest both GAME and WAR domains.
Having said that, linguistic metaphors are
closely related to conceptual metaphors. According
to Steen (1999), in order to determine a metaphorical
2.4. Propaganda slogans
As aforementioned, a large amount of
research has shown the importance of taking
genre into consideration when studying
conceptual metaphor. Slogans are a special kind
of discourse with various definitions. Sherif
(1937, p. 450) states that “we shall consider a
slogan to be a phrase, a short sentence, a
headline, a dictum, which, intentionally or
unintentionally, amounts to an appeal to the
person who is exposed to it to buy some article,
to revive or strengthen an already well-
P. T. T. Trang / VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
156
established stereotype, to accept a new idea, or
to undertake some action”, which covers the
most salient purpose of slogans: to propagate.
By taking propaganda slogans addressing social
issues and purposeful activities as the material
for this study, we expect to see how this genre
affects the way life is conceptualized.
Identification Procedure (MIP) suggested by
Pragglejaz group (2007) is adopted. We
searched for metaphorically-related words by
hand since the corpus is small enough, and then
used the 5-step identification procedure (Steen,
1999, 2009) to infer the underlying conceptual
metaphors. After that, the metaphors collected
will be categorized, analyzed and described in
terms of how they are grounded and elaborated,
using the contemporary theory of metaphor
(Lakoff, 1993). Then the data will be computed
quantitatively in order to reveal the frequency
and distribution of use of life metaphors in each
3. The corpus and methodology
3.1. The corpus
This study is corpus-based since corpus
methodology has been proposed as one way
toward generating a reliable description of the
typical context and use of linguistic metaphors
(Deignan, 1999; Steen, 1999). A corpus is “any
large collection of texts that arise from natural
language use” and “data are not invented for the
benefit of a model but rather a model emerges
from large and representative samples of
language” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 31). It
helps solve the problem of adopting idealized,
isolated examples that are purposefully
invented by the researchers (Quin, 1991).
The corpus of this study comprises 300
English slogans and 300 Vietnamese slogans
which are used to propagate social issues.
English slogans are picked up mainly from two
Vietnamese ones are collected from standees,
street banners, newspapers and the Internet as
well. These slogans focus on social issues like
road and labor safety, environment protection,
women and children’s rights, marriage and
family, reading and education, and social
problems such as smoking and drugs,
prostitution, corruption, bullying, etc., which
cover almost all aspects of life. They serve the
purpose of propagandas, which aim to raise
people’s awareness and call them to actions.
Although the corpus is rather small with a
limited number of metaphorical expressions, it
is expected to make a considerable contribution
as starting points in an investigation of a larger
corpus because both small and large corpora
“are potentially enormously rich sources of data
for the metaphor analyst” (Cameron &
Deignan, 2003, p. 151).
language.
The
metaphorical
linguistic
expressions found in different slogans will be
counted, even though they are the same because
the repetition of language structures and
vocabulary is one typical feature of slogans.
Also, the method of comparison and
contrast is employed since this study aims at
determining the similarities and differences in
the way life is conceptualized in English and
Vietnamese slogans. Because conceptual
metaphors participate in producing cross-
cultural variation (Kövecses, 2005), the study
tries to demonstrate which source-target
mappings are common in the two languages,
which correspondences are transferable or not
transferable and explain what contexts or
experiences ground them. The parameters of
comparison exploited in this paper are as
follows: 1) the same conceptual metaphors and
the same linguistic expressions, 2) the same
conceptual metaphors and different linguistic
expressions, 3) different conceptual metaphors
and linguistic expressions (Gabrys, Solska &
Deignan, 1997). The potential subtle
differences will also be evaluated and justified.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. An overview of findings
This section presents the results obtained
from a quantitative analysis of the conceptual
metaphors of life in English and Vietnamese
propaganda slogans. As aforementioned, 300
slogans in each language are taken into
consideration, and through manual search we
have found 202 metaphors related to life in
English slogans and 204 metaphors in
Vietnamese ones. This shows that metaphors of
life are almost equally frequently used in both
languages. Then all the retrieved metaphors are
3.2. The methodology
This study was conducted both qualitatively
and quantitatively. First, the Metaphor
VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
157
classified according to both their level of
generality and the source domains. Specifically,
life in English and Vietnamese slogans is
conceptualized as A LIVING ORGANISM, AN
OBJECT, PATH-SCHEMA, BUILDING AND
WAR/STRUGGLE. In addition, there are some
minor cases labeled as OTHERS because there
are insufficient linguistic expressions to
generalize detailed conceptual mappings
underlying them. However, this group of
metaphors will also be investigated because it
reveals much of cultural variation.
quite similarly favored in both languages with
very little difference in percentages. In contrast,
the WAR/STRUGGLE and BUILDING
metaphor in Vietnamese are more often used
with 18.14% and 14.22% respectively while in
English, there is only 10.89% for
WAR/STRUGGLE and 4.46% for BUILDING.
We would also like to explain the name of this
source: WAR and STRUGGLE are put together
since WAR is a sub-type of STRUGGLE and
many examples do not directly relate life to war
but to some kind of struggle against a disaster
or an intangible opponent.
The following table shows the differences
in the distribution and percentage of life
metaphors in both corpora.
In the next part we are going to compare the
use of life metaphors in English and
Vietnamese
propaganda
slogans
both
linguistically and culturally. Specific linguistic
expressions will be taken into account and the
similarities and differences in both languages
will be discussed, based on culture-specific
features. For the convenience of comparison,
Table 1
Conceptual Metaphors for LIFE in English and
Vietnamese Slogans
ENGLISH SLOGANS
Vietnamese
slogans
or
metaphorical
Source domains
LIVING ORGANISM
OBJECT
PATH-SCHEMA
BUILDING
WAR/STRUGGLING
OTHERS
Total
Number Percentage
expressions will be translated literally to
English (with further explanation about
meaning if necessary) so that the translation
does not affect the lexical, or to some extent,
grammatical features.
24
50
90
9
22
7
11.88%
24.75%
44.55%
4.46%
10.89%
3.47%
100%
4.2. Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural
comparison
202
VIETNAMESE SLOGANS
At the generic-level, both English and
Vietnamese exploit the same source domains to
conceptualize life; however, at the more
specific-level, one can see a number of
differences in how distinct aspects of life are
conceived.
Source domains
LIVING ORGANISM
OBJECT
PATH-SCHEMA
BUILDING
Number Percentage
28
45
13.73%
22.06%
23.53%
14.22%
18.14%
8.33%
48
29
WAR/STRUGGLING
OTHERS
37
17
4.2.1. LIFE IS A LIVING ORGANISM
204
100%
Total
This metaphor is largely ontological. Life is
an extremely abstract concept, so it makes more
sense when viewing it as something physical
and close to us like a living thing which can
breathe, eat, or die, or can have blood, roots or
diseases. There are two specific-level
metaphors derived from the source of living
things: HUMANS ARE PLANTS and
PROBLEMS IN LIFE ARE DISEASES. In
those propaganda slogans, problems in life refer
to social ones like poverty, corruption, unsafety,
war, drugs and smoking, etc. The metaphorical
It can be seen from the table that most of
the source domains employed to conceptualize
life are similar in both English and Vietnamese;
they just differ in the OTHERS category, which
will be discussed in part 4.2., where a cross-
linguistic and cross-cultural comparison is
given in more detail. The most favorable source
domain is PATH-SCHEMA, but there is quite a
big difference in the frequency in that English
slogans have 90 cases related to PATH-
SCHEMA, which accounts for nearly half of all
the metaphors found in English and
approximately doubles those in Vietnamese.
expressions of LIFE IS
A
LIVING
ORGANISM metaphor are presented in the
following table.
The metaphors LIFE IS
A
LIVING
ORGANISM and LIFE IS AN OBJECT are
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158
Table 2
Metaphorical Expressions of LIFE IS A LIVING ORGANISM in English and Vietnamese Slogans
English
thrive, sow, seed (2), reap (2), healthy, plant, predator, suffer, grow (2), strong, dangerous, virus,
cure, medicine (3), vaccine, perish, flourish (2), bud, bloom, flower, nourish, prevention, disease,
breed, rot, harvest
Vietnamese
lành mạnh (healthy) (3), gốc rễ (root), (2), nhân (kernel), máu (blood), nhu cầu (need), hơi thở
(breath), măng non (bamboo sprout), búp trên cành (bud), giống nòi/nòi giống (breed) (3),
nguyên khí (vitality), nuôi dưỡng (nourish), trồng (plant), tế bào (cell) (2), tươi đẹp
(fresh/beautiful) (2), mồ chôn (tomb) (2), tàn (fade/wither)
Note: the number in brackets indicates the number of occurrences of the item.
From the results retrieved from our manual
of war and struggle. For instance, while
English-speaking people view corruption as “a
disease having no medicine”, in Vietnamese, it
is more common to see “Thực hành tiết kiệm,
phòng chống tham nhũng, chống lãng phí”
(Practice thrift, stave off corruption, fight
against wastefulness), “Thuốc là là kẻ thù của
sức khỏe” (Smoking is an enemy against
health) or “hiểm hoạ tai nạn giao thông” (the
disaster of traffic accidents). This is going to be
discussed in the section about the
WAR/STRUGGLE metaphor.
search, it is clear that many English expressions
have Vietnamese equivalents: healthy (lành
mạnh), nourish (nuôi dưỡng), plant (trồng), bud
(búp), breed (giống nòi), etc, but many do not.
Vietnamese slogans often use plant-related or
animal-related nouns and adjectives while
English slogans tend to use more verbs. For
example, a Vietnamese slogan says “Nước là
máu của sự sống” (Water is the blood of life),
but an English slogan would go “Allow life to
thrive, don’t drink and drive.” This could be
justified with the difference between Western
culture where positive action (tung) is favored
and Eastern culture where passiveness (ching)
prevails (Li Ta-chao, quoted in The Last
Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese
Dilemma of Modernity, Alitto, 1986).
4.2.2. LIFE IS AN OBJECT
Another ontological metaphor that is
prevailing is LIFE IS AN OBJECT.
Objectifying an abstract concept is salient in
our conceptual system, because it gives us a
chance to sense, quantify, rank, measure, etc., it
(Lakoff and Johnson, 2003). Slogans, with its
outstanding feature of conciseness, objectify
life as a tangible thing so that the audience can
visualize it more vividly.
Another difference is that there is no
metaphor of PROBLEMS IN LIFE ARE
DISEASES in Vietnamese. Instead, Vietnamese
slogans often refer to problems in life as a
disaster or an enemy, which belongs to the field
Figure 1
The System of LIFE IS AN OBJECT Metaphor in English and Vietnamese Slogans
The following list of metaphorcial
expressions realizing LIFE IS AN OBJECT
proves that life is conceptualized and expressed
in almost the same way in the two languages:
VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
159
Table 3
Metaphorical Expressions of LIFE IS AN OBJECT in English and Vietnamese Slogans
English
gift (6), give , break, pay (3), save (3), cost (2), hand over, pay heavy fees, throw away, trash,
count, cut, bleak, waste (5), conserve, spend (2), shine, bright (3), destroy, steal, precious,
treasure, keep, pass on, valued, devalue, pro-life, light, shape, cherish, rich (2), precious, how
many, share, secure, brighter, gain, own, stolen, worth, utilize, pricey
Vietnamese
nếp (sống) (crease – referring to a habit) (3), văn minh (radiant – referring to a civilized world)
(7), đánh mất (lose), đảm bảo (ensure), bảo vệ (protect) (6), cướp đi (rob) (2), tươi sáng (bright)
(3), bảo tồn (preserve), phá tan (break), giá trị (value) (2), trong tay (in hand), chất lượng
(quality) (5), sàng lọc (screen), đẹp (beautiful), có ích (helpful), của cải (riches), cứu (save),
chia sẻ (share) (2), kết nối (connect), gửi (send/give), trao (hand over), lưu giữ (store), tỏa sáng
(shine), yêu thương (love), giữ gìn (keep), ý nghĩa hơn (more meaningful), thắp (light), đốt
(ngắn) (burn something short)
Note: the number in brackets indicates the number of occurrences of the item.
Most of the linguistics expressions in both
metaphors
derive
from
the
EVENT
languages are equivalents. One can find the idea
of “saving life” or “cost life” easily in such
English slogans as “Save water, Save life” or
“Trying to make up time could cost your life”.
Similarly, they are also ubiquitous in
Vietnamese as in “Cho giọt máu, cứu cuộc đời”
(Give blood, save life) or “Tai nạn giao thông
hàng năm cướp đi sinh mạng của hàng ngàn
người” (Every year traffic accidents cost/steal
thousands of lives). It can be concluded that
LIFE IS AN OBJECT, and more specifically
LIFE IS A VALUABLE OBJECT is very
common in both languages. For people of each
culture, life is so precious and fragile that they
treasure it like a possession, which results in a
very high frequency of use of such words as
“save” and “(don’t) waste”.
The only minor difference noticed when
LIFE IS AN OBJECT WITH TWO SIDES
metaphor is examined is that in Vietnamese
slogans, unhappy life as the dark side of an
object is not mentioned, and there is only one
example in the English corpus as in “Leaks
make your future bleak”. It is supposed that
slogans are made to encourage and motivate
people to live well rather to warn them of an
unhappy future.
STRUCTURE metaphor (Lakoff, 1993).
LIFE IS A VERTICAL PATH is actually
an orientational metaphor in which GOOD
THINGS IN LIFE ARE UP and BAD THINGS
IN LIFE ARE DOWN, which are in accordance
with the metaphors GOOD IS UP and BAD IS
DOWN suggested by Lakoff and Johnson
(2003). However, the number of these
metaphors in English slogans is fairly larger
than in Vietnamese one, and one can find both
directions up and down in English but only up
in Vietnamese.
Table 4
Metaphorical Expressions of LIFE IS A
VERTICAL PATH in English and Vietnamese
Slogans
English
down (6), evolve up, rise, raise, up
(5), tear down, build up, stand (2),
uphold, arise, elevate, drag down,
high, higher, stand up, fall (2), lift up
Vietnamese trên (hết) (above all), nâng cao (uplift)
(7), vun đắp (build up), vươn tới đỉnh
cao (reach for the top), vươn cao
(rise), cao đẹp (lofty/elevated), lên
(up)
Note: the number in brackets indicates
the number of occurrences of the
4.2.3. THE PATH-SCHEMA METAPHOR
item.
The PATH-SCHEMA is one of the most
popular image-schema metaphors, which are
particularized as IN-OUT, FRONT-BACK, UP-
DOWN, CONTACT, MOTION and FORCE
(Kövecses, 2002). In slogans, we realize that the
SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema dominates. This
metaphor is specified as LIFE IS A VERTICAL
PATH and LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Cross-
With the dominating word nâng cao
(uplift), which occurs seven times in
Vietnamese slogans, and the existence of
expressions of UP only, it seems that
Vietnamese slogans tend to encourage people to
look at the bright side of life instead of thinking
about unhappiness or difficulty, which
coincidentally supports the supposition
discussed in part 4.2.2.
culturally
and
cross-linguistically,
these
P. T. T. Trang / VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
160
Meanwhile, LIFE IS A JOURNEY is a
make sense of life refers to a PURPOSIVE
ACTIVITY in terms of MOVING FORWARD
TOWARD A DESTINATION. In this process,
different aspects of a journey are taken into
account.
structural metaphor, which constructs LIFE as a
path with a starting point and a destination. As
Johnson (2013) argues, one of the most
important conceptualizations that people use to
Table 5
The Mappings of LIFE IS A JOURNEY Metaphor
JOURNEY (source)
movement along the
path
LIFE (target)
living a life
Examples
(E) If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t
need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is
education to turn him around.
(V) Giọt máu cho đi, cuộc đời ở lại (Blood given, Life
stays)
starting to go
destination
starting a life event
purpose of life
(E) Life is very short, so put worries apart and give your life
a kick start.
(V) Thay đổi văn hoá giao thông, bắt đầu từ chính bạn (To
change traffic culture, start from you.)
(E) Education is a right path to reach to the destination.
(V) Hướng tới một xã hội không có trẻ em nghèo khó và
thất học (Head for a society without poverty-stricken and
illiterate children).
different routes
obstacles on the path
companions
different choices
difficulties in life
support
(E) Take a better route, put that smoke out.
(V) Nơi nào có ý chí, nơi đó có con đường (There’s a will,
there’s a path)
(E) We shall overcome.
(V) Lớp tôi thống nhất đạp đổ thách thức (Our class is
determined to overthrow challenges)
(E) Good books are good companions.
(V) 55 năm công tác dân số đồng hành cùng hạnh phúc mỗi
gia đình (55 years of population and family planning goes
together with every family’s happiness)
(E) Life’s short. Don’t rush it.
(V) Nhanh một phút, chậm cả đời. (1 minute faster, one life
slower)
(E) What goes around comes around: Keep the sea clean.
* No Vietnamese examples
length of the journey
motions
length of life
changes
These different mappings are expressed via
a number of metaphorical linguistic items,
demonstrating the complexity and diversity of
this metaphor of life.
Table 6
Metaphorical Expressions of LIFE IS A JOURNEY in English and Vietnamese Slogans
English
lead the way, reach, journey, destination, lead (6), on the brink, go (4), go around (2), come
around (2), take positive steps, rough, stop (7), advance, get on the right track, end, short (2),
long, a kick start, rush, way (3), walk in different directions, walk in, walk out, get, go side by
side, guide, at right path (2), reach to the destination, go down, road, speed up, turn around,
track, block (2), go forward, step (2), place (3), line, fill, go forth, bring ahead, drive,
companions, take … places, sail away, sail on a sea, exceed, put an end (2), keep on track, come
first, come second, come up on the short end, put a step back, leave behind, rewind, route,
come, join the race, carry on, step up, step on, overcome
Vietnamese
bắt đầu (start) (2), đi đôi (go side by side) (2), nhanh (fast), chậm (slow), hướng đến/hướng tới
(head for) (3), nhịp cầu (bridge), đồng hành (go together), từng bước (step by step), chặng
đường (path), thi đua (race), đạp đổ (overthrow), con đường (path), tiếp sức (relay), vững bước
(step firmly into), tiến bộ (progress) (3), lùi (step back), đi (go), ở (stay), thúc đẩy (push
forward), điểm tựa (fulcrum), đẩy lùi (push backward), bờ vực (brink), về (return), dừng lại
(stop), dẫn đến (lead to)
Note: the number in brackets indicates the number of occurrences of the item.
VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
161
As aforementioned in the overview, the
most notable difference in the use of the PATH-
SCHEMA metaphor in English and Vietnamese
slogans lies in the number of cases. 90 metaphors
are found in English while there are only 48 in
Vietnamese. Table 6 also suggests that there is a
much wider variety of metaphorical expressions
of this metaphor of life in English slogans than in
Vietnamese ones. It could be indicated that
English-speaking countries are closely associated
with movements and exploration. In the past, they
travelled everywhere to explore new worlds, and
this imprinted the notion of life as a journey or
an adventure in their minds. On the contrary,
the term “luỹ tre làng” (village’s bamboo fence)
surrounding Vietnamese communities hint that
they prefered stability to movement. This could
probably be verified, as Kövecses suggested in
his study (2005) that cultural history plays a central
part in shaping the conceptualization of life.
4.2.4. LIVING IS STRUGGLING AND
LIVING IS BUILDING
The reason why we put these two
metaphors in the same discussion is that they go
together and share the same features. As figured
out through our investigation, these metaphors
in Vietnamese outnumber those in English. From
a cultural and historical perspective, Vietnamese
people have a strong mindset about fighting and
building. They have a long-standing history of
fighting against invaders and developing
countries after war. Therefore, in Vietnamese
slogans, it is easy to encounter such phrases as
“Sống, chiến đấu và làm việc …” (Live, fight and
work …) or “Xây dựng nếp sống văn hoá …”
(Build a civilized way of life …). However, it is
undeniable that both languages share the same
conceptual metaphor of life.
Table 7
The Subtypes of LIVING IS STRUGGLING AND BUILDING Metaphor
LIVING IS STRUGGLING
LIVING IS BUILDING
LIFE IS A BATTLE FIELD
LIFE IS A BUILDING
DEALING WITH SOCIAL PROBLEMS IS WAR
SOCIAL PROBLEMS ARE ENEMIES/ DISASTERS
Though based on similar mappings, English
and Vietnamese metaphors of life are still
distinctive in not only the preferences of use but
also the employment of metaphorical linguistic
expressions. For example, there are only nine
cases of LIFE IS A BUILDING in English but
they are realized by different linguistic items
like hammer, nail, open the door, key, build,
make a door, base, lock, remove. In contrast,
there are 29 metaphors related to the domain of
building in Vietnamese slogans while statistics
show that there are only a few linguistic
expressions that are repetitively used, including
“xây dựng” (build) (used 11 times), “bền vững”
(solid) (used 10 times) and some other items
like chìa khoá (key), mở cửa (open the door), tổ
(nest), nền tảng (foundation). However, it is
noticeable via these expressions that Vietnamese
slogans put an emphasis on calling people to act
for a sustainable development, which is vital to a
developing country like Vietnam.
FUTURE IS A BUILDING
DEVELOPING A COUNTRY IS BUILDING
oriented attitude (Kövecses, 2005) towards the
war against social problems. In contrast,
Vietnamese slogans exploit such words as
phòng chống (stave off), ứng phó (cope with),
ngăn chặn (stop), phòng ngừa/ngăn ngừa
(prevent), pháo đài (bunker), thành trì (baster),
etc., which demonstrates a position of defense of a
country constantly facing attacks from outside.
4.2.5 Minor cases of metaphors of life
This part will present some isolated cases
with very few linguistic expressions. Though
the examples searched from the corpora are
insufficient to make any generalizations, they
still serve as clear hints for these conceptual
metaphors, summarized in the following tables.
Table 8
Minor Cases of Life Metaphors in English and
Vietnamse Slogans
Likewise, in English, linguistic items
related to war, especially the actions of
attacking and winning the enemy are more
preferable: win, defeat, weapon, banish, disarm,
destroy, fortify, jeopardize, conquer, fight,
strive, victory. This reveals an active success-
Conceptual
English Vietnamese
metaphors
LIFE IS
+
-
-
ENTERTAINMENT
HAPPINESS IN LIFE
IS WARMTH AND
+
P. T. T. Trang / VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2021) 153-164
162
FULLNESS
Vietnamese slogans contain the same generic-
HUMAN ARE TOOLS
LIFE IS BUSINESS
Note: + (existent); -
(non-existent)
-
-
+
+
level conceptual metaphors of life such as LIFE
IS A LIVING ORGANISM, LIFE IS AN
OBJECT, LIFE IS A PATH, LIVING IS
STRUGGLING AND LIVING IS BUILDING,
there are still a number of differences at a more
specific level, in the frequency of use and
metaphorical linguistic expressions, which are
susceptible to cultural and historical influences.
There are some specific-level metaphors which
exist in one language but not in the other like
LIFE IS ENTERTAINMENT, SOCIAL
PROBLEMS ARE DISEASES in English or
HAPPINESS IN LIFE IS WARMTH AND
FULLNESS, HUMAN ARE TOOLS, LIFE IS
BUSINESS in Vietnamese. Together with the
detailed analysis of metaphorical linguistic
expressions and the number of occurrences of
specific items, the study shows that English-
speaking people view life from a more dynamic
Total: 7
Total: 17
As Kövecses pointed out in his study
(2005), there is a tendency of American people
using positive domains, which originated in the
consumption-oriented culture of the 20th-
century America, to conceptualize life, and we
reckon that this is also true for English-
speaking countries in general because
consumerism caused widespread “leisure time”
values to Western Europe and the United States
at the turn of the 20th century (Veblen, 1899).
Hence, it is not surprising to know that life to
them is viewed as entertainment. In the English
corpus, we found these: When you gamble with
safety you bet your life (LIFE IS A
GAMBLING GAME), Life is a game, play it
happily (LIFE IS A GAME), Character is best
shown when nobody is watching (LIFE IS A
and
success-oriented perspective
while
Vietnamese people perceive it more statically,
protectively and hopefully. It is, therefore,
evident that our study results have made a
meaningful contribution to the understanding of
conceptual metaphors in general and the
conceptualization of life in English and
Vietnamese in particular, for those who are
interested in English and Vietnamese languages
and cultures.
PLAY). However, with
a
country that
experienced numerous wars and difficulties in
the past like Vietnam, life is contrastive to
entertainment; it is a struggle. To the
Vietnamese people, happiness in life is having
enough food ((ăn) no – (eat to) full), and warm
clothes (ấm - warm). It is therefore common
practice to use the phrase “no ấm” (full and
warm) to express happiness in Vietnamese.
Also, experiencing severe hardships in life
leads to the idea of humans as tools which need
to be rèn (forged) and luyện (refined) as in Rèn
thầy trước, luyện trò sau (Forge teachers first,
Refine students later).
Surprisingly, LIFE IS BUSINESS metaphor
does not exist in English slogans while hinted
in Vietnamese ones with the term of đầu tư
(invest) like in Đầu tư cho con người là đầu tư
cho tương lai tươi sáng của dân tộc (Investing
in people is investing in the bright future of the
nation). Vietnam is now a fast-growing
economy, it is understandable that business
terms go into life; however, we cannot produce
any explanation for the non-existence of this
metaphor in English slogans at the moment,
which requires further research.
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164
SỰ Ý NIỆM HOÁ CUỘC SỐNG
TRONG KHẨU HIỆU TUYÊN TRUYỀN TIẾNG ANH
VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
Phí Thị Thu Trang
Đại học Thăng Long
Đại Kim, Hoàng Mai, Hà Nội, Việt Nam
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