ways of denoting characteristics through domestic animal metaphor in english = cách cách diễn đạt tính cách thông qua ẩn dụ vật nuôi trong tiếng anh

According to cognitive linguistics, a conceptual metaphor is a mapping of the structure of a source domain onto a target domain, in which the target domain is understood in terms of the

1.3.1 Definition of Conceptual Metaphor 7

1.3.6 Some features of Conceptual Metaphor 14 1.4 Animal Metaphor and The Great Chain of Being Metaphor 15

2.3 Analytical Framework 19

Part I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Over the past century, English has emerged as an international language with its influence extending to almost every part of the world and almost fields of life It is an indispensable medium for diplomacy, aviation, transaction of international trade, scientific and technological studies, etc Accordingly, English teaching and learning are becoming increasingly important In Vietnam, there seems to exist a commonly-held assumption among many English learners that in acquiring a foreign language, such linguistic factors as grammatical, lexical, phonological etc rules must be put priority and be the centre of the learning process Such assumption, though considered reasonable to certain extent, has somehow shaped a rigid learning method which heavily focuses on linguistics factors and take other non-linguistic elements for granted However, it has been pointed out that if we learn English without studying, at the same time, the underlying aspects of the language, we are merely using words which might convey improper senses A lot of language phenomena are associated with cultural aspects of the country from which the language stems, and some also reflect the specific way of viewing and experiencing the world of people of that country Metaphor is one such phenomenon

Metaphor is traditionally considered a figure of speech, an ornamental device that is restricted to literature and poetry and ―exclusive with the realm of ordinary everyday language‖ (Lakoff, 1993, p 202) In recent decades, with the increasing interest of cognitive researchers in the subject, metaphor has been re-defined as a cognitive system that structures our thoughts and behavior rather than a language phenomenon, hence the term ―conceptual metaphor‖ According to cognitive linguistics, a conceptual metaphor is a mapping of the structure of a source domain onto a target domain, in which the target domain is understood in terms of the source domain It acts as a powerful thinking mode in which people use their familiar, material and concrete concepts to know, think about and experience immaterial concepts which are difficult to be realize, thus obtain better understanding about themselves and the outside world

Out of the human world, there is a colourful animal world which is closely related with our life The ―neighbour‖ relationship between human and animals makes people very familiar with the habits of animals, and gradually they begin to associate some animals‘ characters with someone‘s characters, hence ―PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS‖ metaphor Metaphorical transfer from animal domain to human domain is considered universal and can be found in many languages, including English and Vietnamese However, although the same animal metaphor may occur in the two languages, it does not mean that the concept represented by that metaphor in English is totally identical to that in Vietnamese and vice versa The difference in the perception of each language community toward an animal metaphor may cause difficulties for English learners in both learning and translating process Therefore, a good understanding of how an animal protypical atrribute is used to talk about a human trait in

a certain language not only helps English learners use it properly but also offers them opportunity to get to the heart of English culture For this reason, the study will attempt to explore how animals related expressions are used to denote human characteristics in English and Vietnamese As it would be an exhausive work if all animal terms are investigated, the study will limit itself to analyze just some domestic animals that are common in both everyday life and language, namely Dog, Cat, Chicken, Pig, and Cow

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at

- Investigating different ways of denoting human character traits through Dog, Cat, Chicken, Pig, and Cow metaphors in English

- Identifying the symbolism of Dog, Cat, Chicken, Pig and Cow in association with human character traits as encoded in English

3 Research question

To realize the above aims, the following research question will be addressed:

How are salient human characteristics denoted through the Dog, Cat, Chicken, Pig and Cow metaphor in English?

4 Scope of the study

The study examines a group of domestic animal metaphors Within the domestic animal source domain, five sub-domains are chosen: dog, cat, chicken, pig and cow When a comparison between humans and animals is made, different features of animals such as physical appearance features, sounds, and prototypical behaviours can be respectively mapped onto human domain In this thesis, the foci will be on those metaphors that describe human characteristics

5 Organization of the study

The study consists of three parts The first part ―Introduction” gives a brief account of

the rationale, scope, aims, research questions and organization of the study The second and

also the main part of the study, ―Development”, consists of two chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background, which provides an overview of conceptual

metaphor such as its definition, levels, types and features as well as other central concepts to understand conceptual metaphor like domain, mapping and image-schema

Chapter 2: The study This chapter restates the research question, briefly describes the

data collection procedure as well as presents the analytical framework The main focus of this chapter is a discussion on the usage of different expressions with Dog, Cat, Chicken, Pig, and Cow to denote human characteristics in English

The last part is “Conclusion”, which summarizes the main findings; draw important

conclusion and offers suggestions for further studies

The study ends with “Reference” and “Appendix”

Part II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 An Overview of Cognitive Linguistics

Cognitive linguistics has emerged in the last twenty-five years as a powerful approach

to the study of language, conceptual systems, human cognition, and general meaning construction It views linguistic knowledge as part of general cognition and thinking; i.e linguistic behaviour is not separated from other general cognitive abilities which allow mental processes of reasoning, memory, attention or learning, but understood as an integral part of it (Johnson, 1987) It addresses within language the structuring of basic conceptual categories such as space and time, scenes and events, entities and processes, motion and location, force and causation It addresses the structuring of ideational and affective categories attributed to cognitive agents, such as attention and perspective, volition and intention. Aspects of language studied in cognitive linguistics include conceptualization, meaning, metaphor, grammar, and many other aspects of the language facility as it relates to thinking As an interdisciplinary enterprise, it incorporates ideas from philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, computer science and develops theoretical insights based on empirical methodologies

The cognitive linguistics movement consists of different theories that share at least two important tenets: first, language is symbolic in nature; and second, everything in language is permeated with meaning

In cognitive view, language is taken to be fundamentally symbolic at all levels of its structure The purpose of linguistic inquiry is to describe its semiotic function; i.e the symbolic association between a meaning and a phonological form The lexicon, morphology, and syntax form a continuum of symbolic structures that cannot easily be separated into discrete compartments Consequently, the grammar of a language can be described as ―a structured inventory of conventional symbolic units‖ (Langacker, 1987, p.73) To put the same thing differently, symbolic units constitute the totality of the grammar of the language, and each symbolic unit is composed of a semantic and a phonological pole

As linguistic expressions are inherently symbolic, the investigation of their meaning represents a major field of studies in cognitive linguistics Meaning is considered to be

equated with conceptualization, or to be more specific, in the human interpretation of the world It is subjective, anthropocentric, and reflects dominant cultural concerns and culture-specific modes of interaction as well as features of the world as such (Lakoff 1987, Langacker

1991, Wierzbicka 1988) In that sense, man's conceptual system is postulated to be grounded

or ―embodied‖ in his physical experience, i.e conceptual categories, and the meanings of words, sentences and other linguistic structures are considered to be motivated and grounded

in one's concrete, direct experience with the surrounding world with which one interacts

1.2 An Overview of Cognitive Semantics

As an indispensable part of cognitive linguistics, cognitive semantics is concerned with investigating the relationship between experience, the conceptual system, and the semantic

structure encoded by language (Evans and Green, 2006) It is concerned most directly with the

form of the internal mental representations that constitute conceptual structure and with the formal relations between this level and other levels of representation In specific terms,

scholars working in cognitive semantics investigate knowledge representation (conceptual structure), and meaning construction (conceptualization) Cognitive semanticists have

employed language as the lens through which these cognitive phenomena can be investigated Consequently, research in cognitive semantics tends to be interested in modelling the human mind as much as it is concerned with investigating linguistic semantics

Cognitive semantics is not a single unified framework Those researchers who identify themselves as cognitive semanticists typically have a diverse set of foci and interests However, there are a number of guiding principles that collectively characterize a cognitive approach to semantics which can be stated as follows: (i) Conceptual structure is embodied; (ii) Semantic structure is conceptual structure; (iii) Meaning representation is encyclopedic; and (ix) Meaning-construction is conceptualization (Evans and Green, 2006)

(i) Conceptual structure is embodied

A fundamental concern for cognitive semanticists is the nature of the relationship between conceptual structure and the external world of sensory experience One idea that has emerged in an attempt to explain the nature of conceptual organization on the basis of interaction with the physical world is the embodied cognition thesis The thesis holds that the

nature of conceptual organization arises from bodily experience so part of what makes conceptual structure meaningful is the bodily experience with which it is associated We can only talk about what we can perceive and conceive, and the things that we can perceive and conceive derive from embodied experience Hence, conceptual structure (the nature of human concepts) is a consequence of the nature of our embodiment and thus is embodied

(ii) Semantic structure is conceptual structure

This principle asserts that language refers to concepts in the mind of the speaker rather than to objects in the external world (Evans and Green, 2006) In other words, semantic structure (the meanings conventionally associated with words and other linguistic unit) can be equated with concepts However, the claim that semantic structure can be equated with conceptual structure does not mean that the two are identical Instead, cognitive semanticists claim that the meanings associated with linguistic units such as words, for example, form only

a subset of possible concepts After all, we have many more thoughts, ideas and feelings than

we can conventionally encode in language

(iii) Meaning representation is encyclopedic

The third central principle of cognitive semantics holds that semantic structure is encyclopedic in nature This means that lexical concepts do not represent neatly packaged bundles of meaning This means that words do not represent neatly packaged bundles of meaning but serve as ―points of access‖ to vast repositories of knowledge relating to a particular concept of conceptual domain (Langacker 1987)

(ix) Meaning-construction is conceptualization

The fourth principle associated with cognitive semantics is that language itself does not encode meaning Instead, as we have seen, words are only ―prompts‖ for the construction of meaning (Evans and Green, 2006) According to this view, meaning is constructed at the conceptual level: meaning construction is equated with conceptualization, a dynamic process whereby linguistics units serve as prompts for an array of conceptual operations and the recruitment of background knowledge It follows from this view that meaning is a process rather than a discrete ―thing‖ that can be ―packaged‖ by language

1.3 Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Since the appearance of Cognitive Linguistics in the mid 1970s, metaphor has received great amount of attention by scholars such as Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987) and

Turner (1987) who have devoted their research to studying this phenomenon In Metaphors

We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson propose Conceptual Metaphor Theory which postulates that

metaphors develop through experiences and become a part of our basic conceptual system Through our bodily experiences we learn to connect one thing to something else and the mapping is stored in our brain Thus, the use of metaphor reflects speakers‘ ideas and the interactions with the world Assuming that the human ordinary conceptual system is metaphorically structured, metaphor in Lakoff and Johnson‘s description is not simply a means of expression, but a means of conceptualization (Deignan, 2005; Kövecses, 2005) It resides in thought, and structures thinking and knowledge; and it is grounded in physical experience (Deignan, 2005, p 13) Hence, metaphor is primarily a matter of conceptual structure, and derivatively a matter of language: ―Metaphor is a tool so ordinary that we use it unconsciously and automatically it is irreplaceable: metaphor allows us to understand our selves and our world in ways that no other modes of thought can.‖ (Lakoff & Turner, 1989, p xi) Therefore, it should not at any time be forgotten is that the Conceptual Metaphor Theory is not merely a linguistic theory of how figurative language works, but a theory of language, cognition and reasoning

In the later part, some of the key concepts in the Conceptual Metaphor Theory such as domain and mappings, image-schema, levels of conceptual metaphor, types of conceptual metaphor as well as some of its basic features are explained in details

1.3.1 Definition of Conceptual Metaphor

Lakoff and Johnson argue that ―the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another‖ (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p 5) Thus, from the cognitive linguistic point of view, metaphor is defined as the cognitive mechanism whereby one conceptual domain (source domain) is partially mapped or projected onto another conceptual domain (target domain), so that the second domain is partially understood in terms

of the first one Metaphor is thus ―a cross domain mapping in the conceptual system‖ (Lakoff

1994, p.203) A convenient short hand way of capturing this view of metaphor is as follows: CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN (A) IS CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN (B)

1.3.2 Domain and Mapping

As stated above, conceptual metaphors are systematic mappings across two conceptual domains: the source domain is mapped onto the target domain A conceptual domain is any coherent organization of experience Of the two domains that participate in conceptual metaphor, the one from which we draw metaphorical expressions to understand another

conceptual domain is called source domain, and the one that is understood this way is the target domain The target domain is that which is described and the source domain or the metaphoric theme provides the terms which the target is described The source domain is typically concrete and the target domain is typically abstract For example, in such conceptual

metaphors as LOVE IS A JOURNEY, AN ARGUMENT IS WAR, or THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS, ideas and knowledge from the source domain of ―journey‖, ―war‖, or

―buildings‖ are mapped onto the target domain of ―love‖, ―argument‖, and ―theories‖ In other words, it is through the source domains of ―journey‖, ―war‖, or ―buildings‖ that we better understand ―love‖, ―argument‖ and ―theories‖

The mapping between two conceptual domains A and B is ―a set of systematic correspondences between the source and the target in the sense that constituent conceptual elements of B correspond to constituent elements of A‖ (Kovecses, 2002, p.6) To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing Taken the LOVE IS A JOURNEY conceptual metaphor as an example, we can lay out

a set of correspondences or mappings between constituent elements of the source and those of the target as follows:

Source: JOURNEY

the travelers

the vehicle

the journey

the distance covered

the obstacles encountered

Target: LOVE

 the lovers

 the love relationship itself

 events in the relationship

 the progress made

 the difficulties experienced

decisions about which way to go

the destination of the journey

 choices about what to do

 the goal(s) of the relationship

In the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY, Lakoff and Johnson use the above mappings as evidence that love is conceptualized as a journey in the English language People

in a long-term love relationship are expected to have both an individual and joint purpose in life Each individual‘s life can be seen as a journey and a couple‘s life together can also be seen as a journey to common goals An individual journey is difficult and the task of choosing and pursuing common goals is even more difficult Thus, LOVE IS A JOURNEY is a complex metaphor that concerns the difficulties faced in setting and pursuing common goals

by people in a long-term love relationship

1.3.3 Image-schema

Another concept central to conceptual metaphor theory is image-schema According to Geeraets (2006, p.12), ―an image-schema is a regular pattern that recurs as a source domain (or a structuring part of a source domain) for different target domains‖ In his book ―The body

in the mind‖ (1987), Mark Johnson proposed that embodied experience gives rise to image schemas within the conceptual system, and image schemas derive from sensory and perceptual experience as we interact with and move about the world For example, in the metaphor LIFE

IS A JOURNEY we find the following metaphorical usages

He's cruising down the highway of success

You'd better slow down and think about what you want to do with your life

She lives her life in the fast lane

All these examples have to do with the image schema of speed Speed in the source

domain of JOURNEY relates to the speed at which the journey (usually in a car) takes place

This image-schema maps onto the speed at which LIFE takes place

Mark Johnson (1987) has identified some of the most basic of the kinesthetic image

schemas, ones arguably most central to human experience These include the container schema (a boundary distinguishing an interior from and exterior), the part-whole schema (the

part-whole structure of bodies and objects), the link schema (which secures the location of one

thing relative to another e.g a rope), the center/periphery schema (center = identity or

importance), and the source-path-goal schema (all actions involve a starting point, a trajectory,

and an endpoint) Other central schemas include the up-down schema, the front-back schema, and the linear order schema, for example, although the full range and centrality of all of these

is under continuous investigation to date

1.3.4 Levels of metaphor

The Conceptual Metaphor Theory discriminates between two levels of metaphor: the

conceptual level and the linguistic level The former is represented by conceptual metaphor,

which has come to mean ―a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system‖ (Lakoff, 1993,

p.203) The linguistic level of metaphor is represented by metaphorical expression which

refers to ―a linguistic expression (a word, a phrase, or a sentence) that is the surface realization

of such a cross-domain mapping‖ (Lakoff, 1993, p.203) Metaphorical expressions are systematically tied to a conceptual metaphor, with each of the former as a particular linguistic instantiation or manifestation of the latter In other words, it is the metaphorical expression that make explicit of and reveal the existence of conceptual metaphor For example, the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY can be manifested through numerous metaphorical expressions as follows:

LOVE IS A JOURNEY

Look how far we‟ve come

We‘re at a crossroads

We‘ll just have to go our separate ways

We can‘t turn back now

I don‘t think this relationship is going anywhere

Where are we?

We are stuck

It‘s been a long, bumpy road

This relationship is a dead-end street

We‘re just spinning our wheels

Our marriage is on the rocks

We‘ve gotten off the track

This relationship is foundering

1.3.5 Types of conceptual metaphors

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) distinguish three fundamental types of conceptual metaphor,

namely structural, ontological, and orientational

1.3.5.1 Structural metaphors

Structural metaphors make up the largest portion in conceptual metaphors According to Lakoff & Johnson (1980, p.197), structural metaphors ―involve the structuring of one kind of experience or activity in terms of another kind of experience or activity.‖ To put the same thing differently, in structural metaphor, one concept is understood and expressed in terms of another structured, sharply defined concept The cognitive function of such a metaphor is to enable speakers to understand target A by means of the structure of source B

For instance, war is a concept that is frequently mapped onto target domain such as argument We know that war is a concrete concept referring to a very complex process that involves plan, attack, defense, counterattack, fight, win, lose, truce etc Argument is an abstract concept that shares a lot of similarities with the war concept Many aspects of an argument are partially structured by the concept of war We can actually win or lose arguments We plan and use strategies We defend our own positions and attack others‘ and the person we are arguing can be seen as an opponent As a result, there can be a lot of metaphorical expressions motivated by the structural metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR:

Your claims are indefensible

He attacked every weak point in my argument

His criticisms were right on target

I demolished his argument

I‘ve never won an argument with him

You disagree? Okay, shoot!

If you use that strategy, he‘ll wipe you out

He shot down all of my arguments

(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p 4)

This is an example of what it means for a metaphorical concept, namely, ARGUMENT

IS WAR, to structure what we do and how we understand what we are doing when we argue

It is not that arguments are a subspecies of war Arguments and wars are different kinds of things - one is verbal discourse and the other armed conflict - and the actions performed are different kinds of actions But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR

1.3.5.2 Ontological metaphors

Ontological metaphors ―involve the projection of entity or substance status on something that does not have that status inherently‖ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p 196) In this group of metaphors, we conceive intangible concepts, such as feelings, activities, and ideas as objects and substances, and set up artificial boundaries for them As a result, we can "refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them - and, by this means, reason about them" (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.25)

The most typical and representative example of ontological metaphor is container metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) We are physical beings, bounded and separated 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 un-out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces Thus we also view them as containers with an inside and an outside Rooms and houses are obvious containers Moving from room to room is moving from one container to another; that is, moving out of one room and into another We project this conception on to our natural environment, or even to those abstract, unbounded events, actions and activities Thus we have the following expressions For example, THE MIND IS A CONTAINER metaphor:

I can‘t get the tune out of my mind

He‘s empty-headed

His brain is packed with interesting ideas

Do I have to pound these statistics into your head?

I need to clear my head

Ontological metaphors like these are so natural and so pervasive in our thought that they are usually taken as self-evident, direct descriptions of mental phenomena The fact that they are metaphorical never occurs to most of us

1.3.5.3 Orientational metaphors

Orientational metaphors ―structure concepts linearly, orienting them with respect to non-metaphorical linear orientations.‖ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.196) In other words, orientational metaphor organizes concept by giving them a spatial orientation, such as up-down, front-back, center-periphery, etc These spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they function as they do in our physical environment (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p.462) The cognitive function of orientational metaphors is to allow for coherency among the target concepts in the conceptual system Two typical examples of orientational metaphors are GOOD IS UP and BAD IS DOWN Some metaphorical expressions motivated by these orientational metaphors are as follows:

Things are looking up

It‘s polite to yield up your seat on the bus to an old lady

Bernard has fallen on evil days since he lost his job and his wife left him

He lives down and out

These examples illustrate that an upward orientation usually goes together with a positive evaluation, and conversely, a downward orientation usually indicates a negative evaluation This can be explained taking account into the human posture We all know that human beings walk erect, which means that they have the ability to overcome the gravitational force As a result of this, the erect body tend to have a positive connotation and prostrate posture has a negative one However, these orientational metaphors are culture-specific, that is, not all cultures give priority to the up-down orientation In some cultures more emphasis may, for example, be put on an active-passive orientation or in-out orientation

There are overlaps between these three categories of conceptual metaphors Structural metaphors and orientational metaphors may have ontological functions too, while ontologicale metaphors depend on having structured source domain

1.3.5 Some features of conceptual metaphors

1.3.5.1.Uni-directionality principle

Lakoff and Turner (1989) categorically state that metaphorical mapping goes in one direction Conceptual metaphors typically employ a more abstract concept as target and a more concrete or physical concept as their source In such conceptual metaphors as

―ARGUMENT IS WAR‖, ―LOVE IS A JOURNEY‖, ―IDEAS ARE FOODS‖, ―IDEAS ARE PLANTS‖, argument, love, idea are all more abstract concepts than war, journey, food and plant This is because our experiences with the physical world serve as the foundation for our understanding of more abstract domains Therefore, in most cases of conceptual metaphors, the source and target domains are not reversible: the metaphorical process typically goes from the more concrete to the more abstract and not the other way around

to target domain interiors; exteriors correspond to exteriors, and so on One cannot find cases where a source domain interior is mapped onto a target domain exterior, or where a source domain exterior is mapped onto a target domain path

1.3.5.3 Systematicity

The idea that metaphors are systematic is fundamental to conceptual metaphor theory Metaphorical systematicity allows highlighting and focusing on certain aspects of the target domain Conceptual metaphor theory uses the term ―highlighting‖ to refer to the selective mapping of source domain features onto target domains, and the suppression of other features

is termed ―hiding‖ The concept areas of source and target domains are complex, and different aspects are highlighted in different metaphors, thus when a source or target domain has multiple mappings, the individual mappings represent different sets of highlighted features For example, the metaphor ―ARGUMENT IS WAR‖ highlights the adversarial nature of arguments but hides the fact that argument often involves an organized development of a particular topic In contrast, the metaphor ―AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY‖ highlights the progressive aspects of arguments while hiding the confrontational aspects

1.3.5.4 Explanatory function and creativity

Certain issues such as abstract conceptual domains, theoretical constructs, and metaphysical ideas could hardly be understood or conceptualized at all without recourse to conceptual metaphor In order to grasp thorough understanding of such concepts, the common way is to comprehend these abstract concepts in terms of other concepts which are more concrete ones Conceptual metaphors enable us to quantify, visualize, and generalize about abstract concepts because they make use of relationships within source domains that we know well from our concrete experience Thus, when we take information from one domain and project it to a second domain, the latter receives in this way the structure from the former This allows us to understand the second domain, the target, in a way that we otherwise could not This is the explanatory aspect of conceptual metaphor In this way, conceptual metaphors exist

to enhance or facilitate the understanding of certain concepts

Moreover, metaphor displays creativity both in ordinary and poetic discourse As language is changing continually, new conceptual metaphors are generalized and accordingly, new metaphorical expressions are created ―In ordinary everyday life it can restructure ingrained patterns of thinking And in scientific contexts it can have a heuristic function.‖ (Jākel, 2002, p 22), that is way metaphor display its creativity power in both language and cognition

1.4 The Great Chain of Being and Animal Metaphor

In many languages, animal names are engaged in metaphorical process Animal metaphors refer to the metaphors with animals as source domains in the mappings The comprehension of human attributes and behaviours through animal attributes and behaviours

results from the application of the highly general conceptual metaphor, i.e HUMANS ARE ANIMALS To comprehend the mappings of animal metaphors, Lakoff and Turner (1989) declared the Great Chain of Being metaphor so we may understand the process of animal metaphors through it

The Great Chain of Being ―goes back to the Bible‖ as Kovecses (2002, p 126) mentions

It was a folk theory originally used to explain the relationship between different levels of things in a hierarchy The main purpose of ―Great Chain of Being‖ metaphor is to assign a place for everything in a well-defined hierarchical system from the lowest to the highest, which is pictured as a chain vertically extended:

At the bottom of the ―chain‖ stand various types of inanimate objects such as metals, stones and the four elements Higher up are various members of the vegetative class, like flowers and plants Then come animals; then, human beings and finally at the very top is God Within each level there are sub-levels defined by different degrees of complexity and power in relation to each other The ―Great Chain of Being‖ metaphor, thus, presupposes that the natural order of the cosmos is that higher forms of existence dominate lower forms of existence

Furthermore, in terms of attribute of each level, the upper level contains attributes of the levels below it, but it consists of some attributes the lower doesn‘t have For example, animal instincts are properties of animals and the upper beings humans, but humans think and have rationalities which animals do not Moreover, the attributes of the upper beings are more specific and distinct since they do not appear in the lower ones In this sense, when we apply

the Great Chain of Being to animal metaphors, we may find that human beings at the higher level in the hierarchy contain the attributes that animals such as pig and tigers have For instance, pigs have its own instincts like gluttonous, while tigers are wild and fierce in nature All the attributes like gluttonous and fierce can be found among human beings as well so that there are some associations between them

As can be inferred from the Great Chain of Being, people are at the higher level, which indicates it is more difficult to define their attributes As a result, animals may be assisted to explain these more abstract attributes By comparing animals to humans, the more abstract attributes of humans may be understood more easily Lakoff and Turner (1989, p 172) point out that the Great Chain of Being Metaphor is ―a tool of great power and scope because it allows us to comprehend general human character traits in terms of well-understood nonhuman attributes; and, conversely, it allows us to comprehend less well- understood aspects of the nature of animals and objects in terms of better-understood human characteristics.‖

Chapter 2: THE STUDY

In this chapter, the research questions will be restated in 2.1, the methods of the study will be highlighted in 2.2, the data will be described in 2.3, the analytical framework of the study will be introduced in 2.4, and data analysis and discussion will be presented in 2.5 Particularly, in section 2.5, which constitutes the central focus of the current study, a thorough account of different ways of denoting human characteristics in English will be provided

2.1 Research Question

The research question that serves as the guideline for the study are restated as follows:

How are salient human characteristics denoted through the Dog, Cat, Chicken, Pig and Cow metaphor in English?

2.2 Data collection

The English linguistic data have been gathered from Oxford English Dictionary, Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, Collins Cobuild English Guides (7) – Metaphor, and British National Corpus As stated in the scope of the study, only lexemes relating to five domestic animal categories (dog, cat, chicken, pig, and cow) are searched for Within each of these animal categories, different lexical items referring to male, female, and young animals are included in the search as well since many of them carry metaphorical meaning when applied

to human The thesis will also include some instances taken from Vietnamese sources to illustrate the conceptualization of domestic animal names between the two languages These Vietnamese expressions have been obtained from short stories and online newspapers such as Vnexpress.net, Tienphongonline.com.vn, Vietnamnet.vn, Giadinh.net However, they are merely used for reference, and a detailed description of how domestic animals represent human characteristics in Vietnamese and a contrastive analysis between the two languages are beyond the scope of the study

All in all, an inventory of 80 English metaphorical expressions were collected for our analysis The metaphorical expressions can take the form of a single lexical item (a noun, verb,

or adjective) or be combined with other lexical items in a phrase or an idiom to denote a human character trait Most of the instances are used colloquially or as slang or addressing

terms, some can be of old usage Once they were collected, they were grouped and analyzed according to the analytical framework provided below

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) use the TARGET DOMAIN IS SOURCE DOMAIN formula to describe the metaphorical connection between the two domains in a conceptual metaphor More precisely, the conceptual metaphor consists of a structural mapping between

the target domain and source domain, in which the target domain is then understood in terms

of the source domain Therefore, in the general HUMANS ARE DOMESTIC ANIMALS metaphor, HUMANS is target domain and DOMESTIC ANIMALS are the source domain However, when comparisons between people and domestic animals are established, not all features present in the source domain will be transferred to the target domain Rather, we

―map certain aspects of the source domain onto the target domain‖ (Lakoff & Turner, 1989,

p.38-39) For instance, in the sentence ―She knew Mandy wasn't normally catty”, there is a

mapping of the character trait of maliciousness from source domain of cats to the target domain of women In this case, only the attribute of maliciousness is highlighted while other ascribed attributes of cats such as loose moral or cowardice are not mentioned

Following the theory of structural metaphor and source-target domain, we group and analyze the collected data according to the character traits that they represent in language Then, within each group of character trait, we identify the source domain or the name of the animal that is commonly associated with that character trait

2.4 Analysis

In this part, some of the main human characteristics that are often associated with dog, cat, chicken, pig and cow will be discussed with illustrated examples For better recognition of metaphor and metaphorical expressions, the conceptual metaphors are printed capital, the instances are in italic with the metaphorical expressions highlighted in bold font

2.4.1 Arrogance

In English, the quality of being arrogant is usually perceived to be present in behaviours

of two domestic animals: cock from chicken category, puppy from dog category Hence, in

English there exist two metaphors which denotes human arrogance using domestic animal names: ARROGANT MEN ARE COCKS and ARROGANT YOUNG MEN ARE PUPPIES, The latter part will provide a closer look at these metaphors

(i) ARROGANT MEN ARE COCKS

(1) He may be cock of the walk just now, but there‟s an election next year and I‟m sure he‟ll

lose his seat in Parliament

(2) They appeared cocky even before they went one goal up

The lexical item ―cock‖ literally designates the adult male of the domestic chicken When applying to humans, it refers to an adult man and is generally associated with the idea of leadership Accordingly, the expression ―cock of the walk‖ in example (1) is used to describe

an over-confident man who tends to show his ruling role and be conceited about his position This is owing to the fact that on the farm, cocks usually fight for supremacy until one remained – the supreme leader, or cock of the walk The winner would then not only rule the chicken coop but also dominate ―the walk‖ or the chicken yard, and no other cock is allowed

to enter the territory under the rule of the winning cock Likewise, the lexeme ―cocky‖ in example (2) denotes an unpleasantly and rudely confident man The usage of this word may originate from the brash self-confidence that is associated with the cock when ruling the roost – to announce the break of the day, to have the run of the females, to chase the other males and

to eat whatever and whenever he wants

(ii) ARROGANT YOUNG MEN ARE PUPPIES/ PUPS

(3) You ungrateful puppy!

(4) You saucy young pup!