the linguistic devices making wittiness in english and vietnamese humourous stories a study of contrastive discourse analysis = các phương tiện ngôn ngữ tạo nên sự dí dỏm trong truyện hài anh-việt

1 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN QUÝ THE LINGUISTIC DEVICES MAKING WITTINESS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE HUMOUROUS ST

1

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN QUÝ

THE LINGUISTIC DEVICES MAKING

WITTINESS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE HUMOUROUS STORIES: A STUDY OF CONTRASTIVE DISCOURSE

HÀ NỘI-2012

2

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN QUÝ

THE LINGUISTIC DEVICES MAKING

WITTINESS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE HUMOUROUS STORIES: A

STUDY OF CONTRASTIVE DISCOURSE

ANALYSIS

( Các phương tiện ngôn ngữ tạo nên sự dí dỏm trong truyện hài

Anh-Việt: Nghiên cứu đối chiếu phân tích diễn ngôn)

-*** -

M.A Thesis – Program 1 Field:Linguistics Code: 602215

SUPERVISOR: NGÔ HỮU HOÀNG, Ph.D

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV ABSTRACT VI

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2.Aims of the study 5

3.Scope of the study 5

4.Method of the study 6

5.Organization of the study 6

DEVELOPMENT 7

CHAPTER 1: THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 7

1.1 Discourse 7

1.1.1 Definition of Discourse 7

1.1.2 Types of Discourse 8

1.2 Context 9

1.3 Humour and Its Categories 10

1.4 Overview of Humourous Stories 12

1.5 The Incongruity Theory in Humour 14

1.6 Figure of Speech as Linguistic Devices in Humourous Stories 16

1.6.1 Metaphor 16

1.6.2 Metonymy 18

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 20

2.1 Methodology 20

2.1.1 Data Collection 20

2.1.2 Procedure 20

2.2 Data Analysis 21

2.2.1 Metaphor 21

2.2.2 Metonymy 29

2.3 Discussion and Contrastive Findings 33

2.3.1 Discussion 33

2.3.1.1 Metaphor 33

2.3.1.2 Metonymy 34

2.3.1.3 Context in the Interpretation of Jokes in the Humourous Stories 34

2.3.2 Contrastive Findings 37

2.3.2.1 Similarities 37

2.3.2.2 Differences 37

CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATIONS OF TRANLATION AND TEACHING 39

3.1 Implications of Translation 39

3.2 Implications of Teaching 43

CONCLUSION 45

1.Major Findings 45

2.Suggestions for the Translators, Teachers and a Further Study 46

2.1 Suggestions for the Translator and Teachers 46

2.2 Suggestions for a Further Study 47

ABSTRACT

Reading humourous stories is the good means of entertainment because it can help the readers to release the stress and reduce the tension Beside the function of entertainment, humour is the special means of reaching the better things which satisfy the progressive thoughts and the lower-class‟s dream of equality This study is aimed at investigating the figure of speech as linguistic devices in the English humourous stories and Vietnamese humourous stories The analysis is carried out on 50 samples collected from the different books of English and Vietnamese humourous stories The results show that there is the similarity in the using of metaphor between these two languages Besides, Vietnamese humorous stories have the higher percentage of metonymy, comparing to English humourous stories Context

is the important element that helps the reader to understand and interpret the figure of speech in the humourous stories Furthermore, the study offered the implications of translating and teaching so that the translator and teachers can use in their jobs

It is said that Aristot is one of the first author that investigated the nature of humour when he stated that the humour is aesthetic However, it is necessary to note that the humour is aesthetic only when it is aimed at the specific object with the deeply social meanings The humour was born out of hostility If there had been no hostility in man, there had been no laughter (and, incidentally, no need for laughter) All the current humour and wittiness retain evidence of this hostile origin types Furthermore, humour is the product of the society when people, by different means, make the laughter in the spiritual works like the HS, the play, the cartoons, the funny pictures and movies, etc Among those types of literature, the short humourous stories (hereafter called HS) are really important in amusement by just some short sentences, and it is easy for the readers to provoke the laughter at ease to entertain or satire the negative sides of human beings or the whole society Being different from the other types of art like cartoon, funny pictures and play; the humorous stories use the only means of language to express the laughter like the following story:

Phát triển không đồng đều Buổi tối, anh thợ làm bánh mì thường dẫn người yêu ra ghế đá công viên Có lần anh hỏi:

- Em yêu, tại sao cứ nửa buổi hẹn hò là em đổi chỗ bên này qua bên kia vậy?

In the evening the baker often takes his girl friend to the park bench

Once he asked her:

- My dear, why do you change your side after the half-date?

She answered softly:

- Because if I remain one side, my body would develop unequally

In the past, there were a lot of studies about the humour of scholars, humorists, philosophers and psychologists, dating back as far as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle,

to Darwin and Freud, Eastman and Pittington, through to Koestler and Midess; plus more than 100 theories of humour and laughter, some of them brilliant investigations into the social and behavioral nature of humour and laughter

According to the standard analysis of Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (internet 23), humor theories can be classified into three neatly identifiable groups: the incongruity, superiority, and relief theories Incongruity theory is the leading

approach and includes historical figures such as Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and perhaps has its origins in comments made by Aristotle in the

Rhetoric The paradigmatic superiority theorist is Thomas Hobbes (1958: c.8,

internet 5), who said that humor arises from a “sudden glory” felt when we recognize our supremacy over others Plato and Aristotle are generally considered superiority theorists, who emphasized the aggressive feelings that fuel humor The third group, relief theory, is typically associated with Sigmund Freud and Herbert Spencer, who saw humor as fundamentally a way to release or save energy generated by repression Today, there are two well-known linguistics as Salvatore

Attardo and Victor Raskin with Script-Based Semantic Theory Of Humour (SSTH) and The General Theory Of Verbal Humour (GTVH) respectively The main hypothesis is quoted by Avro Krikman (2006:31, internet 7) as follows:

SSTH is the theory refers to a text which can be characterized as a carrying text if both of the conditions are satisfied The text is compatible, fully or

single-joke-in part, with two different scripts The two scripts with the text is compatible are opposite in a special sense defined in section 4 The two scripts with which the text

is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text

GTVH is presented as a theory that allows us to relate perceived differences between jokes to six hierarchically ordered Knowledge Resources (parameters), namely knowledge concerning Language; Narrative Strategies; Target(s); Situation; Logical Mechanism(s); Script Opposition(s)

The investigation of the linguistic devices making the wittiness by discourse analysis is a large field that was implemented by the linguistics in the world Generally, this matter is investigated and explored long before by many people in the field of language However, everything seems to be different in Vietnam because the study of humour is less and the study by discourse analysis, especially the professional and contrastive one of English humourous stories and Vietnamese humourous stories (hereafter called EHS and VHS respectively) Let‟s begin with

Vũ Ngọc Khánh who presented us the book named Hành Trình Vào Xứ Sở Cười (translation: The Journey to the Land of Laughter) in 1996 He gave us the overview

of VHS, including the folklores and the scholar-styled literatures on the aspects of time and space During the history, Vũ Ngọc Khánh (1996:7) claimed that from the

17th century, VHS has developed with the appearance of Trạng Quỳnh collection whose the objects to be laughed at were the king, officials, Gods and Budda, monks, traders, etc Also from this century, we have had other scholar-styled authors like Nguyễn Bá Lân or Nguyễn Cư Trinh, and in the modern time there are Tú Mỡ, Tú Xương, Vũ Trọng Phụng, Nguyễn Công Hoan, Bút Tre, etc About the aspect of space, he stated that the humour is created by people in the specific lands like Vĩnh Hoàng village, Đông Anh villages, Hòa Làng villages (Vũ Ngọc Khánh, 1996, p.54) One more point in his book is that he introduced us the linguistic uses for making laughter, including puns, slang and bad language We can find the words

having the co-equal meanings as follows: ‘Lên phố Mía gặp cô hàng mật, cầm tay

kéo lại, hỏi thăm đường’ (Translated version: Downtown to Sugarcane street, see

Miss Treacle, ask her the direction) Another author should be mentioned is Nguyễn Hoàng Yến when he discovered the pragmatic mechanism through the

disseration: „ Truyện Cười Dân Gian Việt Nam Dưới Góc Độ Dụng Học‟ (The

Vietnamese Folklores: A Study of Pragmatics) Based on the cooperation principles

of Grice Maxim, politeness principles, reference and implicature, Nguyễn Hoàng Yến (2011: 110) found out that implicatures in conversation appeared at the closings of the stories and played the substantial role in making laughter The implicatures of the opening and the body is the only cause and condition for the closings and the lessons of morality would be from such implicatures Nguyễn Thị

Hồng Nhung is the author of the master thesis: ‘Implicature in English and

Vietnamese funny stories’ In this study, she discovered both languages have the

same implicature mechanism based on flouting or violating the maxims that are important for the writers in order to evoke feelings and reactions in their readers (Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung, 2010, p.37)

It can be seen that there have not been any study of HS under discourse analysis and contrastive between English and Vietnamese implemented before by any researchers in Vietnam, so the author of this study believes that this would be the first time this subject is carried out and hopes that it would be new approach to the humour under discourse analysis in Vietnam as well as to the literature of which HS are the object of the study In addition, the study would be helpful for the translators

to be good at their translation from English and Vietnamese and vice verse because when reading the literature works, in terms of the discourse analysis views, the readers not only understand the humour mechanism, the linguistic devices, the nature of humour, etc but also are supplied with the knowledge of language, people characteristics, attitudes and thoughts of the culture the stories belong to Besides, the study also is necessary for the teachers in their jobs because it is said that the successful teacher need to have good sense of humour Through the study, the knowledge would be helpful for them to tell the jokes in the appropriate time to be the warm-up activities

2 Aims of the study

- In the study, the researcher investigates the figure of speech as linguistic devices making the wittiness and then help us to understand/explain why people laugh when reading EHS and VHS

- The role of context in the HS, then readers can understand the jokes by the context when reading them

- To provide implications for the translators to understand the jokes in the stories and have good interpretation with the right transfer Besides, it is necessary to tell HS in language teaching, then the students can be supplied with language knowledge, cultures and motivated in learning, warm-up activities and release their study tension

3 Scope of the study

The types of humour can be cartoons, funny pictures, plays, etc However, this study is limited to the verbal humour The object of research is the EHS and VHS This research is limited to investigate the figure of speech as the linguistic devices like metaphor, metonymy and others which make the wittiness in the selected EHS and VHS

4 Method of the study

By means of quantitative method, the investigation is carried out through text analysis, previous researches, individual analysis and observations

Data are gathered in the books collection of EHS and VHS

Based on the collected books, the samples shall be sorted out in terms of the figure

of speech as linguistics devices and types of the theory of humour

5 Organization of the study

There are three main parts in the study as follows:

The researcher represents the ideas of other linguistics and researchers about their previous studies and books to build up the theory as the background for this study to

be based on and develop

Chapter 2: The Study

This part gives the detailed description of the study, which includes data collection,

data analysis and the results and discussion

Chapter 3: Implication of Translation and Teaching

In this part, the researcher offers the implications for the translator and teacher how

to apply the humour in their jobs

Conclusion

This is the last part of the thesis which summaries the findings and makes suggestions for the translators and teacher; and a further study

DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definition of discourse

The term „discourse‟ is defined differently by the linguistics One of the definitions

is that discourse is a set of meanings in which a group of people communicate about

a particular topic Discourse can be defined in a narrow or a broad sense and a narrow definition of discourse might refer only to spoken or written language The term of discourse refers to the conventions underlying the use of language in extended stretched of written and spoken text (Alison Ross, 1998, p.41) Here is Crystal‟s statement as quoted by David Nunan (1993:5): „A continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative‟ However, Cook (1989:156) as quoted by David Nunan (1993:6) defined discourse as stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive

From the above extracts, it can be seen that the definitions of discourse are different and still argumentative For some authors, the term of discourse can be the text and used in the interchangeable way For others; however, discourse seems to be the language used in the context David Nunan (1993: 5) agreed with the idea that discourse need to be defined in terms of meaning, and the coherent texts/pieces of discourse are those form of meaningful whole

Although discourse analysis is the new branch of the linguistics, it has developed for the recent years and received the great concern of the linguistics in the world According to Nguyễn Hòa (2008:13), discourse analysis was named officially by the linguistics caring the coherence and the structure of text, especially in the time

of „post-functional grammar‟ About the name, Nguyễn Hòa also added that Harris (1952) was the first to use the term of discourse analysis and this has been called

until now (2008, p.13)

Discourse analysis involved in the language use and has been received the great concern in the second half of this century Discourse analysis is related to

conversation analysis, pragmatics, some sort of text grammar, text linguistics in which cohesion and coherence are mentioned essentially in text

1.1.2 Types of discourse

Nguyễn Hòa (2008: 66) admitted that it is not always easy to classify the types of discourse because language occurs in a numerous situations of communication Thus, there a variety of discourse types, depending on the situations they are in In other words, different types of communications events result in different types of discourse, and each of these will have its distinctive characteristics (David Nunan, 1993,p.7) However, Nguyễn Hòa (2008: 66) added that Halliday is the first to

improve the term register which is used to refer to the types of discourse Thus,

register can be literature, science, press, daily communication and other

subregisters The term register include subregister, for example the news, reports

and advertising belong to the press, short stories, poetry, play included in literature (Nguyễn Hòa, 2008, p.78)

It is a shortcoming not to mention the term genre when we investigate discourse analysis According to Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics, the term genre is a particular class of speech event which are considered by the speech

community as being of the same type (Jack C Richards, John Platt & Heidi Platt,

2000, p.156) It highlights the fact that different types of discourse can be identified

by their overall shape or generic structure; actually it refers to the types of communicative events (David Nunan, 1993, p.48) There are different types of genres like non-literature, literature, everyday/social discourse, general genre, etc The humourous discourse is so special that in this research the humorous discourse may belong to the general discourse with the hidden meanings

The genre and registers may be related because different types of communicative

events result in different types of discourse, and each of these will have its own distinctive characteristics Each of texts is very different in terms of its structure, grammar and physical appearance (David Nunan, 1993, p.51)

1.2 Context

There is no doubt that context plays the central role in discourse analysis because communication cannot happened in the vacuum (Nguyễn Hòa, 2008, p.281)

Specifically, context is related to the language in the triangle: language – communication – context David Nunan (1993:8) stated that there are two types of context: (1) linguistic context - the language that surrounds and accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis (2) non-linguistic context/experiential context – communicative event (for example: joke, story, lecture, greeting and conversation), the topic, the purpose of the event, the setting; the participants and the relationships between them; and the background knowledge Based on the David Nunan‟s ideas, context is the situation that helps to rise to the discourse and within which the discourse embedded Nguyễn Hòa (2000: 47) argued that context refers to those that are outside language and features of context include: the addressor/addressee, audience, topic, setting, channel, code, message form, event, key, and the purpose

In some cases, however, context is not enough for the interpretation, so it is necessary to mention the co-text which is restricted to the linguistic factors According to Hallliday quoted by Nguyễn Hòa (2000:43), co-text is known as „the stretch of language that occurs before or after the utterance which need to be interpreted‟ with the example:

The same evening I went ashore The first landing in any new country is very interesting (Brown & Yule, 1983: 47)

Based on landing in the previous discourse, it is easy to interpret the utterance: The

person came ashore or travelled by ship, and did not arrive by plane

1.3 Humour and its categories

In this section, the researcher presents the definition of what counts as „humour‟ and considers the other factors which make wittiness Humour is a term used in both wide and narrow sense In the wide sense, it is applied to all literatures and informal speech or writing with the purpose of amusement In its narrow sense, humour is distinguished from wit, satire and laughter For some HS, people release their energy by making laughter; this phenomenon is called laughter by the incongruity mechanism However, for some other HS, it is necessary for the reader to laugh, but they still feel the wittiness deep inside the content of the stories because „often humor will produce laughter, but sometimes it results in only wittiness‟ (John Lippit, 1995, p.11, internet 19) Wei Liu (2010:1) defined humour as

communication (written or verbal), including the teasing, joke, wittiness, satire, cartoon, puns, which induces (or is intended to induce the amusement, with or without laughing and smiling

For some ideas like those of John Dewey quoted by Jonh Lippit (1995:11), the laughter is just the standpoint of humour However, other thinker make a distinction: laughter results from a pleasant psychological shift, whereas, humour arise from pleasant cognitive shift

Actually, the terms such as humour, irony, sarcasm, funny, laughter, etc are the barely distinguished ones because lexicographic studies have shown that the semantic field of what has been broadly defined as „humour‟ is very rich Salvatore Attardo & Victor Raskin (1994: 17, internet 1) introduced the humour as main category and others like irony, sacram, wittiness, funny, etc as subcategory due to the methodology of semantic field in the following figure:

Figure 1: The semantic field of humour

WIT

mot Satire

Practical Joke

In general, it is not easy to define humour and its categories because humour and others involved in „mental phenomenon (humor) with a complex neuro-physiological manifestation (laughter)‟ (Salvator Attardo & Victor Raskin, 1994,

p.17, internet 1) Almost every major figure in the history of philosophy has proposed a theory, but after 2500 years of discussion there has been little consensus about what constitutes humor Despite the number of authors who have participated

in the debate, the topic of humor is currently understudied in the discipline of

philosophy In this research, the researcher agrees with the ideas in Humour in

Woody Allen (2008:18, internet 22) that people adopt the word „humour‟ as an

umbrella term encompassing all the above terms, and the linguistics, psychologists

and anthropologists have taken humour to be an all-encompassing categories because it can cover any event or object that make laughter, amuses or is felt to be funny Salvator Attardo & Victor Raskin (1994:8, internet 1) considered humour to

be „the least restricted sense‟, so humour and wittiness are the two terms refers to the amusement which is funny; and they can go with or without laughter interchangeably with „the funny‟

The language is chosen closely, compressed and coherent to show the purposes and implicatures of the speakers All the elements of the stories like the structure, the contents, the characters and the language serve the only purpose of humour: making laughter The surprising is the common feature; i.e the last sentence would make the laughter for the readers Nguyễn Hoàng Yến (2011: 110) concluded that the implicature interpreted from the last sentence is the decisive factor to make the laughter through the story

People can laugh at the blind, the stingy, the high class; the low-educated persons and the out-date thought The below HS is the type of satire:

Ai nuôi tôi?

Một ông bố 50 tuổi có cậu con đã 30 tuổi nhưng lười, không biết nghe gì làm ăn, chỉ nhờ vào bố Một hôm, ông thầy tướng coi tướng cho cậu ta bảo:

- Bố anh sống 80 tuổi, còn anh sống tới 62 tuổi

Cậu ta thấy thế liền òa lên khóc Thầy tướng lấy làm lạ hỏi:

- Tôi bảo bố con anh đều thọ cả, cớ sao lại khóc?

- Your father will live 80 years, and you will live 62 years

He burst into cry The fortune teller felt strange and then asked him:

- I told you that both of you live long, so why do you cry?

The son answered:

- My father will die before I will two years So, within such the duration, who

will nurse me?

Besides, the HS has a variety of topics like teacher-student jokes, the politicians, the priest, the doctor-patient, the lawyer, etc Through such topics, the readers understand the relations among the character and the feeling, the attitudes towards such people in the society Let‟s see one joke about the teacher:

A new teacher, trying to make use of her psychology courses, started her class by saying, ‘ Everyone who thinks you’re stupid, stand up.’

After a few seconds, little Johnny stood up The teacher said, ‘ Do you think you’re stupid, Johnny?’

‘ No Ma’am,’ he said, ‘But I hate to see you standing up there all by yourself.’

The shape of the HS is so special that it has the turn-taking in the conversation of the character or just one sentence as follows:

Trên bức tường của một trường học, người ta nghi: ‘Cấm không được chửi bậy’

Translated version:

On a wall of the school, it is noted that: ‘Forbid not to swear’

It is funny that the negative forms are used double in the notice, i.e the school allows their students to swear By using one sentence, the shape of joke is stimulated and created the laughter to the reader

The conversation in the HS can be long or short, in some cases there is a mini-talk like the following jokes:

Mother: ‘What did you learn in the school today, Clarence?’

Clarence: ‘How to whisper without moving my lips.’

As known before, the HS is short; therefore, its structure is established in the neatly and short way, the total number of sentences is just one sentence in some cases, and the average number is about 10 sentences (Nguyễn Thiện Khanh, 2012, internet 11) Although they are short, they are the completed stories with the opening, the development and the closing Generally, the opening and closings are essentials to the subject of the story, in which the closings with the last sentence provoke laughter for the readers

1.5 The Incongruity Theory in Humour

There were a lot of studies about the humour of scholars, humorists, philosophers and psychologists, dating back as far as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, to Darwin and Freud, Eastman and Pittington, through to Koestler and Midess; plus more than 100 theories of humour and laughter, some of them brilliant investigations into the social and behavioral nature of humour and laughter, and now we have Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin As being mentioned, humour is a large and complex field because it is involved in the psychology, physiology, the conscious and unconscious, the cognition, the culture, the language, etc Therefore, the researcher just focused on the linguistic theory of verbal humour, in which the incongruity is more cared because it is actual verbal and include the linguistic devices as metaphor, metonymy and others

According to Avro Krikmann (2006:1, internet 7), he called theory of incongruity the inconsistency or contradiction or bisociation He explained that this involves in being cognitive, i.e the theory is based on some objective characteristics of humourous text or other act like situation, event, picture, etc For this idea, Schopenhauer & Kant (1970: 7, internet 14) stated that a humourous situation would arises when two or more real objects are thought through one concept, and the identity of the concept is transferred to the objects: it then becomes striking apparent from the entire difference of the objects in other respects, that the concept was only applicable to them from a one-sided point of view It is more explained that the incongruity caused by the single real object and the concept subsumed and then suddenly felt So, different objects are understood in just one interpretation under one concept

It is said that incongruity is known as something inconsistent, not fitting well

together, disappointed and unsuitable For the structure of the story, Nguyễn Đức Dân (1977:1, internet 10) claimed that laughter is made at the end of the story Incongruity involves in the end of the story and makes the surprise of laugh or wittiness Nguyễn Đức Dân (1977:2, internet 10) also added that there are three stages of a HS, including the opening, the development and the closing (making laugh) In the opening, the readers find everything run smoothly and develop normally In the body, they expect the result A, but in the conclusion, the result is C which is out of expectation and different from the result A The more the result B is different from the result B, the more the humour is interesting

Alison Ross (1998:30) stated that humour is created out of a conflict between what

is expected and what actually occurs in the joke Other author argued that incongruity is often indentified with „frustrated expectation‟ The incongruity theory focuses on the element of surprise Additionally, by using the incongruity theory, the readers smiles because they can find the inappropriate within the appropriate In any community, the certain attitudes are felt to be appropriate to something but not to others; so that stereotype developed (Hantoro, S, 2004, internet 6) Schopenhauer & Kant (1970: 177, internet 14) developed this theory to make the laughter an affection arising from „sudden transformation of a strained expectation

into nothing‟ in their work named the Critique of Judgment For a joke to work, the

resulting interpretation must result in the incongruity (Arjun Karande, 2006, p.31)

1.6 Figure of Speech as Linguistics Devices in HS

These linguistic devices are mentioned by Alison Ross (1998: p.p1-63) and they contribute to make the laughter in the humour

1.6.1Metaphor

Metaphor is one of the most significant parts of semantics field and is known as figurative language use Besides, it is used widely and sophisticatedly in literature

or poem as well as HS Because metaphor involves in cognitive models, the element

of different culture play a significant role in the interpretation People have different ideas of the metaphor explanation but a common one is somewhat has the analogy

In fact, the meaning would be transferred from one concept to another and the transference depends on some properties A metaphor is an extension in the use of a word beyond its primary referent (Edward Finegan, 2004, p.197) Sebastian Lobner said that a metaphor yields a new concept in the target domain, a concept that is similar to the original concept of the source domain in that it contains certain elements, although not all, of the source concept (1999, p.50)

In Semantics & Description, Jonh, I Saeed (2003:13) introduces some terminology,

including the target domain and the source domain This view of metaphor is known

as „something outside normal language and which requires special forms of interpretation from listeners or readers‟ (Saeed, J, 2003, p.13) To emphasize the using and the role of metaphor in language, it is said that it was metaphor that helps people to understand one domain of experience in terms of another For example,

one group up-down has many metaphors, in which up is interpreted as happy, conscious, health and life, good but down is interpreted as sad, unconscious,

sickness and down

There are other linguistics following the traditional theory when they approved of semantic metaphor like the comparison theory and interaction theory as mentioned

by Stephen C Levinson (2000: 147), for example: I ago is like an eel Whatever the

theories of metaphor, the researcher still agrees with traditional or modern views as long as it makes the laughter in the jokes

In the humorous stories, the using of metaphor is presented and makes the laughter Both linguistics and cognitive theories of humour rely on narrative jokes of Raskin

in 1985 and Attardo in 1994 Actually, metaphor are used in „discourse and on the relationship with humour Sometimes, metaphor is emerged from a play on words and serves no other purpose but to present things in a new and witty way Let‟s see the following HS:

A rich beautiful young girl said to her dancing friend

- My future husband is the handsome man who can sing well the songs that I

favour when I am sad and he can play piano a little but he has to be the famous player He knows literature, history so he can tell me interesting stories He can speak French, Italian and Spanish so that we can take long time travels around the world Specially, he does not smoke and drink Dear friend, give me an advice! What do I have to do?

- You have to buy a television set!

In the above story, the using of ‘a television set’ stands for the girl‟s perfect

husband The readers of the joke are led to form a certain expectation: she wants a husband who possesses the qualities The result is that only a television that satisfies the girl‟s requirements of a perfect husband with above qualities The incongruity arises from what is not explicitly mentioned in the form, yet what the hearer takes

for granted: he must be a human being The context that ‘a rich beautiful young girl

said to her dancing friend’ and ‘my future husband’ lead us to assume that she

expect ‘a man with qualities’, belonging to the source domain The assumption is

made base on our presupposition that she want a human being as husband The actually answer of the dancing partner is a television, belongs to the target domain because it is just a television that meet all the qualities

1.6.2Metonymy

Metonymy

In Meaning And Reading, Sebastian Lobner (2002: 49) defined metonymy as a term

„that primarily refers to object of a certain kind is used to refer instead to things that belong to objects of this kind‟ Consider the following exampled borrowed from the book of Sebastian Lobner:

(a) The university lies in the eastern part of the town

(b) The university has closed down the faculty of agriculture

(c) The university starts again on 15 th April

The subject university refers to the campus in (a), to the institutional body in (b) and

to the courses at the university in (c) Apparently, a metonymy shift of reference of the word from a standard referent, a university, to an essential element of the underlying concept Additionally, when we talk metonymically, we remain within the same domain We borrow an element from the original concept, but the links to the other element remain (Sebastian Lobner, 1999, p.50)

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson (1984: 35) claimed that we are imputing human qualities to things that are not human theories, diseases, inflation, etc Thus, in those

cases, there are no actual human to refer to When we say ‘The ham sandwich is

waiting for his check’, there is no man named ‘the ham sandwich’, instead, we use

one entity to refers to another that is related to It can be understood that ‘the ham

sandwich’ refers to the people who buy the ham sandwich

It is the metonymic concepts that help us to „conceptualize one thing by means of its relation to something else‟ (George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, 1984, p.35) When we think of Nixon, we are not just thinking of himself alone, but we have concepts about him: he is male, a president of America, he was involved in Vietnam war, etc

Thus, with the utterance of ‘Nixon bombed Hanoi’, it is explained that Nixon was

the person in charge, not Nixon was the actual person who performed the action of bombing

In short, this Development part offers the theoretical background of discourse, context, overview of HS, theory of humour and the figure of speech For discourse, the researcher introduces the definition and types of discourse, in which genre and register are related and paid more attention because different types of communicative events result in different types of discourse, and each of these will have its own distinctive characteristics Each of texts is very different in terms of its structure, grammar and physical appearance (David Nunan, 1993, p.51) For context, both context and co-text are really important for the reader in interpretation

of the jokes The HS is special in the shape, the structure, the topic, the conversation between the character, etc; but all of these features serve only purpose of making humour There are over 100 theories of humour, some theories are of psychology, some are of physiology but the researcher selects the the incongruity theory because

it has the linguistic devices Figure of speech with hidden meanings has more than two linguistic devices (metaphor and metonymy), and all of these make the ambiguity Under the hidden meaning of ambiguity, the figure of speech makes the laughter to the reader, so despite the metaphor or metonymy, the researcher reckons that they all are ready-made or living The readers can find the ready-made linguistic devices in the dictionary because they exist naturally in the society with the conventional understanding For the living linguistic devices, they are created by the speakers in the stories and sometimes the readers are difficult to understand them

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

2 1 Methodology

2.1.1 Data Collection

The main aim of this section is to explore how figure of speech as linguistic devices

is used in the stories The researcher found 50 samples which are collected from the selected books Those have been reprinted and published in the recent years; it means that they have been receiving the concerns of readers The books are the series of HS collected by the editors and the publishing houses The samples are from the books: 120 English-Vietnamese HS (episode 1 and 2), Best Funny Stories, The World of English Humour, Teacher – Jokes, Quotes, And Anecdotes, Nụ Cười Nước Anh, Tiếu Lâm Việt Nam Hiện Đại, Cười…Hở Mười Cái Răng, Truyện cười dân gian Việt Nam

The samples collected from the above books are the HS having the various jokes with the theory of verbal hurmous in English and Vietnamese However, it should

be noted that humour is the large and complicated field as mentioned in the previous chapter, thus within the scope of the study and the purpose to be aimed at, the total samples are 50 which fit the investigation of the study Any other irrelevant cases would be ignored and not be considered because it is worth indicating the cases that have to do with metaphor and metonymy as linguistic devices have been gathered

2.1.2 Procedure

The display of the data classification will be done by means of tables in which the type of jokes in English and Vietnamese will be reflected, as well as the pieces of text to be described and analyzed

After doing the in-depth analysis, the cases of each phenomenon in each field will

be quantified and the results are reflected in tables The count will be done manually and calculated in the percentage

Alison Ross (1998:4) claimed that there have been two approaches to the study of humor: the functional and the descriptive The functional approach has emphasized the socio-psychological aspects of joke-telling The descriptive approach foregrounds semantic and structural properties of jokes Regardless of the approach, there is a consensus among humor researchers of jokes, which typically results in laughter, is essentially an intentional act that evolves from laughter, humour, wittiness and the joke

2.2 Data Analysis

The researcher found there are 50 samples in the selected books of HS as mentioned, in which metaphorical jokes are 37 and metonymical jokes are 13 The metaphor jokes and metonymy jokes are subdivided into the categories of English and Vietnamese

2.2.1 Metaphor

The aim of the study deals with the metaphor as linguistic device, so this part was paid special attention because of the purpose of the study A total of 37 samples as metaphor jokes in the books of humorous stories, there are 18 (49%) and 19 (51%)

in the English and Vietnamese respectively Overall, this means that the difference between these two languages is rather small Table 1 reveals the frequency and percentage of metaphor jokes occurring in total and between two languages in particular

Table 1: Metaphor jokes in EHS and VHS

Metaphor jokes Percentage

It can be seen from Table 1 that the percentages of EHS and VHS are rather equal There are the equivalent percentages of metaphor jokes, the findings indicate that both the English and the Vietnamese are fond of using metaphor as the linguistic devices in their humours stories

Mrs Robinson was a teacher in a big school in a city in America She had boys and girls in her class […] [1] One day, she said to the children: ‘ People in a lot of

countries in Asia wear white clothes at funerals, but in America and Europe wear white clothes when they’re happy What colour does a woman wear in this country when she marries, Mary?’

Mary said: ‘ White, Miss, because she’s happy.’

‘ That’s good, Mary’, Mrs Robinson said, ‘ You’re quite right She wear white because she’s happy’

But then one of the boys in the class put his hand up

‘ Yes, Dick’, Mrs Robinson said, ‘ Do you want to ask something’

‘Yes, please, Miss’, Dick said, ‘Why do men wear black in this country when they marry, Miss?’

In the schemata of characters about the cognitive metaphor, the concepts of the

colour like black and white are universal It is the universal knowledge of the

character that

black and white is not only the primary colour but also convey the figurative meaning, the abstract lying deep behind its form, that is the meaning as the metaphor As mentioned by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1984: 3): „The concepts they govern our everyday thought are not just matters of the intellect […] Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities‟

In this story, the teacher explained that black is the representative of the sadness, sorrow and funeral while white is contrasted to black with the meaning of the new

thing, the happiness and the pureness Hence, the Western people use the different colours for their clothes, depending on the situations they are in However, the boy students are too mechanical to understand the explanations of the teachers His

question of „„Why do men wear black in this country when they marry, Miss?‟

seems to be mechanic but it is very suitable because it is raised by basing on the truth as follows: the wedding is a happy event but the groom is still in black

I’m Not Superstitious Personnel Manager: ‘ Have you had any business experience?’

Applicant: ‘ No, I’ve just finished school’

Personnel Manager: ‘What kind of job are you looking for?’

-

[1]

The paragraphs are cut because the story is too long to put the full content in this study For

seeing the full content of the story, see appendix

Applicant: ‘I’d like to be some sort of an executive Maybe a vice-president’

Personnel Manager: ‘But we already had twelve vice-presidents’

Applicant: ‘That’s all right I’m not superstitious It’s ok if I’m thirteenth’

This is the metaphor of cognitive concept in which the thirteenth is thought to be

the unlucky to us, especially to the superstitious people Most of the Western people

believe that the thirteenth is the number of evil and this is one of the features of

Western culture where most of the population follows the Christianity It may be

explained that the thirteenth is involved in the religion, for example thirteen people

attended the last party of Jesus Christ, the Last Day of Jesus Christ, etc Clearly, the applicant in the story acknowledged the thirteen‟s abstract meaning but he did not care about that because he is interested in getting the job above all

The jackasses

- Now, John, suppose there’s a load of hay on one side of the river and a

jackass on the other side, and no bridges, and the river is too wide to swim, how can the jackass get to the hay?

- I give up

- Well, That’s just what the other jackass did

There is the difference in the cognitive metaphor of the jackass in the story between the Western culture and the Eastern culture The jackass is claimed to be the

stubborn animal, thus both cultures have the idiom: „As stubborn as donkey‟

However, the Western people add another characteristic of the jackass: the stupidity Therefore, by using the metaphor of jackass, the character implied that the

other was stupid when he cannot give the results of the math how the jackass can get to the hay It is the similarity and connection between the two domains of John and the animal that create the metaphor and then the wittiness of story, here John is implied to be the stupid person

The foolish worm

A father had been lecturing his young hopeful upon the evils of staying out late at night and getting up late in the morning

- You will never amount to anything – he continued – Unless you turn ove a

new leaf Remember that the early bird catches the worm

- How about the worm, father? – inquired the young man – wasn’t he rather

foolish to get up so early?

- My son – replied the father solemnly - that worm hadn’t been to bed all

night, he was his way home!

It is interesting to note that there are two metaphors; they are the worm and the bird The literal meaning of the worm and the bird are too easy to understand because by

experiences, basic knowledge and observation we all know that one entity is the insect and the other is the bird However, for the figurative meaning, everything is different in the Vietnamese and Western countries The Vietnamese people use the bird as metaphor of the male sex organ and the worm as the metaphor of corrupt officials or the bad persons that are harmful for the whole group with the idiom

‘One scabby sheep is enough to spoil the whole flock’ For the Western people, the bird refers to the hard-working persons, on the contrary, the worm refers to the lazy

ones Both father and son interpreted the metaphors including the bird and the worm; and the joke is created when the father implied the lazy worm sleeping daily, being out all night without any working As can be seen in the story there is the big difference among two cultures about the way entities are conceptualized Although some are universal, some are structured with totally different concepts

Put your poetry into the fire Poet: Do you think I should put more fire into my poem?

Editor: No, quite the reserve

In the schemata of the characters about the cognitive metaphor, the concepts of fire are burning and hot And, it is the universal knowledge of the character that fire is

used in the figurative meaning lying deep under its form According to the Eastern

philosophy, fire is one of the five factors ending the old things and starting the new

things in the ring Yin-Yang Besides, it is said that the life is revived through the

fire after the reborn of the phoenix Therefore, the figurative meaning of the

metaphorical fire are indicated the innovation, the passion and the enthusiasm It is interesting, however, the laughter is created by the fact that the poet use metaphor with figurative meaning but the editor just used fire as literal meaning with the implication that the poetic works were not worth reading, they should be throw away This means that there is no target domain for the editor and he is so witty

with his implication It should be noted that recognizing the incongruity between the poet‟s expectation and the editor creates and provokes the laughter

Mèo khen mèo […]

Chồng hơi bực nên sẵng giọng:

- Anh muốn hỏi cô ấy là ai, người thế nào… cứ nói không đầu không đuôi như

thế, bố ai hiểu được, bộ định true chọc anh chắc?

Vợ mỉm cười thật tươi bảo:

- Rồi em đi xa khỏi cái gương, cô ấy lập tức biến mất

Chồng chuyển từ tức giận sang tức cười mà rằng:

- Ối giời ơi! Thì ra nãy giời anh cứ tưởng…Đúng là mèo!

Translated version:

Cat praises cat […]

The husband annoyed and explained severely:

- I just want to ask who she is and how she is…You keep talking about her

without opening and closing, do you tease me?

The wife smile and said:

- And then I move away from the mirror, she disappreared immediately

The husband changed from the annoyance to the smiling and then said:

- Gee! I have thought that you talked about someone else for a short

while…You, cat!

In the common knowledge, cat is the mammal being capable of catching chimneys and the body‟s movement is so gently and lissome Besides, the cat is able to comfort the owner with the fondle manner like the fable stories „Cat and Sheep‟ by Lev Tolstoi Hence, cat is the symbol of female; especially the ones are of fragile and weak characteristics with the interest of being flattering In this story, the husband has the reference from his wife into the cat because when comparing, he found the analogy between them This case belongs to the traditional theory of metaphor in which substitution is used It is likely that the readers assume the husband not mean what he says literally but that he is metaphorically saying „ the wife is fond of being praised‟

Mr William was a gardener and a very good one too Last year he came to work for Mrs Elphinstone, who was old, fat and rich She knew nothing about gardens, but thought that she knew a lot, ad was always interfering One day Mr Williams got angry with Mrs Elphistone and called her an elephant […] The magistrate found Mr Williams guilty, so Mr Williams said to him: ‘Does that mean that I am not allowed to call this lady an elephant anymore?’

‘That is quite correct’, the magistrate answered

‘And am I allowed to call an elephant a lady?’, the gardener asked

‘Yes, certainly’ the magistrate answered

Mr Williams looked at Mrs Elphinstone and said ‘Goodbye, lady’

Williams called his boss an elephant because he found the similarities between that lady and the animal in size and weight: both were very big and fat Mrs Elphistone

is refered to be the elephant which bring the universal knowledge for the reader to

understand So, this joke is is easy for us to provoke the laughter because we all

understand the concept of the elephant and the fat person, irrespective of the

different culture we live in In understanding the conceptual metaphor „ Mrs Elphinstone is a elephant‟, it is necessary to find implied analogy between the two

conceptual domains, the domains of a Elphinstone and the domain of Elephant, on

the basis of the background knowledge

Bẩm toàn chó cả

Nhà nho nọ thấy quan lại tham nhũng, trong long rất khinh […]

Các quan cầm đũa, gắp mấy món, ăn thấy ngon miệng, liền khề khà hỏi:

- Đây là đĩa gì, kia bát gì?

Nhà nho thong thả nói:

- Đây là chó, kia cũng là chó, bẩm toàn chó cả

That Confucian scholar looked down on the corrupt officials […]

The officials took the chopstick to pick the food, tasted delicious and then talked in drunken voices:

- What is this dish and what is that bow?

The Confucian scholar answered slowly:

- This is dog, that is dog, all are dog, sir

- But there is one side that is not mentioned?

- Also dog all

The officials’ faces were purple with rage but they could not say anything

People think that dog is an intelligent animal and very loyal to the human, so dog is liked by the Western people so much as to be considered the pet in the family

However, the Eastern did not like dog as much as the Western did, and they use the term of dog to refer to the negative things and the lower class, especially to swear at somebody The Confucian is so profound that he used the metaphor of dog to swear

at the corrupt officials

2.2.2 Metonymy

Metonymy is the other linguistics device that the researcher investigates in this study The number of metonymical jokes are 13, in which English jokes are 5, account for 38% and Vietnamese jokes are 8, accounting for 62% The results of metonymy jokes in English and Vietnamese are presented in table 2

Table 2: Metonymy jokes in EHS and VHS

Metonymy jokes Percentage

With regard to the percentage of metonymy jokes in the table 2, this study found a big different result According to the finding, metonymy jokes in VHS have the majority, accounting for 62% This means that there is the difference in the culture

of two countries in using figure of speech in communication It seems that Vietnamese people are more fond of using metonymy to display the referential function, it allows them to use one entity to stand for another While the English

metonymy is not often used in the jokes, the Vietnamese metonymies are favored

when talking about the place for the institution

Let‟s see the collected samples of metonymy and then find the nature of metonymy which is used to make the laughter, besides we can see the attitudes, thoughts and cultural characteristics of Vietnam and English for each

(No subject) [2]

A certain sales manager has a very loud voice One morning, when he was shouting

in his office, the managing director asked his secretary, ‘What were all this noise about?’

‘Mr Blank is talking to San Francisco, sir’, was the reply

‘then why on earth does he use the telephone?’ asked the managing director

The secretary use the metonymy with the relation between San Francisco and the actual person who came from the place named San Francisco A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with what it is closely associated, for example Washington stand for the United States government or of the sword for military power (George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, 1984, p.34) However, the incongruity of the metonymy that makes laughter in the joke when the sales manager did not understand that San Francisco is just substitution for the actual persons who are in the office now, thus he was angry at the noise caused in the conversation

A fine weapon to kill time

‘Do you sing and play much?’ A young man asked the pretty girl who was carelessly thrumming the key of the piano

Only to kill time’, she replied

‘You’ve got a fine weapon I must admit’, ventured the young man

After investigation of the metonymy nature, it can be explained that when humanizing, we employ the characteristics of human being to the objects like disease, inflation, etc In such situations, the correspondent characteristic cannot be apply the specific person When the young men use the term „weapon‟ with the

purpose of killing time, he was using the human qualities to things that are not human

Shakespeare forgot the hat

A husband left home for another city and lived for 3 months because of the business When coming home, he found his wife lying on the bed to read the book He asked:

- When I was absent, were you sad?

His wife answered:

- No, I was not, my dear When you were absent, most of time, I talked to

Shakespeare How wonderful he is!

The husband glanced at the male hat on the armchair suspiciously He spoke to the wife sadly:

- Probably Shakespeare forgot his hat

His wife smile and said:

- That is our father’s hat He came here yesterday and just went downtown

The concept in the above story is the certain general metonymy in terms of which the character organized his thought and actions In fact, it is the metonymic concepts that help us to conceptualize the things with the relation to another When

we think of a Shakespeare, we are not just thinking of a work of literature alone, instead we think of his style, his position in the history, his time in literature, etc, and our thinking of those affect our thought and our action Shakespeare appears in the story, we call it the metonymy as the producer for product The joke is created when the wife used Shakespeare as metonymy, i.e she read the works of Shakespeare while her husband was absent However, the husband thought that Shakespeare is a person, not the collection of works read by the wife, thus he said:

„Shakespeare forgot his hat‟

Puppy Dogs […]

About a week afterward the Democrats held a meeting at the same place, and among the crowd was to be seen the same boy and his two remaining pups He tried for hours to obtain a purchaser, and finally was approached by a Democrat and asked: ‘My little lad, what kind of pups are these you have?’

‘They’re Democratic pups, sir’

Among the considered instances of metonymy, they are systematic and not used randomly because they conceptualize the general meanings, the thoughts, the attitudes of us When thinking of Democrats or Republican, we just don‟t see the two main parties of American alone, we have the attitudes and feelings of them In the story, the pub is changed into Democrats and Republic as the political satire Once more, there is the mixture of the incongruity and superiority to enhance laughter with the feeling of wittiness to the group‟s weakness

Mất cắp pha điện Giám đốc một doanh nghiệp đang chủ trì cuộc họp, bàn kế hoạch sản xuất kinh doanh Bỗng một nhân viên bảo vệ hớt hải chạy vào báo cáo:

- Thưa ông giám đốc, phân xưởng A vừa làm mất một pha điện !

Ông giám đốc chỉ thị ngay:

- Anh huy động toàn đội bảo vệ, nếu cần phải lấy thêm một số thị vệ tổ chức

bao vây toàn phân xường A ngay lập tức và phải tìm cho ra kẻ ăn cắp pha điện

Translated version:

Stolen electricity phase The manager of a company was holding the meeting which discussed the plan of business and production; a security guard came in and reported:

- The workshop A had an electricity phase, sir!

The manager directed immediately:

- You collected all the team of security, if necessary, you use more imperial

guards to surround the workshop immediately and then it is obligatory to find the stealing persons of the electricity phase

This is the case of institution for people responsible in metonymy when the workshop A represents the persons in charge, i.e one entity is used to refer to another The security guard informed the manager of the workshop where the persons are responsible for the electric cut But the manager had the wrong