typical cultural features in english and vietnamese fables about philosophy of life a contrastive analysis = phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm văn hóa điển hình trong các truyện ngụ ngôn tiếng anh và tiếng việt nói

---o0o--- NGUYỄN VĂN NGHĨA TYPICAL CULTURAL FEATURES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FABLES ABOUT PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VĂN HÓA ĐIỂN HÌ

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NGUYỄN VĂN NGHĨA

TYPICAL CULTURAL FEATURES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FABLES ABOUT PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE:

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VĂN HÓA ĐIỂN HÌNH TRONG CÁC TRUYỆN NGỤ NGÔN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT

NÓI VỀ TRIẾT LÝ CUỘC SỐNG

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

HANOI – 2010

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NGUYỄN VĂN NGHĨA

TYPICAL CULTURAL FEATURES IN ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE FABLES ABOUT PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE:

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VĂN HÓA ĐIỂN HÌNH

TRONG CÁC TRUYỆN NGỤ NGÔN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT

NÓI VỀ TRIẾT LÝ CUỘC SỐNG

M.A minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: PHẠM XUÂN THỌ, MA

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN LINGUISTICS

HANOI – 2010

Table of contents Page

Certificate of originality of study project report i

Acknowledgement ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

Abbreviations vii

List of tables viii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims and research questions 2

1.3 Significance of the study 2

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Organization of the study 3

Chapter 2: Literature View 4

2.1 Culture 4

2.2 Fables as a type of literature 8

2.2.1 Fable 8

2.2.2 Fables about philosophy of life 10

Chapter 3: Methodology 11

3.1 Subjects 11

3.1.1 English fables 11

3.1.2 Vietnamese fables 11

3.3 Data collection and data analysis procedures 12

Chapter 4: Results and discussions 14

4.1 Typical cultural features of English fables about philosophy of life 14

4.1.1 Features of the settings and objects 14

4.1.2 Features of the characters 17

.4.1.3 The features of the language used by the characters 20

4.1.4 Features of the ways the philosophy of life is expressed 23

4.2 The TCFs in Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life 24

4.2.1 Features of the settings and objects 24

4.2.2 Features of the characters 26

4.2.2.1 Characters as humans 26

4.2.2.2 Characters as animals 28

4.2.3 Features of the language 30

4.2.4 Features of the way the philosophies of life are expressed 32

4.3 The similarities and differences of the TCFs in English and Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life 34

4.3.1 Similarities 34

4.3.2 Differences 35

Chapter 5: Conclusion 37

5.1 Major findings 37

5.2 Limitations and suggestions for further research 38

5.3 Pedagogical implications 38

References 39

APPENDIX I

Abbreviations

TCF: Typical cultural features

CA: Fables with characters as animals

CHA: Fables with characters as humans and animals CH: Fables with characters as humans

DA: Domestic animals

NDA: Non-domestic animals

List of tables

Table 1: TCFs of the settings and objects in English fables about philosophy of life

Table 2: TCFs of characters in English fables

Table 3: Features of the language in the conversations of English fables

Table 4: Features of the ways the philosophy of life is stated in English fable

Table 5: TCFs of the settings and objects in Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life

Table 6: TCFs of characters in Vietnamese fables

Table 7: Features of the language in the conversations of Vietnamese fables

Table 8: Features of the ways the philosophy of life is expressed in Vietnamese fables

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Rationale of the study

The first thing to mention when it comes to choosing the topic of this thesis is that culture itself is a broad and complicated subject matter There are plenty of aspects in this field As usual, each of them is touched upon individually from different angles, depending on the interests of certain authors Therefore, it is not surprising that different authors give different definitions of culture In addition, it is agreed that getting a deep understanding about any aspect of culture is a really hard job This is because culture is not tangible, and it is only perceptive to human sense For different individuals, the perceptions are not the same Thus, there is a variety of presentations on the subject matter

However complicated it is, culture is still an important factor in our life It distinguishes humans from animals The way people behave and treat each other makes them different from other living beings It is also agreed that although the world is coming toward common standards in many fields like science, technology and business, there are by no means a uniform in culture among the regions or nations in the world It is cultural identities that distinguish groups of people Nowadays, in the world of integration, humans are searching for

a common understanding of one another Culture is really a bridge that brings people closer together The need to discover certain cultures has become more urgent than ever before Another reason that inspires the author to carry out this study is the attractiveness of fables,

in this case, fables in English and Vietnamese Fables are one type of folk literature with stories containing characters as either animals or humans Stories of this type tell a variety of subject matters like the explanations of phenomena in real life or the teasing of bad habits of humans Each story is a moral lesson and through the words and behaviors of characters, we can draw certain philosophies of life The readers become thoughtful after reading such a fable

Among fables of various themes, those about philosophies of life appear to be the most remarkable These are the most attractive of all types of fables The world of animals or

humans - mostly in the past, speaks of the moral lessons which are still relevant in present life Apart from the moral lessons, another attraction in fables is the cultural features embedded in each story The settings, characters, language, and the way characters treat one another reveal the cultural identities of certain nations, regions and these are the most attractive parts of fables

1.2 Aims and research questions

Conducting the study, the author sets several limited aims First of all, the study is to find out the typical cultural features (TCFs) in fables in English as well as in Vietnamese As a matter of fact, there are a number of cultural features in fables, but the author’s focus is only

on the typical ones That is, only the most remarkable features are taken into account The second thing this study has to do is to contrast these typical cultural features in the fables in the two languages, finding out the similarities and the differences In order to do so, the study will have to search for the answers to the following research questions:

1 What are the typical cultural features in English fables about philosophy of life?

2 What are the typical cultural features in Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life?

3 What are the similarities of the typical cultural features in English and Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life?

4 What are the differences of the typical cultural features in English and Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life?

1.3 Significance of the study

The study is of great significance to not only culture researchers but those whose interests are in applied linguistics as well To those who are interested in cultures, the findings of the study will manifest the TCFs in the fables in two languages, namely English and Vietnamese The readers and the learners of English language will have a chance to perceive the TCFs in each language In addition, the study also presents a contrastive analysis between these

features The audience will get a deep understanding about the similarities and differences between Vietnamese culture and Western one For learners of English as a second language, the study helps them become aware of cultural elements in the process of learning, which has not been paid much attention to so far Meanwhile, this is very important in English learning because learners are able to perceive why speakers or writers use different language in different contexts Being aware of cultural elements is also a good way to avoid cultural shocks when they communicate with people from English – speaking countries

1.4 Scope of the study

As stated earlier, culture is a broad field with various aspects This study, however, only focuses on the TCFs in a limited number of fables in English and Vietnamese It is also known that fables consist of lots of themes Yet, due to the shortage of such factors as time, materials and finance, this study only exploits those about philosophy of life, which are very common in the world of fables

1.5 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters The first chapter is the introduction, which includes the rationale, aims and research questions, scope as well as the organization of the study The second chapter is the literature view in which the author presents an overview of the publications related to the topic of the research The methodology used in the study is presented in the third chapter It includes a description of the data collection and data analysis procedures used in the study The findings of the study are presented in the fourth chapter, Results and Discussions The final chapter presents a summary of the findings, limitations of the study as well as suggestions for further research

Chapter 2: Literature View

In this chapter basic concepts relevant to the study will be reviewed with the aim of finding out what has been about the topic as well as forming a theoretical framework for the study

2.1 Culture

As stated earlier, culture is not tangible, only perceptive to human senses There have been a large number of publications regarding culture from different points of view Some authors do their best to give its definitions; others both give the definitions and discuss certain aspects of culture As a consequence, the publications about culture are plentiful not only in number but also in its aspects as well

As is known, scholars all over the world have defined and regarded culture differently In fact, it is believed that there is no commonly - shared definition According to Gooddenough (1964:36), a proper definition of culture must ultimately derive from the operations by which

we describe particular cultures Because these operations are still in early stages of formulation and development, it is not yet possible to state precisely just what we mean when

we speak of a society’s culture He adds:

“As I see it, a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate

in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for anyone of themselves Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning, knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term” (p.36)

By this definition, we should note that culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior, or emotion It is rather an organization of these things As such, the things people say and do, their social arrangements and events, are products or by – products of their culture as they apply it to the task of perceiving and dealing with their circumstances To those who know their culture, these things and events are also signs signifying the cultural forms or models of which they are material representations

Given such a definition, it is obviously impossible to describe a culture properly simply by describing behavior or social, economic, and ceremonial events and arrangements as observed material phenomena Goodenough (1964) gives further analysis:

What is required is to construct a theory of the conceptual models which they represent and of which they are artifacts We test the adequacy of such a theory by our ability to interpret and predict what goes

on in a community as measured by how its members, our informants, do so (p.36)

Meanwhile, Hoijer (1964:445) employs a well – known definition by Tylor (1903) that culture is “… complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom and any other capability and habits acquired by man as a member of society” Concerning another aspect of culture, Hoijer (1964:445) claims that some traits of culture are easily borrowed by one group from neighbouring groups In essence, then, the similarities in culture which mark societies in the same cultural area result from contacts and borrowings and are limited to those features of culture which are easily transmitted form one group to another Robert Lado (1957) views culture form another approach He only focuses his attention to human behaviour From his point of view, “cultures are structured systems of patterned behaviour” (p.111) In addition, he connects culture with anthropology According to him,

“cultural anthropologists have gradually moved from an atomistic definition of culture, describing it as more or less haphazard collection of traits, to one which emphasizes pattern and configuration” (p.111) He also compares this definition with the assumption by Edward Sapir (1921) that “all cultural behavior is patterned” (Robert Lado, 1957:111) This point of view is shared by Holliday, Hyde and Kullman (2004), they assume much of the debate on

“culture” in the last fifty years or so have been concerned with challenging models of culture which have emanated from the field of anthropology

Meanwhile, when discussing the concept of culture, Risager (2006:32) briefly presents three dimensions of the concept of culture described by the Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Baumann (1999) They are:

The hierarchical concept of culture The differential concept of culture The generic concept of culture

In the hierarchical concept, Baumann (1999) regards a culture as something that the individual human being or individual society either “has” or “does not have” or “has” at a higher or lower level This concept cannot exist in the plural and it is always value-laden The criteria for what “culture” is – and thus the “ideal human” – are something for which a struggle takes place in a society To attain culture is actually to attain an ideal nature: “There is

an ideal nature of human beings, and the culture means the conscious, strenuous and prolonged effort to attain this ideal, to bring the actual life – process into line with the highest potential of the human vocation.” (Baumann, 1999:7)

The differential concept of culture, according to Baumann (1999), has to do with culture as something that “marks off” group of people from each other This concept can be used in plural Following this concept, a culture is typically a cohesive unit that various anthropologists have described with the aid of such terms as ethos, genius, pattern, configuration, style and the like Baumann (1999) adds that “a culture has the nature of a system that is self – contained and resists mixing; it mainly alters as the result of encounters with other cultures (“cultural clashes”)” Baumann (1999) also assumes that cultures viewed in such a way can be compared, and the comparison can result in cultural universals being collected and categorised Culture can be both “from the outside” and “from the inside”; the former involves observing behaviour on the basis of a general or universal apparatus, while the latter involves listening to and trying to understand what categories are relevant for the indigenous people themselves – consciously or unconsciously (Baumann, 1999, quoted in Risager, 2006:33)

The generic concept of culture, on the other hand, has to do with what is common to humanity, that which distinguishes humanity from nature and all other living creatures One could say that the more one emphasises the diversity of cultures and their mutual incompatibility, the more one needs, despite everything, to have a concept that applies to all humanity The generic concept of culture can give rise to the view that there is only one culture, i.e human culture everywhere and at all times (Baumann, 1999, quoted in Risager, 2006:33)

Like William (1988) and Fink (1988), Risager (1999) distinguishes between three concepts of culture that have come into being at different times but all of which can be refound in present – day understandings of the concept:

The individual concept of culture The collective concept of culture The aesthetic concept of culture With regard to the individual concept of culture, Risager (2006) assumes that this concept has

been known since at least the time of Cicero, who uses the metaphor expression cultura animi

, i.e cultivation of the soul/mind, and this has to do with the individual’s mental cultivation,

either via God’s cultivation of the soul For the first 16 centuries cultura animi (or from the

16th century, cultura without a logical object) designates a process of mental cultivation, a

pedagogical process Not until the 17th century can the concept also signify the result of this process, i.e the mental (intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic) level the person involved has attained One begins to speak of “the cultivated person” The individual concept of culture is generally speaking chracterised by a hierarchical understanding of culture (the hierarchical concept of culture) (p.36)

As for the collective concept of culture, Risager (2006) claims that from the end of the 17thcentury, a collective concept of culture developed alongside the individual one The collective concept of culture has to be divided into a hierarchical and a non-hierarchical variant The hierarchical variant is the earlier, and it deals with either the societal conditions for the individual process of cultivation, or with what “cultivated people” have in common (p.36) With reference to the aesthetic concept of culture, Risarger (2006) assumes that in the course

of the 19th century, a number of special spheres crystalise in connection with modern development, including “art” with its subsections including literature, visual arts and music These become a reference for the aesthetic concept of culture which develops during the same period, alongside other concepts of culture, and which adopts a narrowing, individual and hierarchising direction that focuses in particular on artistic products as supreme achievements

of symbolic – aesthetic creativeness

Like many authors who are interested in culture, Claude Lévi – Strauss (1958), an European sociologist and anthropologist proposes that all cultures reflect fundamental and universal principles of human mind Cultures were shared creations of human minds Meanwhile, Keesing (1974:78-79) when discussing Lévi – Strauss’s points of view supposes that the mind imposes culturally patterned order, a logic of binary contrast, of relations, and transformation,

on a continuous changing and often random world The gulf between the cultural realm, where man imposes his arbitrary order, and the realm of nature becomes a major axis of symbolic polarity: “nature vs culture” is a fundamental conceptual opposition in many all – times and places

To conclude, there is no limit in the discussion of culture This is a multi-facet subject matter Yet, through the overview of the publications involved, we can focus our attention on some issues like the definition, concept of culture seen from different angles or the relationship between culture and anthropology

2 2 Fables as a type of literature

2.2.1 Fable

There are many definitions for fables David Emery (2010) views a fable as a short allergical narrative making a moral point, traditionally by means of animal characters who speak and act like human beings (About.com Guide) The website Questia.com shares this point of view According to this online journal, a fable is a short, pithy, and animal tale, most often told or written with a moral tagged in the form of a proverb Thus, to convey a moral is the aims of most fables, and the tale is the means by which this is done, providing illustration and compelling argument for the moral The author adds that “fable does not originate as a folktale, though it may make use of folk material, and can also be composed into a culture and exchanged as traditional oral folklore” (http://www.Questia.com)

Similarly, according to the free encyclopedia on Wikipedia, a fable is a “succinct story, in pose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of

nature which are “anthromorphized” (given human quality), and that illustrates a moral lesson ( a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim”

According to another definition on the free encyclopedia, fables can be described as a didactic mode of literature That is, whether a fable has been handed down from generation to generation as oral literature, or constructed by a literary tale-teller, its purpose is to impart a lesson or value, or to give sage advice Fables also provide opportunities to laugh at human folly, when they supply examples of behaviors to be avoided rather than emulated

With reference to fable characters, this author claims that the characters of a fable may be people, gods, animals or even lifeless objects When animals and objects are used in fables, they think and talk like people, even though they act like animals or objects For example, in a fable a clay pot might say that it is frightened of being broken

The stories told by fables are usually very simple To understand a fable, the reader or listener does not need to know all about the characters For this reason animals are often used

in fables in a way that is easily understood because it is always the same They keep the same

characteristics from story to story

range of animals as protagonists, including "the Tortoise and the Hare" who famously engage

in a race against each other; and, in another classic fable, a fox which rejects grapes that are out of reach, as probably being sour ("sour grapes") (Wikipedia)

In summary, fables belong to fiction in literature A fable is a simple story with the characters as persons, animals or even inanimate objects At the end of each story, a lesson or

moral is often drawn and this is the most typical feature of fable The characters and content of

a fable are always influenced by cultural factors

2.2.2 Fables about philosophy of life

It is agreed that fables have a wide range of themes It can be either about human relationships expressed through animal behaviours or the explanation of a natural phenomenon, or simply it

is about humans’ daily interactions However, in this study, those about philosophies of life are the major concern The question asked here is “What is philosophy of life?” As shown in Dictionary.reference.com, philosophy of life is “any philosophical view or vision of the nature

or purpose of life or of the way that life should be lived” Literally, this definition is satisfactory and clear in the common sense However, in the article “The philosophy of life”

on the website http://www.swami-krishnananda.org, Swami Krishnananda thinks deeply about this definition According to this scholar “Philosophy is a well coordinated and systematised attempt at evaluating life and the universe as a whole, with reference to first principles that underlie all things as their causes and are implicit in all experience” In addition, we see another concept of philosophy by http://www.onu.edu.com: “Philosophy is a quest for a comprehensive understanding of human existence The objective of philosophy is to consider the rational justification of logical inferences, human values, criteria for establishing the claims of knowledge and certainly, and interpretations of the nature of reality”.

From the definition of philosophy, it is not a hard job to comprehend what fables about philosophy of life are In fact, they are fables with a “moral”, or philosophy of life in the end This characteristic is typical among fables in all languages Hence, each of the fables about philosophy of life is a lesson about life, and way of life We can claim that a fable is something more important than a work of art It is a lesson about life

Chapter 3: Methodology

In this chapter, the procedures of data collection and data analysis will be outlined Whether the findings are valid and reliable or not depends on the method in which the study is conducted

3.1 Subjects

In this study, the subjects are 15 fables about philosophy of life in English and 15 fables about philosophy of life in Vietnamese

3.1.1 English fables

The 15 English fables come from the collection of Aesop’s fables This collection is taken

from the website An English-Zone.com It is also noted that An English-zone.com is a

webpage for online English learning and teaching This is a reliable website in terms of academic English and is very well – known in the field of teaching and learning English as a foreign language (EFL) The English language used on this webpage is the standard one; and the collection of Aesop’s fables on this webpage is used as the material for reading skills Therefore, these fables are quite reliable for academic purposes

3.1.2 Vietnamese fables

The 15 Vietnamese fables in this study are taken from the book “Tổng tập văn học dân gian người Việt - Tập 10: Truyện ngụ ngôn” (The great collection of Vietnamese folk literature – Volume 10: Fables) by Social Science Publishing House, Hanoi (2003) The book consists of hundreds of fables of different types like prose, poetry In particular, all the fables are collected from different regions of Vietnam; therefore, the regional diversity is guaranteed In this study only those of prose are taken as the subject of the study

3.2 Data collection and data analysis procedures

15 fables of philosophy of life in English and 15 fables of philosophy of life in Vietnamese were chosen from the two sources above They were then carefully read and analyzed in terms

of the following features in order to answer the first two research questions:

- The objects and settings : First, the setting is the situation in which the story takes place and

the characters interact with each other The settings might be either rural, urban or in the mountainous area The story might take place in a room, at the market or in the field In addition, there are a large number of objects in the fables They might be the objects used in everyday life at home or anywhere else These objects are very important for finding out the cultural features because they are obviously influenced by cultural factors

- The characters: The characters in fable are diversified They might be human: farmers,

merchants, huntsmen, fathers, sons, husbands, wives, friends or children They belong to different social classes at that time It is clear that cultural elements have influence on them Apart from human characters, there are many fables in which characters are animals, either wild or domestic such as tigers, lions, foxes, wolves, weasels, hares, tortoises, buffalos, cows, horses or chickens

- The language used by the characters: In fables, language is used as a means of

communication The way the characters make themselves understood, or the language they use – either direct or indirect is the concern of this study It is clear that language depends on cultural elements, which are embedded in the words uttered by the characters In addition, we should bear in mind that language is itself a broad field However, this study only focuses on the directness and indirectness of the language used by the characters in the fables Other linguistic properties will not be considered

- The way the philosophies of life are expressed: Philosophies of life are the themes of the

fables in this study There are a number of philosophies of life in these fables like those about human relationships or the struggle between the good and the evil The question of how these philosophies of life are expressed - whether implicitly or explicitly is taken into consideration

in this study These features are clearly influenced by cultural elements

In order to answer question 3 and 4: “What are the similarities of typical cultural features

in English and Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life? /What are the differences of typical cultural features in English and Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life?”, a comparison between the TCFs of fables in English will be compared to those of fables in Vietnamese

This chapter has outlined the subjects of the study as well as the procedures of data collection and data analysis The results of the study will be discussed in the next chapter in order to answer the four research questions of the study

Chapter 4: Results and discussions

In this chapter, the results of the study will be discussed with relevant citations from fables in English and Vietnamese The four research questions will be answered in turn

4.1 Typical cultural features of English fables about philosophy of life

4.1.1 Features of the settings and objects

Table 1: The TCFs of the settings and objects in English fables about philosophy of life

CA: Fables with characters as animals

CHA: Fables with characters as humans and animals

CH: Fables with characters as humans

S: Settings

O: Objects

R: Rural setting U: Urban setting D: Domestic animals ND: Non domestic animals

The TCFs of the settings and objects in English fables about philosophy of life are shown in Table 1 As can be seen from the table, 11 out of 15 fables have got rural settings (73.3%) The percentages of fables with characters as animals (CA), characters as humans and animals

(CHA), and characters as humans (CH) in rural setting are 26.6 %, 20 % and 26.6 % respectively On the contrary, there are no fables in which urban setting is employed

Table 1 shows that the settings in most of the English fables are rural The rural background

consists of “the field” or “the plowland” where farmers work Particularly, in many fables,

“the field” is considered the setting of the story The reason for this is that long ago, farming

mainly took place on the farm or in the field Another reason that explains why rural setting is dominant is that these fables were mostly written long ago in the ancient time, when farming, including the raising of cattle and the growing of crops is the most popular economic activity Throughout Aesop’s fables, there is a dominance of rural settings, so we can claim that rural

settings are a typical feature of fables in Western cultures In the fable The farmer and the

crane, “the feeding ground”, “plow land newly sown with wheat” are seen as the major setting

Apart from “wheat”, farming production in the West involves many other crops like “vine” in

the fable The farmer and his son In this fable, “farm” and “vineyards” belong to rural setting

They are typical of farming production in the West

With reference to urban settings, Table 1 shows that none of the fables has this kind of setting This is quite understandable because in ancient time most people earned their livings

by growing crops and raising cattle, both of which took place on the farm or in the field At that time there were not many urban areas, so urban life was not typical of the culture of the time As a result, urban settings were not popular in fables

The TCFs are also manifested via the objects of the fables The total number of the fables with domestic objects is 7 fables (46.7%) The cultural features are hidden inside the objects

themselves Some major tools are “spades”, and “mattocks” (Farmer and his sons); “the

wagon” and “the wheel” (Hercules and the wagoner); the “panniers” (The merchant and his donkey) It is commonly known that spades, mattocks, wagons, wheels, and panniers are the

tools used in farming They are very useful in daily life of farmers Apart from the domestic

objects, farming products also bear some typical cultural identities For example, “fleece”,

“wool”, “flesh” (The widow and the sheep) are farming products from the animals They are

typical in the life of the Western people In addition, the tools associated with them are also

taken into account in terms of culture “The shearer”, which farmers use to shear sheep is a

typical tool in the West Besides, there are many non-domestic objects which bear certain

cultural identities The “oak” tree is an example: “… He asked a man felling oaks …” (The

hunter and the woodman) The oak is a typical tree in forests in Western cultures

In short, the settings and objects in Easop’s fables embed European cultural identities not only of the ancient time but at present They help distinguish the European culture with cultures anywhere else These settings and objects are so popular in the West that they have become stereotyped whenever Western rural life is mentioned

4.1.2 Features of the characters

Along with the settings and objects, the characters of English fables reveal a lot about TCFs They are divided into two groups: characters as animals, as humans, and the characters as both humans and animals Animals are divided into two subgroups: domestic and non-domestic (DA and NDA); Characters as humans is on the other hand grouped according to many different norms: family relation (FR), career relation (C), and social relation (SR) The characteristic of humans and animals as the main characters is very common in the world of fable Table 2 presents the TCFs of characters in English fables

CA: Fables with characters as animals

CHA: Fables with characters as humans and animals

CH: Fables with characters as humans

DA: Domestic animals NDA: Non-domestic animals FR: Family-related relation C: Career relation

SR: Social relation