a study of water and fire as metaphors in american and vietnamese short stories of the 20th century = nghiên cứu ẩn dụ nước và lửa trong truyện ngắn thế kỷ 20 của mỹ và việt nam

Scope of the study This paper mainly focuses on how water and fire metaphors are created in literature and what they convey to the readers through an in-depth comparision between Americ

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Scope of the study 2

3 Objectives of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 3

5 Design of the study 3

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1: Theoretical background 4

1.1 An overview of metaphor 4

1.1.1 What is metaphor? 4

1.1.2 Components of metaphor 5

1.1.3 Types of metaphor 6

1.2 Metaphor in literature 7

1.3 American short stories of the 20th century 9

1.4 Vietnamese short stories of the 20th century 10

Chapter 2: Water and fire as metaphors in American and Vietnamese short stories of the 20 th century 12

2.1 The popularity of water and fire as metaphors 12

2.2 The formation of metaphors of water and fire 14

2.2.1 Lexical items 14

2.2.2 Parts of speech 20

2.3 The functions of metaphors of water and fire 23

2.3.1 The description of strong emotions 23

2.3.2 The creation of imagery 32

2.4 Summary of the chapter 36

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 38

1 An overview of the study 38

2 Pedagogical implications 40

3 Suggestions for further studies 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX A I APPENDIX B II APPENDIX C III APPENDIX D VIII APPENDIX E XX APPENDIX F XXIX APPENDIX G XXX

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

Figurative language in general and metaphor in particular has always been an interesting and inspiring research field Though a large amount of research has been done

on metaphor and metaphorical expressions, it still needs further investigation Metaphor plays a very important role not only in language study but also in everyday life, because many metaphorical concepts are used by ordinary people without being recognized or being aware of In ―Metaphors we live by‖ (George Lakoff & Mark Johnsen, 2003: 4) the authors state that ―metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action‖ Thus, it can be said that metaphor is a powerful tool helping people use and enjoy the use of language

To have a thorough look at the matter of metaphor, literature is the best choice Literature can be considered the product of imagination, but it reflects real life The language used in literature is therefore both imaginative and realistic, which means we can examine metaphors in both ―ordinary and extraordinary‖ perspectives Nowhere is figurative language found in such great amount and variety as in literature, and so is a great source of authentic metaphors, which are employed to create imagery and enhance the powerful effect of the language use In fact a number of researchers have chosen literature

as a means of studying language

Among myriads of metaphorical concepts, I would like to have a close look at the use

of water and fire in literature for some reasons First, water and fire are two essential elements of life and of cultures, which appear in literature universally It is believed that water represents the East and fire the West, (Trần Ngọc Thêm, Nước, văn hoá và hội nhập, http://www.anviettoancau.net/anviettc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=253) Therefore, water and fire in cultural contexts is worth being researched Second, water and fire are also common metaphorical concepts in everyday communication People sometimes integrate water and fire in their communicative exchanges without realizing they are metaphors, for example, ―hot-tempered‖, ―heated discussion‖, ―tears streaming down‖, or ―flooding with work‖ Last but not least, I personally developed a great interest

in the use of water and fire as metaphors when I noticed that these two elements, though contrastive, sometimes denote the same things Such sentences as ―Anger rushed over him‖

or ―What you said added fuel to the fire‖ are easily heard in everyday communication They show that the abstract feeling of anger can be expressed by two opposite things which are able to exclude themselves Therefore, it is fascinating to explore how water and fire metaphors are created in literature and used in real life

To conclude, because there has not been any detailed research on the creation and use

of water and fire as metaphors in literature though water and fire in culture has been scrupulously investigated, this study is hoped to contribute something to the research of metaphors in literature and to the teaching and learning foreign literature of students of English

2 Scope of the study

This paper mainly focuses on how water and fire metaphors are created in literature and what they convey to the readers through an in-depth comparision between American short stories and Vietnamese short stories of the 20th century from cultural and stylistic points of view The reason for that is metaphor and literature are such large researching fields that it is impossible to cover the whole areas in the limited space of this paper

To keep within the restriction of time and scale while ensure the ample language style

a collection of data from a variety of different American and Vietnamese short stories by influential or recognized authors of the 20th century is assembled The data must provide a wide range of language use and style, with relatively modern language which is close to everyday communication as well as maintains the distinguished feature of literature Therefore 30 American stories and 30 Vietnamese stories of all stages of the 20th century are randomly picked out as the database for this paper

3 Objectives of the study

This paper is carried out in order to fulfill four main objectives:

 To explore the use and formation of the metaphors of water and fire in the linguistic perspective, basing on the data from American and Vietnamese short stories of the 20th century

 To compare water and fire metaphors in American and Vietnamese literatures

 To connect the use of water and fire as metaphors from the linguistic angle and from the cultural viewpoint

 To suggest implications for teaching American literary texts to Vietnamese learners whose major is English language

4 Methods of the study

The overriding researching methods used to conduct this study are quantitative and descriptive methods In order to have an insight into the use and the creation of the

metaphors of water and fire in literature, the data collected from various short stories in both languages, English and Vietnamese, are analyzed, synthesized and computed and finally documented The findings and conclusions of the paper are based on the facts and figures produced via these methods

5 Design of the study

This thesis paper is divided into three main parts, namely Introduction, Development and Conclusion The contents of these parts are presented as follows

Part I introduces the rationale, scope, objectives, research methods and format of the study

Part II includes two main chapters Chapter 1 provides the theoretical background of the study regarding major concerns in the area of metaphor and literature, and brief information about American and Vietnamese short stories of the 20th century Chapter 2 is the main focus of the paper, which investigates the use of water and fire metaphors in American and Vietnamese short stoires It deals with the popularity, the creation and the functions of water and fire metaphors

Part III is the conclusion of the study in which a summary of the findings, pedagocial implications for teaching and studying literature and suggestions for further studies will be made in a brief manner

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

1.1 An overview of metaphor

1.1.1 What is metaphor?

The nature of metaphor can be understood from linguistic and cognitive perspectives Traditionally, metaphor or linguistic metaphor is viewed as a figure of speech in which an expression is used to represent something that it does not denote literally For example, in

the sentence ―He’s going to ask for her hand‖, the bolded phrase refers to the action of

proposing marriage to someone The similarity between them is that when someone is proposing marriage, he wants to put a ring on his life partner’s fingers In terms of linguistics, metaphor is a non-literal use of language, a ―characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action‖ (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003: 4)

Based on cognitive linguistics, another point of view emerged, defining metaphor as

―understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain‖ (Kovecses, 2002) Similarly in ―Metaphor we live by (2003: 37) Lakoff & Johnson view metaphor as a

―way of conceiving of one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is understanding‖ This kind of metaphor is called conceptual metaphor Our everyday functioning, including communication is governed by a number of concepts For instance,

in most culture people think and talk about life or love in terms of journeys These concepts are so common that most of us do not consider them metaphors, or some kind of figure of speech Our concept of love and life is expressed by speakers of English as follows:

My life is going to an end./ He’ll end up in prison

Our relationship is going nowhere./ We won’t go far in this marriage

Obviously, these expressions are derived from the way we talk about journeys, even though we do not straightly say ―My life is a journey‖ We talk about things the way we conceive them

Despite different ways to define metaphors, they meet one another at a point that metaphor is considered a representation of one thing by another one based on their certain similarities However, Galperine (1981: 140) thinks that it is wrong to assume the basis of metaphor is the similarity of two domains The nature of metaphor is, according to him, is the identification of two notions when the metaphor maker finds in them ―certain features

which to his eye have something in common‖ (1981: 140) Therefore, two domains of a metaphor do not necessarily have factual affinities but something creators of metaphors accept similar

Metaphor in language and thought are closely related Linguistic metaphors are the realisations of conceptual metaphors The mapping ―TARGET DOMAIN is/as SOURCE DOMAIN‖ is represented by ―metaphorical linguistic expressions‖ (Kovecses, 2002: 4) For example, the conceptual metaphor LIFE AS A JOURNEY is commonly made explicit

by linguistic metaphors like on the right way/ at a crossroads in life/ going nowhere/ looking for a diversion, etc Therefore, it is essential to take both conceptual metaphors and

metaphorical linguistic expressions into serious consideration

1.1.2 Components of metaphor

Metaphor, according to I.A Richards in the Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), consists of two parts: the tenor and vehicle The tenor is the original subject to which attributes are ascribed The vehicle is both the words and concepts evoked by the words, i.e the metaphorical words (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor) The components of metaphors are cognitively called the target domains and source domains (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003), corresponding to the tenor and the vehicle respectively These two components are either actually related or deliberately made related depending on the metaphor maker’s own perception

The attributes or qualities of the vehicle which are mapped or transferred back onto the

tenor are called dimension For example, in the sentence ―… the girl entered his mind, moving with perfect freedom through its shut doors and filling chamber after chamber with her light.‖ (The country husband, John Cheever), ―mind‖ is the tenor or the target domain, and the vehicle or source is a house with chambers The shut doors and many chambers attribute the secret and complication to the mind The action of entering the house with a light means trying to understand what one is thinking The dimension of

―mind-is-a-house‖ metaphor can be interpreted that way However, a vehicle may have several dimensions, so it can be used to convey different meanings

In order to connect the tenor and the vehicle, a linking verb is generally used The most common formula is ―the tenor is the vehicle‖, in which the verb ―to be‖ is employed.‖

A typical example is: ―All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players‖

(Shakespeare, As you like it, Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166) Nevertheless the linking verb ―to be‖ is not always the only choice, but the tenor and the vehicle is connected by means of other lexical or grammatical devices Let us look back at the above example of

―mind-is-a-house‖ The vehicle (a house) is mapped onto the tenor (the mind) through different verbs (enter, move, fill) and nouns (shut doors, chamber, light), and a parallel structure This creates a large ranger of metaphorical expressions

According to cognitive linguists, the relationship between the target and the source domains is represented through a set of mappings, the systematic correspondences (Kovecses, 2002: 6) that help us understand the target domain This set of mappings that characterize the LOVE-IS-A-JOURNEY conceptual metaphor, used by Kovecses in the book ―Metaphor: A practical introduction‖ (2002: 7) is adopted to illuminate this point

The obstacles encountered  The difficulties experienced

In whatever perspective it is seen, there are typically three components of metaphors, namely the tenor (target domain), the vehicle (source domain) and the connection between them (dimension or a set of mappings) As a matter of fact these components play an indispensible part in ―understanding‖ metaphors, whether linguistically or cognitively

abstract target concepts and creating coherence among metaphors Therefore, structural metaphors, ontological metaphors and orientational metaphors are official names for

these functions respectively

On the other hand, this paper also deals with a more traditional way to classify metaphors - according to the level of usage – there are dead, faded and living metaphors

This classification is of great importance in understanding metphors in literature, most of which are living metaphors, or metaphors originating from conventional ones

 Dead metaphors

Dead metaphors are the ones which ―have been so often used that speaker and hearer have ceased to be aware that the words used are not literal‖ (Fowler, 1985: 359) Dead metaphors are hard to be recognized because their direct meanings are completely lost, which means English vocabulary consists of a huge number of dead metaphors unconsciously used in everyday language

 Living metaphors

Living or active metaphors are used unconventionally Kovecses (2002: 29-32) and Lakoff & Johnson (2003: 212-213) employ the term ―conventionality‖ to distinguish the living metaphor from the dead ones According to the scale of conventionality, living metaphors are original expressions used in an impressive and artistic way and have not become part of everyday linguistic use They are often creative and sometimes absurd if out of context, as a result of individual reasoning and experiencing This kind of metaphor dominates the art of literature, where people can freely play with words in their own imagination

To sum up, the boundary between living, faded and dead metaphors is not very conspicuous A faded (dying) metaphor for one person may be a completely original metaphor for the other This depends on each individual’s knowledge, experience, and culture On the other hand, for most people who are not researchers or scholars it is virtually impossible to realize dead metaphors The differentiation between these types will

be helpful, however, to this paper because it involves metaphors in literature

1.2 Metaphor in literature

Metaphors are dominant in literature, appearing in every genre from poetry to prose, from essays to epics, utilized to bring literary imagery to life, playing a major part in

intensive reading and appreciating literature Metaphors in literature are said to be innovative products of genius writers; in fact, ―metaphor is a matter of thoughts – all kinds

of thought‖ (Larkoff & Turner, 1989), so most of eccentric metaphors in literature have roots from ordinary materials In other words, ordinary conceptual metaphors are transformed into poetic expressions through the process of extending and elaborating (Kovecses, 2002) However, many metaphors are not ordinarily part of the way we conceptualise our experience, which are called image metaphors (Lakoff & Turner, 1989) Extending, according to Kovecses (2002: 47), means introducing a new conceptual element in the source domain; elaborating means that an existing conceptual element is depicted in extraordinary way The following stanza from ―Road not taken‖ by Robert Frost is a good illustration

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;”

(Road not taken, Robert Frost)

What do you think about when you read this? Is this simply a description of a person who

is travelling on a road which diverges and he does not know which direction to take? It is certain that this poem cannot be interpreted that way The principal conceptual metaphor in the poem is LIFE-IS-A-JOURNEY, but the diverging road in a wood is clearly an extended conceptual element that symbolizes life Therefore, it can be understood that someone has to make a difficult decision that will have a great impact on his life and he still cannot make up his mind Furthermore, instead of using an ordinary metaphorical

expression like ―I’m at the crossroads in life‖ the author elaborates it to make a

picturesque description of a journey in the wood and the difficulty of choosing a direction the traveler is facing The novelty created with the extension and elaboration of LIFE-IS-A-JOURNEY metaphor leaves a profound impression on readers, putting them in thought and imagination, which cannot be done by ordinary language

The second type – image metaphors – can be noticed in a poem by Emily Dickinson:

“Fame is a bee / It has a song— / It has a sting— / Ah, too, it has a wing.” The metaphor

―fame is a bee‖ is really fresh and creative What aspects of a bee can we map onto the fame? The choice of ―a bee‖ as a vehicle for ―the fame‖ emphasizes the contrast between

sweetness and bitterness, beauty and danger, attraction and risk Whatever it is, it is not ordinary part of the way we conceptualize our experience – a so-called ―one-shot metaphor‖ (Lakoff & Turner, 1989: 91) employed exclusively by the author, impossible to

be copied by others Most importantly, this kind of novel metaphor creates freedom for readers to interpret the metaphorical images in whatever dimensions they recognize, which make reading literature enjoyable

To conclude, metaphorical expressions found in literature is considered ―more creative, novel, original, striking, rich, interesting, complex, difficult, and interpretable‖ (Semino & Steen, 2008: 233) than conventional metaphors, which are found outside the literary world and typically in real life language It is therefore very inspiring to have an insight into the use of metaphors in literature no matter what genre it is

1.3 American short stories of the 20 th century

The 20th century witnesses a great transformation of American literature in general and short stories in particular due to enormous social reform and international conflict This century bears a load of wars for racist, religious, politic and economic reasons, is the cradle for industrial revolutions, the development of science and technology and world economy, and cherishes a great number of human achievements in all areas This has led to significant alterations to American lifestyle and thoughts, and short fiction is not an exception Short stories have daunted the American literature of the 20th century with its amazing growth and incredible popularity, hundreds of outstanding authors, thousands of books, magazines, newspapers publishing short stories

Following the features of American literature of the 20th century, short fiction belongs

to one of these major stages as follows, even though the division is not completely distinct, and in fact there are variations in categorizing these stages

The division of 20th century American short stories into different stages demonstrates the development of thematic contents and artistic styles, which have a profound impact on the language usage in this narrative form Social and cultural conditions had led to differences in the viewpoints, artistic trends and language styles of American writers For example, the Naturalists like Stephen Crane, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and Sherwood Anderson tended to view people as hapless victims of immutable natural laws, whereas the World War I destroyed the illusion that acting virtuously brought about good, resulting in writers of "The Lost Generation" like Hemingway and Fitzgerald The postwar period flourished with respected practitioners like Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver, and was marked by a feeling of uneasiness and disturbance, a self-conscious sense of position in the world, and therefore became the base for short stories focusing on the search for truth and skepticism The Confessional period and the period of Postmodernism seek the instability and ambiguit y of human experience with a deeper focus on personal pain of Confessional writers like Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, and Raymond Carver

According to James Nagel in ―A companion to the American short story‖, the 20thcentury is a period of innovation and continuity, ―filled with impressive artistry, social conflict, and enormous potential for sustained innovation‖ (2010: 223) Whichever stages they are in, and however different their philosophies are, the characteristics of American culture are still thrown into sharp relief in the short stories of the 20th century

1.4 Vietnamese short stories of the 20 th century

The development of Vietnamese short stories of the 20th century follows the general varied but complicated development of Vietnamese literature of the whole century It falls into three main stages, the categorization of which is based on the most remarkable

milestones in the history: from the early century to the August 1945 Revolution, from the August 1945 Revolution to 1975, and from 1975 to the end of the century Being created in

the struggle for national construction and defense, Vietnamese short stories of this century are not out of the influence of the social circumstances

In the first stage short stories are marked with two periods: the first 30 years of the century filled with ideological stories, and more flagrantly, the fiction of 1930-1945 period with dominated by three literary movements: romanticism, realism and revolutionism with

the contribution of a great number of authors such as Nam Cao, Nguyễn Công Hoan, Thạch Lam, Kim Lân, Học Phi, Hồ Dzếnh, Bùi Hiển, etc Their creations in this period are deeply humane, artistic and reflective and many of them have become masterpieces of Vietnamese literature

Ideology, patriotism and socialism are noticeable features of the 1945-1975 stage The literature of this stage is revolutionary with deep humanism and many achievements in the development of genre and style Short fiction particularly focuses on the wars of resistance against the French colony (1946-1954) and the US Army (1965-1975), and the construction of Socialism in the North of Vietnam (1955-1964) Most stories depict the ordinary but somehow heroic people before the fate of their nation (―Mùa lạc‖ by Nguyễn Khải, ―Thư nhà‖ by Hồ Phương, ―Quán rượu người câm‖ by Nguyễn Quang Sáng, ―Rừng

xà nu‖ by Nguyễn Trung Thành and so forth); or the arousal of the public in light of the holy revolution and Vietnamese Communist Party (―Đôi mắt‖ by Nam Cao, ―Vợ nhặt‖ by Kim Lân, etc.)

After the reunion of the North and the South in 1975, Vietnam stepped into the process

of reconstructing the whole country with the unforgettable social reform started in 1986 Short stories of this stage, especially from 1980s to the end of the century, saw abundant changes in both artistry and content They put a heavy emphasis on the description of daily life with ordinary people, the difficulties in life, their calculation and scrambling for money and fame, the corruption of the society and also their hopes and dreams of a better life The personalities and inner thoughts of the characters are described in detail with ample imagery language Some of the representative short stories writers of this stage are Nguyễn Minh Châu, Lê Minh Khuê, Nguyễn Quang Thiều, Võ Thị Hảo, Nguyễn Quang Thiệp, Y Ban and many other famous writers

In conclusion, the understanding of social contexts and historical conditions of Vietnam and America in the 20th century brings us an in-depth look into the language styles and artistic tropes used in short stories, among which are metaphors

Chapter 2: Water and fire as metaphors in American and Vietnamese short stories of the 20 th century

2.1 The popularity of water and fire as metaphors

The mechanical study of 60 American and Vietnamese short stories into the length of each story, the number of water and fire metaphors to figure out the average ratio of these metaphors per one story shows that water and fire are popular as literary tropes in both literatures

The density of water and fire metaphors in American short stories is high Among 30 stories investigated, 293 examples of metaphors are found with 177 water metaphors and

116 fire metaphors, accounting for 60.41% and 39.59% respectively The length of each story ranges from approximately 2,000 words to over 13,000 words, with an average of 7,000 words each On average a story of approximately 7,000 words contains about 10 water and fire metaphors There are particularly some short stories extraordinarily densely-

covered with water and fire metaphors such as A death in the desert (Willa Cather, 1903) with 27 metaphors, Bernice bobs her hair (Scott Fitzgerald, 1922) with 18 metaphors, The lame shall enter first (Flannery O’Connor, 1965) with 25 metaphors or Soon (Pam Durban,

1997) with 21 metaphors In short water and fire are seen with high frequency in American short stories

Regarding Vietnamese short fiction, the proportion of metaphors of water and fire is similarly large There are 266 examples in 30 stories with the average length of approximately 5,000 words It works out as 9 metaphors in each story, though some stories

have strangely high density of water and fire metaphors such as Nắng mới (Bùi Hiển, 1939), Hai dòng sữa (Nguyên Hồng, 1943), or Mùa lạc (Nguyễn Khải, 1960), etc Fire

metaphors account for only 36.47% while 169 examples of water metaphors are discovered (63.53%) Similar to American short stories, the number of water metaphors is much greater than the number of fire metaphors, and both appear frequently throughout the studied stories

The above figures are significant in pinpointing the popularity of water and fire metaphors in both American and Vietnamese literatures The frequency of appearance of these metaphors is very high, which inevitably proves that water and fire images are commonly used as literary tropes in short fiction Besides, that the examples of water

metaphors outnumber those of fire reveals a higher favor of water in creating metaphors and its remarkable impact on people’s thoughts and actions

The explanation for the popularity of these metaphors perhaps lies in the essential roles of water and fire in human life Mankind relies on water and fire to survive and develop Water is the most important factor that makes a planet habitable, and fire is the root of civilization Water is the necessary condition because it maintains the existence of man and fire is the sufficient condition as it helps improve the quality of life For this reason, every activity and thought of people are closely linked to water and fire

Though both are extremely vital to life, water is more deeply-attached to people and their culture Water is believed to be the source of life Science has proved that life originates from the sea and people had existed long before anthropogenic fire was created and used to their advantage The survival of human beings is decided by water as biologically our bodies will be in desperate straights without water for just one day though

we can go wihout food for weeks or even months Moreover, three-fourths of the area of the earth surface is covered in water, which means most of our living activities involve water Water has thus become part of cultures around the world Famous ancient cultures were established by the basins of big rivers such as Egyptian civilization with the Nile, Mesopotamia (Greek word for ―between the rivers) with the Tigris-Euphrates river system, Indian culture with the Indus, Chinese culture with the Yellow River (Huang He), etc Water is also an indispensible part in the beliefs of many religions all over the world with two main ―symbolic qualities – rebirth and purification‖ (www.abc.net.au/water/stories) According to Tran Ngoc Them (www.anviettoancau.net) water is a typical natural phenomenon while culture is a typical social phenomenon Thus, water and culture are strongly interlinked This relationship explains why water metaphors have a higher frequency than fire metaphors in both American and Vietnamese short stories

In conclusion, water and fire have a great influence on the way language is used with a range of colloquialisms and metaphorical expressions The study into 60 short stories of American and Vietnamese literatures displays a very high density of water and fire metaphors, which can serve as an undeniable evidence for the domination of these two natural and cultural concepts in people’s perception of the natural and social phenomenons However popular they are, fire metaphors are not preferred as much as water in literature

as water is conspicuously more attached to life than fire in any culture Frequently utilized

as literary tropes, these metaphors convey messages of the writers to the readers in an astounding manner

2.2 The formation of metaphors of water and fire

Conceptual metaphors of water and fire in literature are created in two key ways First, short stories writers employ different lexical items related to water and fire to construct various expressions that carry deep meanings they want to deliver They can also be created with different parts of speech like nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs Each part

of speech affects greatly the way writers embed messages and how readers process them The formation of water and fire metaphors is clearly illustrated in 60 short stories with a large number of linguistic expressions and grammatical devices

2.2.1 Lexical items

Lexical items play a significant role in forming the metaphors of water and fire These

metaphors are not only expressed with the words ―water‖ and ―fire‖, but refered to via all

the lexis directly or indirectly associated with these two elements Water is directly mentioned through the forms it takes and its activities, indirectly with words and phrases specifying the actions performed with water, the properties of water and its consequences

As regards fire, it appears directly with the images of fire and its activities, and is indirectly mentioned with the images of light and heat, the properties of fire, and its consequences The numbers of lexical items in English and in Vietnamese differ, but they all fall into the above categories and help build conceptual metaphors such as ANGER IS FIRE, LOVE IS FIRE, HAPPINESS IS WATER, etc which are already imprinted in people’s minds

As an illustration for the use of lexical items to create water and fire metaphors effectively, table 1 and 2 have been built, presenting common words and phrases related to water and fire in English and Vietnamese Each category is divided in two parts: English (E) and Vietnamese (V) with equivalent items in both languages, although a few of them

do not have counterparts The division of water-related lexis is quite similar to that of fire with the categories of form, activity, property and consequence The only discrepancy is due to the fact that fire generates heat and light, so heat and light take a separate place in the table About water, people can do many things with it; as a result, it is necessary to include another column to cover some verbs signifying actions performed with water Due

to the limited space, parts of these two tables are presented here; the whole table 1 and 2 can be seen at Appendix A and B respectively

hot nổi nóng, nóng (ruột, lòng)

bừng bừng, nóng bừng nôn nóng, nóng hổi nóng cháy, nóng bỏng

burnt (out) khô cháy

warmth

hơi ấm

ấm áp, ấm cúng đầm ấm

To begin the analysis of lexical items, it is noticeable that the metaphors of water are manifested with different forms and activities Water can take a variety of forms such as

sea, stream, reservoir, pool, river, wave, tide, shower, current, torrent, rain, ice, tear, etc Its activities are even more various: pouring, flowing, overflowing, flooding, spilling, streaming, rushing, drifting, showering, sprinkling, welling, rising, churning, dribbling, percolating, soaking, or saturating, etc Vietnamese writers likewise make use of all the forms and activities of water such as sông, suối, biển, sóng, mưa, ao, luồng, dòng, giọt, lũ, nguồn, chảy, trôi dạt, tràn ngập, dâng trào, đổ về, xoáy, etc to create various metaphorical

expressions Clearly all these words and phrases, straightly connected with water, contribute to the vivid emergence of water in literature

A striking illustration for this is LIGHT-IS-WATER metaphor with many ways to compare light with water The feature shared by both light and water is that they are lissome, spreadable and able to move and twist naturally, i.e the comparison is based on the similarity in both forms and sensations The following examples taken randomly from different American short stories help us realize how this conceptual metaphor is mapped through the means of lexical items

 “… and Rainsford stood blinking in the river of glaring gold light that poured out.” (The

most dangerous game, Richard Connell)

 “… and flashed with drops of light on their new varnished leaves.” (The peach stone, Paul

Horgan)

 “The green waves of white light are thrown upon our eyes.” (The shadow and the flash, Jack

London)

 “… and turned my face up in the light that streamed out through the shutters …” (A death in

the desert, Willa Cather)

 “For some time he lay without movement, the genial sunshine pouring upon him and saturating his miserable body with its warmth.” (Love of life, Jack London)

These examples obviously show that the concept of light is expressed through words and

phrases directly related to water A river is a thing formed by water; a drop and a wave are forms of water; streaming, pouring and saturating are activities of water They leave a

deep impression in readers’ minds about the softness in the movement of light These items can aslo be found in Vietnamese stories Bùi Hiển (Nắng mới, 1939) fascinatingly

describes sunlight by various forms and activities of water such as ―một giọt nắng hoe hoe

vàng‖ (a blonde drop of light), ―ánh sáng ùa tràn vào thành luồng lớn khiến chàng ngợp trong sóng vàng chói lọi‖ (light is rushing in a large stream, flooding him with brightly golden waves) or “… ánh vàng dâng tràn, chảy rời rợi trên ngón tay‖ (the golden light is

overflowing on the fingers) By means of such words and phrases as ―wave‖, ―stream‖,

―drop‖, ―river‖, ―sea‖, ―flood‖, ―flow‖, ―overflow‖, the tenor of light is conveyed through the vehicle of water directly

Nonetheless, it is not necessary to relate the target domain straightly to water: there are indirect expressions describing the actions performed with water, its properties and its

consequences Many actions remind people of water like watering, swimming, sinking, washing, bathing, drinking, etc Things also need water to float or buoy up Water evokes the feeling of pleasure because it is cool When water takes the form of ice, it is freezing Water also leaves disastrous consequences: it causes flood, makes people drown, or wash over things Short stories writers take advantage of indirect lexis to compare things

implicitly with water For example, anger and water are interlinked in that both can lower

the temperature If in English someone is ―frozen with frustrated rage.” (Everything that

rises must converge, F O’Connor), then in Vietnamese, anger is shown on a cold face as in

the phrase ―nét mặt lạnh lùng, băng giá của cô ấy‖ (Có một thời yêu, Vũ Thị Thu Hồng)

Also, Vietnamese people conceive anger as some liquid that you can pour as in “… chẳng

nói chẳng rằng lão trút cơn giận …‖ (Chiếc thuyền ngoài xa, Nguyễn Minh Châu) It

sounds strange but not unreasonable to consider ―coldness‖ as a metaphor of water The basis of this direct metaphor is the transference of sensation People normally feel cold when they are in water; this feeling is transferred to the state of being angry Therefore they express their anger through a ―frozen face‖ or an ―icy voice‖ It can be concluded that the indirect lexical items connected with water impressively diversify metaphorical expressions without the presence of water itself

Similarly, fire metaphors are formed either with direct lexical items indicating fire and its activities or with indirect vocabulary denoting heat and light The image of fire is

expressed with ―fire”, ―flame” or ―spark” with Vietnamese corresponding words or phrases like lửa, đám lửa, cục lửa, ngọn lửa, tia lửa Normally fire can burn, consume, warm, kindle, flicker, flare and die out Equivalently the activities of fire are described with thiêu đốt, sưởi ấm, nhen nhóm, le lói, bùng bùng, or tàn lụi in Vietnamese Apart

from that, fire is often associated with heat and light, two things generated by fire Then

heat and light are elaborated with a wide repertoire of words and phrases such as glow, gleam, glint, glitter, sparkle, radiate or emanate Fire is also depicted via its properties and

consequences Fire is always in connection with high temperature at different levels like

warm, heated, hot, boiling, burning, and with a ruinous result when something is burnt (out) Even though the quantity of items related to fire (25 words in English and a

relatively equal number in Vietnamese) is not as large as the quantity of water-related lexis (64 words in English and a relatively equal number in Vietnamese), their diversity and descriptive capability are not less notable

Some expressions of ANGER-IS-FIRE conceptual metaphor below can illustrate the direct and indirect words and phrases related to fire in both English and Vietnamese:

English Vietnamese

―But they are men,‖ said Rainsford hotly (The

most dangerous game, Richard Connell)

… mà lại hay nổi nóng (Rừng xà nu, Nguyễn

―Yuh ain never heped yo own sef since yuh

been born,‖ she flared (Bright and Morning

Star, Richard Wright)

Tâm trí Huyên cứ ngùn ngụt (Hai dòng sữa,

Nguyên Hồng)

―There was a deep burning inside her, an anger

that made her feel larger than herself …‖ (A

good, small thing, Raymond Carver)

Một ngọn lửa bỏng rát táp vào mặt ông Lư

(Mùa hoa cải bên sông, Nguyễn Quang Thiều)

From the above sentences, it is not difficult to realize that different fire-related items are

put into service to relay the only concept of anger, from the activity of burning (burning, flared) to the consequence of heat (boil, hotly) They also reveal the degree of anger, from the mildest to the most serious, through the level of heat: hot, boil, flare, burn Though

fire-related lexical items found in American and Vietnamese stories are not of the same parts of speech, they can illustrate one point: fire metaphors are created via images, activities, properties and consequences of fire

As shown above, one similarity between American and Vietnamese language is that there is a wide variety of lexical items, either direct or indirect for the writers to create the metaphors in their own fashion Obviously it is not necessary to mention water and fire, then there are water and fire metaphors Water and fire are just concepts, which can be

expressed directly or indirectly with a large range of words and phrases indicating their forms, activities, properties and consequences They not only result in the diversity but also enhance the beauty of language, helping readers unforgettably enjoy literary works, no matther what language they are in

On the other hand, table 1 and 2 also present the difference betweet the two languages: Vietnamese language has a larger repertoire of descriptive vocabulary For example in

order to describe the activity of ―flowing‖, ―overflowing‖ or ―flooding‖ there are plenty of words in Vietnamese such as ―ùa‖, ―ùa tràn‖, ―tràn‖, ―ngập tràn‖, ―tràn ngập‖, ―ngập‖,

―đổ tràn‖, ―gội tràn trề‖, ―trào‖, ―chảy cuồn cuộn‖ etc Through these words, the activities

of water are animated with different levels of strength that cannot be expressed with such

mere words as ―flood‖, ―flow‖ or ―overflow‖ Another example is the word ―sink‖ and its

counterparts in Vietnamese Common Vietnamese words to express the action of ―sinking‖

is ―đắm‖, ―chìm”, ―chìm đắm‖, ―chìm nghỉm‖, ―chết chìm‖ Also, Vietnamese adjectives describing heat and burning are not less various: ―bừng bừng‖, ―nóng cháy‖, ―nóng bỏng‖,

―nóng hổi‖, ―nóng bừng‖, ―nôn nóng‖, ―bùng bùng‖, ―ngùn ngụt‖, ―ngốt ngát‖, etc are

some of the expressions with the same denotation but varied connotations

As regards the variety in descriptive vocabulary of Vietnamese, let us examine some characteristics of Vietnamese as a monosyllabic type of language The smallest unit to construct a word in Vietnamese is a morphemesyllable – a syllable coincides with a morpheme (www.ngonngu.net) Vietnamese language is non-inflected, so the boundary between syllables, morphemes and words is not sufficiently clear Hence the ability to construct words is much greater than English, which is called Agglutinated language (Rudra, www.hubpages.com) Understandably the stem ―nóng‖ can be combined with

other morphemesyllables to create new words with different connotations like ―nóng nực‖,

―nóng bức‖, ―nóng hổi‖, ―nóng bỏng‖, ―nóng bừng‖, etc In addition, Vietnamese language

has reduplicative words – one of the most effective stylistic devices in Vietnamese, which adds a valuable supplement to the treausure of Vietnamese rhetoric vocabulary For that

reason such words as lênh láng, ngập ngụa, bùng bùng, ngùn ngụt, ngốt ngát, and so on are

challenging for those who want to find equivalents or to express them somehow in English Evidently Vietnamese language has a richer source of descriptive lexical items connected with water and fire than English

To summarize the whole part, water and fire metaphors are created with various words and phrases denoting the images, activities, properties and consequences of water and fire, which is the most noteworthy similarity between American and Vietnamese literatures Directly or indirectly, these lexical items in both languages remind the readers of these two elements with a variety of forms and strengths Besides, Vietnamese metaphors are better known for their descriptive power although the number of lexis associated with water and fire in English is not small With lexical items as a constructing device, metaphorical expressions in American and Vietnamese short stories vary dramatically

of water and fire in Vietnamese are only grouped into nouns, verbs and adjectives - three main parts of speech of the first category according to the classification of Nguyễn Hồng Cổn (Language Journal, Issue 02/2003) The use of parts of speech in constructing metaphors is significant thanks to their stylistic potentials

To begin, the following charts display the percentage of different parts of speech of water and fire metaphors in American and Vietnamese short stories

Chart 1: Parts of speech of water and fire metaphors in American short stories

Chart 2: Parts of speech of water and fire metaphors in Vietnamese short stories

In American short stories, apparently verb and noun metaphors are dominating while adjectives and adverbs account for a very restricted proportion As regards water metaphors, more than half of them are verbs with 51.41%, leaving the rest for other parts

of speech This trend does not work in the case of fire metaphors The creation of fire metaphors appreciates the high frequency of nouns and verbs relatively equally with 37.07% and 34.48% respectively Adverbs are used least frequently, less than 5%

Unlike metaphors in American stories, the patterns of parts of speech of Vietnamese water and fire metaphors differ notably Water metaphors are dominated by verbs (47.93%) but fire metaphors are conquered by adjectives (44.33%) Noun and adjective water metaphors share quite equal percentage of about 25% Besides, verbs associated with fire also account for a fairly big part with 36.08% despite the dominance of adjectives Briefly verbs and adjectives occupy a key role in the creation of water and fire metaphors

in Vietnamese

On the other hand, the number of examples discovered in 60 stories is presented in the table as follows, which can serve as a basis to decipher the trend of creating water and fire metaphors as a whole via parts of speech in both languages

Noun Verb Adjective Adverb Total

The total numbers of metaphorical expressions in Vietnamese and English are quite the same (266 compared to 293), so it is not subjective to sketch the trend as in this chart:

Chart 3: The trend in using parts of speech to create water and fire metaphors

The chart evidently shows that verb metaphors are of the highest frequency and adverbs rank last in both languages On the contrary, there is a slight difference between the use of nouns and adjectives In American stories nouns are preferred while Vietnamese writers are in more favor of adjectives, with 34.13% and 32.33% respectively Most prominently, verb is the most popular device to create metaphors of water and fire in American and Vietnamese short stories

The fact that verbs account for the largest proportion proves the strength and influence

of water and fire in symbolism Stylistically ―verbal style abounds in verbs and is very dynamic‖ (Missikova, 2003: 59) Verbs, with their dynamic property, describe processes and activities of water and fire, leaving an impression of their constructive and destructive power Thanks to this, the images of water and fire are vigorously portrayed with a variety

of metaphorical expressions

Apart from that, the level of objectivity and subjectivity are also embedded in the use

of nouns and adjectives After verbs, noun metaphors appear quite frequently in American stories while adjectives are relatively dense in Vietnamese ones The use of nouns often provides static and objective descriptions, so readers have more freedom in processing the message when reading American stories Conversely Vietnamese writers are more imposing when enclosing their attitudes and beliefs in what they want to communicate to the readers The reason is that adjectives belong to the qualifying lexis (Missikova, 2003: 59), so they stylistically make the descriptions more subjective For example Connell

writes ―… blinking in a river of glaring gold light that poured out‖ (The most dangerous

game, 1924) The noun ―river‖ just evokes the great amount of light but not how the writer

feels about it Instead of using a noun, Nguyên Hồng makes use of a descritive adjective to

paint the sunlight and wind in ―Nắng và gió toả ra lênh láng‖ (Mợ Du, 1943) ―Lênh láng‖

(being spilt all over) not only denotes the great amount but also conveys the feeling of the author It has a negative connotation that light and wind are too much and unfavorable The objectivity of American writers is also shown in the relatively more limited use of adverbs, which, similar to adjectives, have a qualifying function

In conclusion, each part of speech has its own significance in creating water and fire metaphors Both American and Vietnamese short stories leave largest room for verbs to perform their dynamic effects in depicting the strength and influence of water and fire However, American writers appear to be more objective than Vietnamese ones in the descriptions of scenes and people, which is demonstrated through their preference of noun metaphors and less favour of adjectives and adverbs In contrast, adjectives help Vietnamese writers impose their viewpoints in their own works through water and fire metaphors

2.3 The functions of metaphors of water and fire

The examples of metaphors taken from 60 short stories disclose their two main functions: describing strong emotions and creating imagery based on the affinity between water and fire and the target domains, as well as the identification of the target domains via water and fire They are proved to excite readers’ imagination, making abstract concepts more concrete and livelier in their minds Not only do they aim at finding the resemblance between objects but they also seek the identification of them The tenors, vehicles and dimensions of these metaphors are displayed in detail in Appendix C With the characteristics of novelty, they appeal to the readers of all time, and prove the artistic feature of using and enjoying language

2.3.1 The description of strong emotions

Emotions symbolized with water and fire in both American and Vietnamese short stories are all strong, including love, hope, happiness, faith, pride, triumpth, desire, unhappiness, indifference, anger, fear, hatred, embarrassment, passion, shame, and pain It

is noticeable that whenever the feelings are pushed to an unbearable level, or play a very important role in developing the events, water and fire metaphors emerge with varied

degrees and expressions Another feature is that both water and fire are used to describe positive and negative emotions, even entirely opposing concepts like joy and sorrow These embodiments are the patent results of the impact of water and fire on people’s thoughts, beliefs, values, and in a broader sense, cultures

First of all, let us have a look at these charts, which show the percentage of positive and negative strong emotions expressed through water and fire metaphors

Chart 4: Proportion of good feelings and bad feelings expressed with water and fire in American short stories

Chart 5: Proportion of good feelings and bad feelings expressed with water and fire in Vietnamese short stories

It can be seen that fire in American short stories is more associated with good feelings while worse emotions are much more connected with water Among 67 metaphors of water, only 24 cases imply joy, hope, faith, desire, enthusiasm, triumpth, pleasure and love (about 35.82%) while it adds up to 57.33% for fire metaphors Chart 4 also presents a great proportion of negative feelings expressed with water (64.18%), an exceeding figure above

others While there is a difference in describing opposite emotions with water and fire metaphors in American short stories, Vietnamese writers share a positive attitude towards fire and water, both of which convey good feelings more than bad ones 69 among 120 examples of strong emotions refer to the negative side 40% of water metaphors and 45.83% of fire metaphors mostly describe fear, anger, impatience, embarrassment, unhappiness, pain, indifference and hatred

Interestingly enough, although the number of water metaphors outstrips the number of fire metaphors in both literatures, fire is more frequently used to convey strong emotions than water American short stories provide 75 metaphors of fire and 67 of water Similarly there are 72 examples of fire metaphors versus 50 of water metaphors in Vietnamese stories Thus, approximately three-thirds of fire metaphors are associated with feelings in spite of the greater popularity of water metaphors These findings will be clarified in light

of cultural features in the following lines

The function of describing emotions is culturally related to the roles and influences of water and fire as natural phenomena – both of them are simultaneously constructive and destructive As explained in part 2.1 water and fire perform essential parts in life If water

is the source of life, fire is ―a primary technology for making the world habitable‖, the acquisition of which is considered ―the means of passage from life among the beasts into special status as a human being‖ (James S Clark et al, 1997: 71-72) The significance of water and fire explains their connotation of positive emotions when used as metaphors Nonetheless, water and fire are the main culprits of most of natural disasters such as flood, tsunami, burnings, forest fires, etc They are not the cause, but they inflict catastrophic damage on both properties and people Human beings have been learning to use and control water and fire for thousands of years, yet they still frequently suffer from great devastation every year The destructive power of water and fire is therefore undeniable in nature as well as in symbolism They are favorably used as metaphors to express negative strong emotions which can cause serious psychological damage such as rage, hatred, depression, etc Even good feelings like joy, love, desire and so forth can result in bad consequences if there is too much in amount and level, just as too much water or fire is not

a likable condition Understandably the constructive and destructive properties of water and fire are the bases of their function as metaphors in the description of strong emotions

An interesting question regarding water and fire is that why these two opposing elements can denote the same meaning, an emotion in particular The answer is simple: water and fire are interlinked in terms of physics and chemistry Physically fire makes water evaporate; water can extinguish fire In chemistry, hydrogen is a combustible substance; oxygen maintains combustion; the combination of hydrogen and oxygen creates water Pháp Nhật (2008) has an exciting explanation of the correlation between water and fire with the notion of ―the friendship of water and fire‖ on the website www.daophatngaynay.com Fire uses its heat to lift water to the sky Water evaporates and turns into clouds With the help of wind water, in the form of clouds, falls onto the earth, and creates life Water and fire dissolve into each other, becoming a beautiful symbol of life Water exists in fire and vice versa This explanation is saturated with spiritual color; however, it partly helps clarify the assumption ―water and fire are one‖, and also the fact that both of them, though contrastive, can convey the same messages

As regards the difference in the viewpoints toward water and fire of American writers and Vietnamese writers, let us take two concepts of water culture and fire culture by Trần Ngọc Thêm (Nước, Văn hoá và Hội nhập, www.anviettoancau.net) into consideration According to him the East (including Vietnam) belongs to the hot region, which needs water to get cool Water has an immense effect on Vietnamese people in religions, beliefs, communications, economy and the globalization Consiquenlty Vietnamese culture is water culture with the favor of cumulation, just as water flows down On the contrary, America is in the cold region, where fire is vital to people’s life This can be seen clearly in Jack London’s stories about the Northland, in which people struggle against nature to build

up fire for their survival (see To build a fire, Love of life, Law of life) Additionally, just as

fire flares up, American people like clarity and straightforwardness rather than indirectness To state it briefly, like water with the Vietnamese, fire is significant in American society and culture It is reasonable that the warmth and light from fire give way

to good feelings to American people rather than the coldness and wetness of water

As verified above, describing strong emotions such as hope, anger, fear, love, happiness, unhappiness, faith, indifference, hatred, embarrassment, passion, shame, pride, triumpth, pain, and desire is the most conspicuous function of water and fire metaphors They are painted with an amazing brush through striking metaphorical expressions Let us have an in-depth analysis of the descriptions of these feelings

First of all, LOVE-IS-WATER and LOVE-IS-FIRE are among the most typical conceptual metaphors, which are elaborated and extended with varied linguistic expressions The noticeable common features between love and water is that they are subtle, gentle, pleasant and especially essential to life, while sometimes immensely strong

For example, the sentence ―There was romance sprinkled all over Dave Walsh‖ (Flush of

gold, Jack London) describes a man in love for the first time and enjoying its freshness

Love as water is ―sprinkled‖ over him, giving him a sensation that he is enjoying himself

in a shower Or love can break the barrier between people and people and bring them

closer together as in ―… waiting for that warm and liquid love to overflow the dam in her mother’s heart and pour over her‖ (Soon, Pam Durban) On occasion love is as strong as a flood, which can sweep over those involved – ―Rồi một cơn lũ tình yêu (a freshet of love)

đã cuốn chị và anh vào trong dòng xoáy (eddy current) của nó.‖ (Dưới ánh đèn nhiều màu,

Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Tú) – let them dive under the happiness or power that love brings about Love is not only water but also fire for fire is to one extreme warm and intense, yet to the other extreme formidable and fatal, just as love is passionate, arduous, daunting and

unavoidably hurtful This can explain the metaphor in ―They wooed her with equal ardor and fire” (The shadow and the flash, Jack London), in which the author embeds the

features of love in the features of ardor and fire: warm, passionate and also ferocious Vietnamese people also conventionally conceive love in terms of fire: the image of fire is either explicitly or implicity compared to love Some common metaphorical expressions

such as ―ngọn lửa lòng‖ (Hoàng Đạo, 1941), ―lửa ái tình‖ (Khái Hưng, 1936), ―lửa gần

rơm‖ (Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Tú, 19986) are easily discovered in Vietnamese literature with

lửa (fire) as the stem Apart from that, many fire-related adjectives are used to portray

different aspects of love such as ―bùng bùng‖, ―ngùn ngụt‖, ―nóng bỏng‖, or ―nguội tắt‖

In short, love is one of the most conspicuous strong emotions expressed with a wide variety of metaphorical expressions connected with water and fire

Happiness is another good feeling symbolized by both water and fire in the two literatures Happiness generates pleasure for human in the forms of cool water or warm fire Vietnamese and American writers once again meet at this point Sometimes they portray a person ―sinking‖ or ―warmimg themselves‖ in happiness Let us examine some examples to have a general view of the metaphor ―HAPPINESS-IS-WATER/FIRE‖ The

word ―bathe‖ in ―And Connie … bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy‖ (J C Oates, 1966)

picturesquely describes a girl who is enjoying the pleasure of happiness, like the pleasure a

person feels when taking a bath ―Overflowing with happiness‖ is an orthodox expression

in Vietnamese, whose manifestations are ―hạnh phúc tràn ngập‖ (Nguyễn Minh Châu, 1983), ―vui sướng tràn ngập‖ (Kim Lân, 1954), ―tràn trề hạnh phúc‖ (Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ, 1992, Nguyễn Khải, 1974), ―niềm vui đầy tràn‖ (Lê Minh Khuê, 1971) With

reference to fire, happiness is often associated with heat and light, the positive sides of fire

A happy family is described as ―ấm cúng‖ or ―đầm ấm‖ in Vietnamese Happiness brings light to life as in ―Chỉ thấy dì ngời ngời hạnh phúc‖ (Những người đàn bà bên sông, Thuỳ Dương) or ―His face suddenly lit with joy‖ (Everything that rises must converge, O’Connor) Stronger still, ―a wave of happiness‖ (Where I’m calling from, Raymond Carver) or ―bừng bừng sung sướng‖ (Hoa vông vang, Đỗ Tốn) describe an extremely

intense emotion with an enormous amount The study of 60 stories in English and Vietnamese exhibits a wide range of water and fire-related expressions of happiness

In addition to love and happiness, other positive feelings like belief and hope are depicted vividly with water and fire metaphors The identification of such emotions through water and fire is probably made as follows Life springs from and is developed with water Fire generates light, which luminates and guides human actions and thougths Both fire and water are natural forces with great strength, helping human kind in difficult times This can be compared with the power of hope and belief – they give people strength

and impetus in life As a resuts, people conceive belief as water that overbrims as in ―Đỗ

lại thấy lòng tràn đầy tin tưởng như buổi mới …‖ (Hoa vông vang, Đỗ Tốn) The movement of water also gives way to ―the rise and downfall of hope‖ (Soon, Pam

Durban) The state of a person with faith is also identified with the state of a person in

water – they are lifted; then they float as in the sentence ―She had poured the yearning of

her life into the songs, feeling buoyed with a faith beyond this world‖ (Bright and morning

star, Richard Wright) Besides, hope and belief can be generated, and certainly can be

extinguished like fire Such phrases as ―nhen nhóm (kindle) một hy vọng‖ (Những người đàn bà bên sông, Thuỳ Dương) or ―hy vọng mong manh … đã tắt (die out)‖ (Chiều sương,

Bùi Hiển) are remarkably popular in everyday language with Vietnamese people

In the same fashion, passion and desire are strictly-connected with fire because they

produce heat It is common to hear ―burning desire‖ (đam mê cháy bỏng) in both

languages Raymond Carver writes ―He could feel her kiss still burning on his lips‖

(Where I’m calling from), which portrays the passion in love, represented with a ―burning‖

kiss If the love is without passion, it is ―She kissed him, not suddenly, without heat‖

(Golden Land, William Faulkner) Vietnamese metaphors share this feature in common:

Love without passion is ―tình yêu … nguội tắt‖ (Mùa lạc, Nguyễn Khải) Too much heat

can burn people, just as too much desire lead to awful results like what Nguyễn Khải

writes in Mùa lạc: ―… những khát khao, những ước mơ đốt cháy trái tim (burn the heart),

…‖ Using fire to express dreams and enthusiasm is therefore a typical phenomenon in

American and Vietnamese cultures

In contrast, quite a large proportion of water and fire metaphors is engaged to very

strong negative emotions like fear, hatred and anger For instance, in The second tree from the corner (E B White, 1948), when the main character faces the doctor in the surgery, he

feels extremely frightened His fear is expressed via the image of water: ―A bright wave of fear swept cleanly over him.‖ With the words ―wave‖ and ―swept‖ the fear is depicted with

its great strength and fierceness closely-linked to the strength and fierceness of water in

great amount (wave), which can cause destruction by washing away everything The

readers can feel that the man is overwhelmed with fear Moreover, fear can be compared

with water on the basis of similarity: both make people cold The narrator in Sonny’s Blues

by James Baldwin says ―… felt that ice in my guts again, the dread I’d felt all afternoon‖

Ice, as a form of water under extrememly low temperature, is the most suitable image to describe great fear

While fear is recognized through the spiteful strength and coldness of with water, hatred is a complicated feeling which can be conceived in terms of both water and fire At

one time hatred is viewed as cold in ―A chill of hatred shook him‖ (The lame shall enter first, F O’Connor); at the other time it is perceived through the light of fire in ―… a gleam

of pure hatred flashed toward Sheppard‖ in the same story Vietnamese writers also

describe hatred as water and fire; for example, ―ngọn lửa căm thù‖ (Chiếc thuyền ngoài

xa, Nguyễn Minh Châu) or ―những cơn gớm ghét cứ dâng lên‖ (Biển cứu rỗi, Võ Thị

Hảo) This conception is quite hard to be encoded It is probably the danger of water and fire that arouses the feeling of hatred It can either drown or consume the person who carries it as well as the people around Or else, hatred is a complex strong emotion that can change the temperature inside the person, either cold or hot No matter how it is conceived, obviously hatred is successfully represented with covert comparison with water and fire

Likewise, anger with its destructive strength is colourfully expressed with metaphors

of fire and water The most popular image signifying anger in English is ―a burning eye‖

For instance, in the sentence “She watched the black field and the rain take him, her eyes burning.” (Bright and Morning Star, Richard Wright), the strong feeling of rage is

conceived in terms of fire as it is able to consume everything outside and inside the person What else can a mother feel when seeing her own son tormented and dead in front of her eyes? The mother in Bright and Morning Star is feeling she can eradicate her son’s enemies and also kill herself when the fire of fury is flaring up ferociously and controlling her Such examples are also present in bulk in Vietnamese short stories Vietnamese writers have fabulous ways to picture the deadly danger of wrath with the assistance of a

wide variety of vocabulary: ―nóng‖ (hot), ―sôi‖ (boiling), ―sôi sùng sục‖ (ferociously boiling), ―ngùn ngụt‖ (blazing), etc An illustration is the anger appears to boil the blood inside the person in Mùa hoa cải bên sông by Nguyễn Quang Thiều with the sentence

―Câu hỏi ấy làm máu ông sôi lên‖ The anger is perceived with the analogous feature of

fire and temperature of people in this state of mind: they give out unendurable heat Evidently there is not any more suitable and vivid way to sculpture anger than using fire metaphors The examples of water metaphors expressing anger are not less remarkable

Anger may be in the form of ―a raging torrent‖ (I want to know why, Sherwood Anderson), or ―a rush of anger‖ (The lame shall enter first, F O’Connor) The words

―torrent‖ and ―rush‖ show the potential vicious strength of anger that can destroy things

nearby In short, ANGER-IS-FIRE and ANGER-IS WATER metaphors are among the most incredible metaphors in terms of both variety and originality

Other bad feelings such as impatience, embarrassment and shame, unhappiness and disappointment, pain and bitterness are also in good portraits with water and fire metaphors, although they are not described with flowery but ordinary language

Vietnamese people are so familiar with such metaphors as ―nóng ruột‖, ―nôn nóng‖, or

more specifically ―lòng tôi nóng như lửa đốt‖ (Hậu thiên đường, Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ) to

express the emotion of impatience that they are not considered as metaphors This point can be applied to American culture in that the description of embarrassment or shame with

―burning cheeks‖ or ―ears burn‖ is everyday communicative language While impatience,

embarrassment and shame are presented via fire metaphors because they are the emotions that can emit heat, the feelings of unhappiness and pain are more intensely-attached to

water Some of the conventional metaphors in American stories regarding these emotions

are ―sunk in depression‖, ―saturated in depressions‖, ―sinking heart‖ (F O’Connor, 1965), or ―sinking sensation‖ (S Fitzgerald, 1922) Disappointment is described as ―tràn

trề‖ (Sau chớp là giông bão, Y Ban); or bitterness ―dâng lên‖ (Giăng sáng, Nam Cao) in

Vietnamese These expressions imply really huge amoung of water (so it overflows, overbrims or saturates people) Thus the feelings of unhappiness and disappointment are as strong as water in large quantity Though not distinguished, these common metaphorical constructions of strong negative emontions once again give evidence to the fact that water and fire are deeply imprinted in American and Vietnamese cultures

To sum up, with two conspicuous properties of constructive and destructive power, water and fire as metaphors prove to be a valuable tool to help people sense absolutely

mental abstractions, both positive like love, happiness, hope, faith, passion, desire, and

negative like anger, fear, unhappiness, indifference, hatred, embarrassment, shame or pain

Strong emotion-is-water and strong emotion-is-fire are conventional conceptual metaphors

in both American and Vienamese cultures People only need common sense to understand emotion-related metaphors because in their mind exist the following structural mappings:

 The cause, existence and intensity of fire and water represent the cause, existence and intensity of emotions

 The amount of fire and water is the level of emotions

 The danger of water and fire is the danger of strong emotions

 Damage done by the fire and water represents psychological damage due to strong emotions

However, there is a disagreement in the attitude towards water and fire between American people and Vietnamese people Perhaps due to the geological and cultural features, fire metaphors in American stories stir up more good feelings than water; this is true for water metaphors with the Vietnamese Further details can be seen at Appendix C, which summarizes the tenors and dimensions of water and fire metaphors with typical examples

in American and Vietnamese short stories

2.3.2 The creation of imagery

As a stylistic device, metaphors of water and fire make an enormous contribution to the formation of imagery in literature Apart from the concretization of abstract concepts like emotions, life, thoughts, memories, purity, or beauty, these metaphors create pictorial

images of concrete, normal things like light, hair, smoke, air, noise, sun, field, colours, etc

They paint pictures of scenes, things, people and their feelings in the readers’ minds with highly imaginative images so that they can be experienced at first hand and therefore enhance the joy of reading literary works The full overview of how imagey is created with fire and water metaphors is shown in appendix C, because the limited length of this paper makes it impossible to cover every point apart from some remarkable metaphorical images

for this point is the image of life in the story Love of life by Jack London In the desperate struggle for survival, life emerges with its all beauty and delicacy: ―… the dying life in him

flickered up and burned less dimly‖ Whoever sees the dying fire will understand how

gorgeous it is when flickering up once more before it faints then dies out Life is identified

in the same manner On the way to death the character in Love of life wants to live again at

a bright moment Life as fire is precious, beautiful but extremely fragile The image of ―a lamp before wind‖ is also a typical Vietnamese metaphor that implies a dying person

Therefore, when a life ends Vietnamese people say ―cuộc đời đã tắt‖ (Nguyên Hồng, 1943) or ―tàn đời‖ (Hồ Phương, 1949) Regarding memories, this sentence ―Something had kindled in the boy’s eyes, he was sure of it, some memory of the lost light‖ (The lame

shall enter first, F O’Connor) can illustrate the beauty and frailty of memories, which always exist in people’s minds, but often appear all of a sudden and sometimes last for a

very short moment The word ―kindle‖ perfectly displays all these features Beauty and

attraction of people are identified with the beauty and attraction of fire: they are warm, appealing but potentially dangerous Nguyễn Quang Thiều describes the beauty of puberty

with only one word in ―… dưới lớp áo tối màu, là tuổi dậy thì nóng hổi,‖ (Mùa hoa cải bên

sông, 1989) The adjective ―nóng hổi‖ infers something fresh and inviting, like the beauty

of a girl in her youth To sum up, the concretization of life, memories and attraction is an outstanding function of fire metaphors in both American and Vietnamese stories

Another similarity is that American and Vietnamese writesr use water metaphor to

make the ordinary things like light, hair, words, smoke, air, noise, health, people and things in large quantity, etc more extraordinary For example, moonlight is described charmingly in ―Glowing like a fired pine-knot, it illumined the great door and soft

showered the Negro shanties aligned along the single street of factory town‖

(Blood-burning moon, Jean Toomer) The verb ―shower‖ depicts a whole scene covered in the

water-like moonlight and also implies the beauty and freshness of that scene Or, hair

becomes more adorable when it appears in the form of ―silver wave‖ (Soon, Pam Durban),

or flows (―chảy dài xuống đường hông‖) in by Vũ Thị Thu Hồng, which indicates its

softness and pleasure to the touch To help readers Có một thời yêu imagine the large

quantity of people or things, such phrases as ―shower of heavy suitcases‖, ―a stream of people‖, ―the tide of things‖, etc are frequently utilized Vietnamese wirters provide readers with equally image-provoking metaphors like ―làn sóng người‖, ―dòng sông người‖, ―cơn mưa sao‖, ―trận mưa cây sắt‖, ―người ta cứ tràn lên‖, etc with which

readers can see the abundance as if it were in front of their eyes on the grounds that the bolded words in these metaphorical expressions all signigy the large amount and also the beauty of water Other sparkling descriptions of air, smoke, words, health and noise can be discovered through examples in 60 stories, which, due to the limitation of length, can not

be analysed in detail here In short, imagery created via water metaphors breathes life to ordinary soulless things, making them prominent with their beauty and grandeur

Beside the above conventional metaphorical contructions, conceptual metaphors of water and fire are also successfully extended and elaborated – two devices of ―poetic

reworking of ordinary metaphors‖ (Kovecses, 2002: 47) Let us consider this example: “…

listening to the dark-gold and fluid warmth that filled her mother’s voice, waiting for that warm and liquid love to overflow the dam in her mother’s heart and pour over her‖

(Soon, Durbam) The underlying conceptual metaphor in this sentence is WATER, which is developed through extending and elaborating processes Durbam

LOVE-IS-extends the source domain of water into warm water The property of warm water

stylistically relays a sweet feeling of love, intense but pleasant, a feeling existing only

between mother and child With the extended source domain, the metaphor continues to be

elaborated with a range of expressive vocabulary The ―dark-gold fluid warmth‖ serves as the intenseness of love; the ―dam‖ symbolizes an emotional barrier that separates the mother and her daughter; the activities of ―overflowing‖ and ―pouring‖ allow metaphorical

reference to breakdown of that barrier with the strength of love Some other prosaic metaphors having been made poetic with the recapture of an existing component – water –

in a decorative way include hope as a perverse spring (Soon, Durbam), anger as sizzling heat (Blood-burning moon, Jean Toomer), or heads of people as waves of the ocean (Bernice bobs her hair, Scott Fitzgerald) With reference to Vietnamese, Hoàng Đạo’s

description of life in Sắc không is a worthy illustration: ―Cuộc đời của sư ông êm ả quá, ngày này sang ngày khác trong sự tĩnh mịch phẳng lặng Mặt ao tù, như anh bảo Nhưng thật ra là mặt biển khi lặng sóng.‖ The source domain is extended into different forms of

water like a pond or sea Then the pond, viewed as stagnant, and the sea without active waves elaborately signify a seemingly flat and placid life, yet it contains potential

turbulence – the life of a priest Life is not an exception, but there are more extended and elaborated metaphors with water and fire in Vietnamese short stories; for example, the

description of light in Nắng mới by Bùi Hiển, love in terms of wave in Hoa vông vang by

Đỗ Tốn, hope for a better life in different states of fire, or a pleasant feeling as a souce of

fresh water in Mùa lạc by Nguyễn Khải, etc In short extended and elaborated metaphors

are the ones that animate ―still life‖ pictures thanks to their creation of imagery

Metphors in literature are not only extended or elaborated from conventional materials

in everyday language and thoughts but also exclusively invented by each writer; therefore, some images created with water and fire metaphors in American and Vietnamese short stories are truly distinctive First, some of American writers transfer their original thoughts into inimitable metaphorical concepts, for example, air as a sea, or comprehension as a point of fire Sherwood Anderson draws a vivid picture of horses as giants running on the

fields over which the soft spring air is like a sea: ―The horses were giants walking on the floor of sea With their breasts they pushed the waters of the sea before them They were pushing the waters out of the basin of the sea.‖ (The new Englander, 1921) The

perception of air in terms of a sea makes an invisible thing (air) observable The repetition

of ―sea‖ has an effect of showing the immensity and magnificence of the scene Another

weird metaphorical construction can be seen in this sentence ―At last there came a flicker

then a flame of comprehension across her face‖ (A worn path, Eudora Welty) Two

different forms of fire are employed to relay clarification of such abstraction as

comprehension From ―a flicker‖ – a small point of fire to ―a flame‖ – a large bright fire,

the comprehension is captured as from partial to total The dimension seen between ―a poing of fire‖ and ―comprehension‖ perhaps is the light – which can illuminate things The

degrees of light differ by ―flicker‖ or ―flame‖, expressing the levels of comprehension (a

little or much) Also, eccentric metaphors of water and fire are available in Vietnamese short stories, like shock and human soul in terms of water; triteness and memory in terms

of fire Such expressions as ―dội thêm choáng váng‖ (Hoa vông vang, Đỗ Tốn), ―dòng nước hồn chàng‖ (Nắng mới, Bùi Hiển), are peculiar manifestations of water metaphors

They are thus not noticed in everyday language as the tenors (shock and human soul) are

not ordinarily associated with the vehicle (water) Another example is ―Ai đã cầm máy ảnh

có kinh nghiệm đều biết đó là một cảnh chết cháy‖ (Chiếc thuyền ngoài xa, Nguyễn Minh

Châu), in which the concept indentified with the metaphor ―chết cháy‖ is extremely challenging to be explicated without the explanation that follows immediately: ―một đề tài

đã có quá nhiều người khai thác‖ If the triteness means something that has lost its

freshness due to long use, it is easy to map ―the death‖ onto this tenor, but why it is death caused by fire is beyond the imagination The connection between cliché and fire-related death is seen by Nguyễn Minh Châu only Nguyên Hồng has a more unorthodox

metaphorical construction in describing memory: ―… bất cứ hình sắc gì của mợ Du trong

cái cảnh buổi chiều ấy đều ngùn ngụt trước mặt tôi qua một thứ lửa tê tái toả ra cả ở

trong da thịt tôi‖ (Mợ Du, 1943) What aspects of ―thứ lửa tê tái‖ can we map onto memory? Even the combination of ―tê tái‖ (unbearable painful) and ―lửa‖ (fire) is stranger

still Obviously, the image metaphors reflect each writer’s artistic creativity and are thought-provoking to the readers; therefore, imagery in American and Vietnamese stories, thanks to them, becomes more arresting and adorable

To recap, contributing to the creation of imagery in short stories is a distinguished function of water and fire metaphors because not only does it demonstrate different thoughts and perceptions of American and Vietnamese people but also brings beauty and grandness to ordinary things around us The concretization and titivation of emotions, life, memories, light, air, hair, large amounts of people and things, etc via metaphorical expressions related to water and fire actually make readers absorbed in the developments

of the stories as well as the artistic use of language Not only similar in conceptions, American and Vietnamese writers have similarity in the way to pour them out: using conventional constructions, constructing their own expressions through extension and elaboration, or inventing one-shot metaphors themselves Afterall, metaphors, as a stylistic device, serve as a powerful tool to create novelty and nail literary images in people’s minds

2.4 Summary of the chapter

This chapter has been an attempt to clarify the use of water and fire as metaphors in American and Vietnamese short stories from linguistic and cultural perspectives The popularity, the creation and the functions of these metaphors have been so far investigated with the results clearly displayed via facts and figures

First, the study into 60 stories of both literatures has proved that water and fire metaphors are very popular with high density and a wide variety of expressions This popularity can be ascribed to the vital roles of water and fire as natural forces in social life and cultures all over the world Thoughts and actions of people are directed by the ideas they have about the strength, role, and influence of water and fire; thus, communication and language use are also under their domination

Due to the tremendous impact of water and fire on the way people reason and use language, writers tend to employ all lexical items associated, both directly and indirectly, with the forms, activities, properties and consequences of water and fire to construct metaphors The comprehensive exploration in the vocabulary repertoire in American and Vietnamese stories shows relatively sufficient lexical items utilized as metaphorical expressions The most notable difference discovered between English and Vietnamese lies

in the feature of Vietnamese as a monosyllabic language: Vietnamese has larger choice of descriptive vocabulary related to water and fire

Apart from lexical items, the creation of water and fire is also examined through parts

of speech The study reveals the fact that first preference is given to verbs by both American and Vietnamse writers This also means that dynamism is the most conspicuous stylistic feature of water and fire metaphors However, Vietnamese people tend to impose their attitudes on their statements by using adjectives, while American people are more