Tìm hiểu ý nghĩa của danh từ love trong một số cụm từ trong tiếng anh xét từ góc độ ngữ nghĩa học tri nhận

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN THỊ THƠM THE MEANINGS OF THE NOUN LOVE

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

NGUYỄN THỊ THƠM

THE MEANINGS OF THE NOUN LOVE

IN SOME ENGLISH EXPRESSIONS (FROM COGNITIVE SEMANTICS PERSPECTIVE)

(TÌM HIỂU Ý NGHĨA CỦA DANH TỪ LOVE

TRONG MỘT SỐ CỤM TỪ TRONG TIẾNG ANH

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

NGUYỄN THỊ THƠM

THE MEANINGS OF THE NOUN LOVE

IN SOME ENGLISH EXPRESSIONS (FROM COGNITIVE SEMANTICS PERSPECTIVE)

(TÌM HIỂU Ý NGHĨA CỦA DANH TỪ LOVE TRONG MỘT SỐ CỤM TỪ TRONG TIẾNG ANH

XÉT TỪ GÓC ĐỘ NGỮ NGHĨA HỌC TRI NHẬN)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm

Hanoi - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgement……… i

Certificate of originality of study project report……… ii

Abstract……… iii

Table of contents……….iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION ……… 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Research question 3

5 Organization of the study 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORITICAL BACKGROUND 4

1.1 Cognitive semantics 4

1.2 Cognitive metaphor theory 5

1.2.1 Structural metaphors 6

1.2.2 Orientational metaphors 12

1.2.3 Ontological metaphors 13

1.3 Image schemas 15

1.4 Collocation 16

1.5 The notion love in English 17

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 20

2.1 Research question 20

2.2 Data collection 20

2.3 Analytical framework 20

2.3.1 Love is a container 21

2.3.2 Love is a journey 21

2.3.3 Love is a fluid in a container 21

2.3.4 Love is madness 21

2.3.5 Love is insanity 21

2.3.6 Love is rapture 22

2.3.7 Love is natural/ physical forces 22

2.3.8 Love is fire/ heat 22

2.3.9 Love is a nutrient 22

2.3.10 Love is a valuable commodity (in an economic exchange) 23

2.3.11 Love is a social superior and opponent 23

2.3.12 Love is a patient 23

2.3.13 Love is war 23

2.3.14 Love is a captive animal 23

2.3.15 Love is a unity (of two complementary parts) 23

2.3.16 Love is a hidden object 24

2.3.17 Love is magic 24

2.3.18 Love is a plant 24

2.3.19 Love is a collaborative work of art 24

2.4 Data analysis and discussion 24

2.4.1 Love is a container 25

2.4.2 Love is fire/ heat 27

2.4.3 Love is a social superior and opponent 27

2.4.4 Love is a valuable commodity 29

2.4.5 Love is natural/ physical forces 30

2.4.6 Love is a fluid in a container 31

2.4.7 Love is a journey 31

2.4.8 Love is a nutrient 33

2.4.9 Love is rapture 34

2.4.10 Love is insanity 35

2.4.11 Love is a unity (of two complementary parts) 35

PART III: CONCLUSION 37

1 Major findings 37

2 Implications 38

3 Suggestions for further study 39

REFERRENCES……… 40

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Language is a means to express people‟s thought It is also used to express people‟s emotions, feelings including love, hate, anger, etc In Talmy‟s view, language is a major cognitive system in its own right, distinct from the other major ones: perception, reasoning, affect, attention, memory, cultural structure, and motor control As such, language has some structural properties that are uniquely its own and some others that are in common either with only a few other cognitive systems, or with all other cognitive systems (Talmy, 2000a: 16)

In recent years, the study of emotions has been one of the most important areas of research

in the Social Sciences

Expressing love is not an easy task and different languages may have different conventions In our daily life love is an important emotion Love is not clearly defined in our experience and may be inconceivable without using metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 85) Love, as well as other feeling and emotions, is quite an abstraction It is difficult for us, if not impossible, to comprehend these concepts without metaphor According to Lakoff, we conceptualized the more abstract concept in terms of more concrete, “the non-physical in

terms of the physical” (Lakoff, 1980: 59) This present study investigates the concept of love

in some English set expressions The theory of metaphor from the point of view of cognitive linguistics (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Lakoff, 1993, 1987; Kovecses, 2002) is adopted in this study This new approach on metaphor states that metaphor is a

process of understanding our world, particularly those abstract concepts such as love which are

often expressed in terms of more concrete ones Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 7) point out that:

“Since metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, we can use expressions to study the nature of metaphorical concepts and to gain an understanding of the metaphorical nature of our activities.” The metaphorical concept

Love is a journey is reflected in contemporary English through a wide variety of expressions

(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 44-45):

It's been a long, bumpy road

This relationship is a dead-end street

We're spinning our wheels

The marriage is on the rocks

Our relationship is off the track

In the above examples, love is structured by the concept of a journey These everyday English expressions are used for reasoning about love The metaphor can be understood as a mapping exercise from a source domain (in this case, journeys) to a target domain (in this case love) Entities in the domain of love correspond systematically to entities in the domain of a journey (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 207-208)

Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 29) claim that “…most of our non-physical reality is structures, understood, and created by metaphors…” We come to know our thoughts and feelings by analogy to the physical world Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed that metaphor was a basis structure of understanding through which we conceptualize on domain (the target domain which is unfamiliar or abstract) in terms of another (the source domain, most often familiar and concrete)

In short, the conceptual metaphor of love is conventional in different languages, so I applied the theory of conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Lakoff, 1993, 1987; Kovecses, 2002) to the study of recognition of metaphors of love in some

English expressions of love It is expected that this study will provide invaluable

understanding of correspondence between the domain of love experience and another domain

of experience

2 Aims of the study

The present study aims at studying the conceptualization of the noun love in some English expressions of love The qualities of love are identified in English based on analyzing the data under the study

3 Scope of the study

This study focuses on investigating how love is conceptualized in English evidenced in

115 English expressions of love

There are three different categories according to the function of metaphors: Structural, orientaitonal, and ontological metaphors (Kovecses, 2002: 32, 33) In this study, structural metaphors was used as the analytical framework

4 Research question

The question addressed in this study is:

- How is love conceptualized in English evidenced in some English expressions of love?

5 Organization of the study

The study comprises 3 parts

Part I provides the significance, aims, framework, scope and organization of the study Part II is subdivided into 2 chapters: Chapter 1 provides the general theoretical background

of the study and Chapter 2, the backbone of the study It provides the data collection, the analytical framework and data analysis

Part III demonstrates the major findings of the study, implications and suggestions for further cognitive studies Appendix and references are also included

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORITICAL BACKGROUND

In this study, cognitive semantics, especially the theory of cognitive metaphor is the main interest which provides gateways for the understanding and analysis of linguistics expressions

containing the word love which are the object of the study This chapter explores the field of

cognitive semantics, thus enabling the writer to provide a thorough theoretical framework or background for the study

1.1 Cognitive semantics

A new semantic theory, called cognitive semantics, has been developed (Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1986, 1987; Croft and Cruse, 2004; Evans, 2006) The prime slogan for cognitive

semantics is: Meanings are in the head More precisely, semantics for a language is seen as a

mapping from the expressions of the language to some cognitive or mental entities Langacker (1986a: 3) formulates it crisply: “Meaning is equated with conceptualization.” This paradigm

of semantics is thus conceptualistic or cognitivistic It rejects the formal traditions of attributing linguistics into phonology, syntax, pragmatics, etc., and that the meaning is independent from syntax Moreover, cognitive semantics states that meanings come from our mind; or rather, meanings are in the head (Gardenfors, 1994)

An important tenet of cognitive semantics is that the structures in our heads that are carrying the meanings of words are of the same nature as those that are created when we

perceive- when we see, hear, touch, etc different things (Gardenfors, 2007: 58)

Cognitive semantics is concerned with investigating the relationship between experience, the conceptual system, and the semantic structure encoded by language In specific terms,

scholars working in cognitive semantics investigate knowledge representation (conceptual

structure), and meaning construction (conceptualization) Cognitive semanticists have

employed language as the lens through which these cognitive phenomena can be investigated Consequently, research in cognitive semantics tends to be interested in modeling the human

mind as much as it is concerned with investigating linguistic semantics (Vyvyan, 2007)

Cognitive semantics has established close ties between semantics and cognition Cognitive semantics as a multi-disciplinary theory of language attempts to describe language phenomena from a cognitive, cultural and physiological point of view taking into account the sociological and anthropological differences as well as the experiential realisms and natural surroundings that are embodied A major question in cognitive semantics research is how

different languages and cultures utilize the resource in the language system (the grammar and lexicon) to construe the world

Thus, the use of cognitive semantics as an approach to human discourse seen through underlying conceptual schema patterns could be significant an understanding cross-cultural communication Cognitive semantics, in general, agrees that there are universal as well as language specific construal For instance, Asmah (1996) and Yu (2003) have found that the conceptualization and metaphorisation of the body is influenced by and interacts with the folk cultural elements in society Kovecses (1999) also agrees that the conceptualization of the body and body parts is in the large part culture-specific with several universal conceptual structures at the categorical and schematic level

1.2 Cognitive metaphor theory

The Cognitive Theory of Metaphor - initiated by Reddy‟s (1979) study on the “conduit metaphor”- had been developed mainly by Lakoff, Johnson and their colleagues (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987, 1993; Lakoff &Turner, 1989) It met with wide response It is also called Conceptual Metaphor Theory It is one of the first products of cognitive semantics Conceptual Metaphor Theory is an area of research which deals with the concept of metaphorical language Conceptual metaphors pervade our thoughts and are reflected through our language Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 3) state that: "Our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of In most of the little things we do everyday, we simply think and act more or less automatically certain lines Just what these lines are is by no means obvious One way to find out is by looking at language.” Lakoff and Johnson (1980) pointed out that the concepts that govern our thoughts govern our everyday functioning Our concepts structure what and how we perceive and experience the world Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor

They (1980) also identify metaphor as a transfer between the source domain and the target domain This has become known as the “two-domain theory” of metaphor The cognitive view on metaphor regards it as cognitive mechanism whereby one conceptual domain (source domain) is partially mapped, that is, projected, onto another conceptual domain (target domain) The target domain (abstract conceptual reality) is then understood in

terms of the source domain (physical reality) According to Lakoff (1994: 43), metaphor is thus “a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system” Let‟s look at the examples:

Life is difficulty

Love is a journey

Argument is war

Anger is a hot fluid in a container

As we can see in the examples above, life, love, argument and anger are target domain, while difficulty, journey, war and a hot fluid in a container are source domain (Kovecses,

2002: 6) In order to understand the target domain in terms of source domain, we have to have appropriate knowledge of the source domain (Lakoff & Turner, 1989: 60)

To sum up, according to Lakoff and Johnsons‟ research (1980), from everyday expressions we know that most of our concepts are partially understood in terms of other concepts and that most of human beings‟ normal conceptual system is metaphorical

Lakoff and Johnson identify three types of metaphors: structured, orientational and ontological In the following sections, a brief discussion of each type of metaphor will be outlined

1.2.1 Structural metaphors

According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 40) state that structural metaphor refers to a conceptual metaphor that is constructed from one conceptual structure to another In other words, in the structural metaphor model, one concept is understood and expressed in terms of another structured, sharply defined concept With the help of the structural metaphor, we can

use the words concerning one concept to talk about another concept For instance, war is a concept that is frequently mapped onto the target domain such as argument As we know war

is a concrete concept that we are very familiar with, so we often talk about argument in terms

of war Moreover, we also know that war is a very complex process that involves plan, attack,

defense, counterattack, fight, win, lose, truce, etc., while argument is complex and abstract

concept As a result, the knowledge of war can be used to talk about the unknown abstract

Your claims are indefensible

He attacked every weak point in my argument

His criticisms were right on target

I demolished his argument

I‟ve never won an argument with him

You disagree? Okay, shoot!

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

He shot down all of my arguments (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 4)

In Lakoff and Johnson‟s (1980) examples, we see that although there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle we perform in arguing These expressions are all structured by the

underlying conceptual metaphor Argument is war Arguments and wars are different kinds of

things and the actions performed are different kinds of actions But we can use our knowledge

about war to understand and to talk about argument Here, war is the source domain, and

argument is the target domain Therefore, the knowledge from the source domain is mapped

onto the target domain Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 148) assert that the similarities between war and argument do not exist independently of the metaphor

Such these linguistic metaphors are grounded in ourselves and our own human traits and actions, it makes them easier to understand (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003: 30; Kovecses, 2002: 35)

Conceptual metaphors are understood as cognitive devices which provide a link between the concrete knowledge of the world people hold in their memory and the figurative meaning

of a given expression Some of the most typical conceptual metaphors that characterize emotions include as the followings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; and Kovecses, 1986):

LOVE IS A CONTAINER: He is in love; He entered a state of euphoria; We are out of

trouble now; etc (Lakoff 1980: 32) clearly show that we conceptualize our emotions and states

as a container and conceptualize what we feel and experience as being inside it (Lakoff 1980: 30).This type of metaphor turns our experiences into objects or substances So in English we can say we‟re “in love”, which suggests we‟re in a container called “love” What‟s more, we can have a “falling out”, when we fall out of the container metaphorically speaking

LOVE IS A JOURNEY: Look how far we have; We are at a crossroads; We shall just have to go our separate ways; I do not think this relationship is going anywhere; Where are we?; We are stuck; We have gotten off the track (Lakoff 1980:44-45).Who loved, who has

loved, who is loving, all find that “The course of true love never did run smoothly”

(Shakespeare) In English this metaphor is not homogeneous in nature, as it refers to different

kinds of journeys “Car trip: It‟s been a long, bumpy road; Train trip: We‟ve gotten off the tracks; Sea voyage: Our marriage is on the rocks”, the fact that they “are all journey metaphors, makes them coherent” (Lakoff 1980:45)

LOVE IS A FLUID IN A CONTAINER: Warm feelings welled up inside him; He

poured out his affections on her; She couldn't hold in her love for him any longer (Kovecses;

2002) Love as well as the passion, when reaching a limit, must find a way out Thus the correspondences with the two domains and structured and we get metaphorical entailment or carryover from the source domain to the target domain: when the intensity of love increases, the fluid rises

LOVE IS MADNESS: I am crazy about her; She drives me out of my mind; He has

gone mad over her; I am just wild about Harry; I am insane about her; (Lakoff & Johnson;

1980: 49) Wild, mad, angry and crazy are well-understood by us We do not have any

difficulties in specifying our feeling or behavior when we experience any of these emotions or mental states As we know madness with all its implications belongs to our most natural and basic experiences and therefore gives us a clue of how we feel about love

LOVE IS INSANITY: I'm crazy about her; She drives me out of my mind; He

constantly raves about her; I'm just wild about Harry (Lakoff & Johnson; 1980; Kovecses,

1986) Love is represented as mental illness, such that the person causing the insanity represents the person with whom one is in love, the insane person represents the person in love, and the insane behavior represents the behavior of the person in love.) The behavior of the person affected by the emotion usually is very similar to the behavior of an insane person Insanity is the ultimate lack of control The rational self loses all control as a result of an intense psychological force and becomes completely irrational (Lakoff, 1980; Kovecses, 2000)

LOVE IS RAPTURE: I am giddy with love; She was drunk with emotion (Kovecses,

1986) Kovecses (2000: 74) states the emotion is view as some kind of alcoholic beverage capable of affecting a person‟s intellectual abilities in adverse way The metaphor captures the idea of the inability to speak and think

LOVE ARE NATURAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES: I could feel the electricity

between us, I was magnetically drawn to her; They are uncontrollably attracted to each other;

His whole life revolves around her; The atmosphere around them is always charged; There is incredible energy in their relationship (Lakoff 1980:49) This metaphor arises naturally from

our awareness of the external world According to the discoveries of such scientists as Newton, Einstein and others we have learned about natural forces, magnetism, electricity, gravitation, etc Moreover, we can observe, measure and try them, and through them we can define and measure the strength of our emotions

LOVE IS FIRE/ HEAT: I am burning with love; Love is fire that melts the snow

(Kovecses, 2002) This means that “fire and heat metaphors” are used to described love The

meeting-point of Fire and Heat is the doctrine of bodily humors, in which the idea of the

emotions as contain in the body may partly originate (Geeraerts & Grondealaers, 1995; Gevaert, 2005)

LOVE IS A NUTRIENT: She's starved for affection; He’s love-starved; He hungered

for love (Kovevses, 1986) Here love is represented as necessary sustenance The nutrient

metaphor for love utilizes chiefly the “hunger/ thirst” and the corresponding “desire/ effect” aspect of the concept nutrient

LOVE IS A BOND: There is a close tie between them; She has an attachment to him;

There are romantic ties between them; There is something between them (Kovecses; 1987)

Love is represented as a physical connection between the lovers

LOVE IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY (IN AN ECONOMIC EXCHANGE): I gave

her all my love; I didn't get much in return; What am I getting out of this relationship anyway?; I am putting more into this than you are; She's invested a lot in that relationship

(Kovecses, 1986) These metaphors express how love can be given, handed over, and assigned

a value As a commodity that can be exchanged, people expect to receive something back (that

is love) when they give it away Love is represented as a valuable substance to be traded, thus entailing mutuality of the trade and comparability of the amounts traded

LOVE IS A SOCIAL SUPERIOR AND OPPONENT: She was ruled by her emotions;

His emotions dominate his actions; She was struggling with her feelings of love; He was

seized by emotion (Kovecses, 2000: 70) In this metaphor, we have two forces: the superior

that is the emotion and the inferior that corresponds to the person Here love is represented as

a foe in a fight, such that winning the fight represents maintaining control over one's feelings

of love and losing or surrendering represents loss of control According to Kovecses (2000: 70): “This metaphor primarily applies to a person whose behavior is controlled by emotion,

not by reason… A superior has long-term control over an inferior, whose behavior over a long

period of time.”

LOVE IS A PATIENT: This is a sick relationship; They have a strong, healthy

marriage; We are getting back on our feet; Their marriage is on its last legs; It is a tired

affair; It takes time to cure one’s heart (Lakoff 1980:49) Obviously, it isfolly to pretend that one wholly recovers from a disappointed passion Such wounds always leave a scar Most of

us know what it means to be ill; it is a very basic experience for all human beings, which is why we are able to comprehend this aspect of anyrelationship

LOVE IS WAR metaphor makes us think that this aspect of love namely war, for

examples, He is known for his rapid conquests; She fought for him but his mistress won out;

He overpower her; He made an ally of her mother; He is slowly gaining ground with her

(Lakoff & Johnson; 1980: 49) These examples clearly show that we not only talk about love

in term of war We can actually fight for a person in order to save a relationship Any war presupposes two different sides, between which the fight is going on, we see the same situation in a marriage: either the partners can attack the other (the competition between male

and female), or the enemy can come from the outside To fight, an ally, to overpower, to gain

ground or battalions, etc are instances of the same defining domain, that of war (Lakoff,

1980: 61-68) We coherently use the war terminology when talking about feeling

LOVE IS CAPTIVE ANIMAL: He couldn't hold back his love; She let go of her

feelings (Kovecses, 1986); Her love is not the hare that I do hunt (Shakespeare) Kovecses

(1986)‟ view Love is captive animal metaphor is a conventional metaphor in which love is

represented as a captive animal, external to the person in love but held onto by him or her, such that letting the animal loose represents loss of control over the feelings of love, and holding onto the animal represents retention of control According to Lakoff (1987: 392-395), this metaphor characterizes our attempts to control our “wild” and irrational emotion

LOVE IS A UNITY OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS: We're one They’re

breaking up; We’re inseparable Theirs is a perfect match She is my better half (Kovecses,

1986) These instances form a whole correspond to the lovers in a relationship It is the particular complementary functions of each part (i.e the two lovers) tried to emphasis by the

unity metaphor in conceptualizing love This conceptual metaphor entails the notion that

finding love, living somebody, or being in a relationship is what makes a human being a

complete entity It contains the central notion that real love is the union with that better half that needs to be searched for and found in life (Kovecses, 1986)

LOVE IS A HIDDEN OBJECT: He sought for love in the wrong places; His search for

love wasn't successful; You're lucky to have found her (Kovecses, 1986) In this kind of

metaphor, love is represented as a hidden object to be sought after

LOVE IS A PLANT: Their love just begins to sprout lately; My love for him has grown

gradually; Their love has yielded positive results; Her love starts to root (Lai and Ahrens,

2001) Love as a plant is a conventional metaphor in which an idea is thought of as a plant in

comparisons such as the following: the stages of growth and fruition of the plant represent the stages of development of an emotion and the branches represent relates disciplines (Lakoff &

Johnson, 1980) This metaphor also states that love is understood as plant because plants

involve physical growth and love involves emotional growth

LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART: This metaphor is unconventional metaphor It is the product of two ordinary people attempting to make sense of their everyday love experience (Kovecses, 2002: 36) This emphasizes the more action- oriented aspect of it

If love is a collaborative work of art, the two lovers should be able to work out their common goals, the premises of the work, the responsibilities that they do or do not share The unconventionality of this conceptual metaphor is shown by the fact that Lakoff and Johnson (1980) do not provide any metaphorical linguistic expressions to demonstrate it The reason is that there are no such conventionalized expressions (Kovecses, 2002)

LOVE IS MAGIC: She cast her spell over me; The magic is gone; I was spellbound; She had me hypnotized; He has me in trance; I am charmed by him; She is bewitching

(Lakoff 1980:49) For centuries humans have been fascinated with things connected with magic, as it provided the explanation for the unknown We are unlikely to find out how the very sensation of love appears, that is why we call it magic This metaphor is extremely

productive in English, moreover, the verbs to hypnotize, to cast spell are most commonly used

when talking about women‟sability to charm men, and not vice versa

1.2.2 Orientational metaphors

Another kind of the cognitive metaphor which Lakoff and Johnson have called is orientational metaphor They claim that “one that does not structure one concept in terms of another but instead organizes a whole system of concept with respect to one another” and

“Spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they

function a they do in our physical environment” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 14) The cognitive function of orientational metaphors is to allow for coherency among the target concepts in the conceptual system Most of the metaphors in this category have to do with the basic human spatial orientations: up – down, in – out, front – back, on – off, deep – shallow, central – peripheral In the following part, I will take up/ down orientation as an example to illustrate how orientational metaphors act in set expressions

Good is up; bad is down

Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 16) mentioned “the physical basic of a personal well-being: happiness, health, life, and control-the things that principally characterize what is good for a person-are all up.” Let‟s look at the examples below:

(1) I‟m feeling up

(Tôi đang vui.)

(2) It‟s polite to yield up your seat on the bus to an old lady

(Anh hãy lịch sự nhường ghế cho người già.)

(3) He lives down and out

(Anh ấy đang thất cơ lỡ vận.)

(4) I fell into a depression

(Tôi rất chán nản.)

As we can see the examples above, the up/ down metaphors in the English expressions are different form of the equivalents in Vietnamese Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 14-21) also state that the orientational metaphors are based on physical and cultural experience They can vary from culture to culture They are culture-specific, that is, not all cultures give priority to the up – down orientation In some cultures more emphasis may, for example, be put on an active-passive orientation or in-out orientation

1.2.3 Ontological metaphors

Ontological metaphors are “ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 25) in order to refer to them, categorize them, group them and qualify them We conceive of our experience in terms of objects, substances, and containers in general, without specifying what object, substance or container

is meant (Kovecses, 2002: 34) Ontological metaphors provide a more delineated structure to undesignated experiences The following examples illustrate the way in which these metaphors are used

(1) My fear that she should leave proved to be totally unfounded (referring)

(2) She is full of hatred for the one who killed her friend (quantifying)

(3) The enormity of the task caused him to quit the job (identifying cause)

(4) The brutality of the genocide shocked people all over the world (identifying aspects)

Lakoff & Johnson (1980) assert that people hardly notice metaphors such as these, because they are so basic to everyday conceptualization and functioning They are nevertheless a means by which people understand either non-physical or not clearly bounded things as entities

Understanding our experiences in terms of objects and substances allow us to pick out parts of our experience and treat them as discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind Container metaphor is the most typical kind of ontological metaphor We are physical beings, bounded and separated from the rest of the world by the surface of our skins, and we experience the rest of the world outside us According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 29) “Each

of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an out orientation We project our own out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by surfaces.” Thus we also view them as containers with an inside and an outside Let‟s look at examples below:

in-(1) He is out of sight

(2) We‟re out of trouble now

(3) He fell in love with him

In the above examples, sight, trouble, and love are all abstract concepts which are

metaphorically viewed as concrete concept being boundaries

Moreover, Kovecses (2002: 35) expresses the opinion that personification is to be conceived of as a form of ontological metaphor Personification is an ontological metaphor which allows us to use knowledge of itself to maximal effect, to use insights to help them comprehend such things as forces of nature, common events, abstract concepts, and inanimate objects (Lakoff & Turner, 1989: 72) Just how common personification is in literature and everyday discourse becomes apparent in the examples below:

(1) Death is a thief

(2) The wind whistled in the chimney

(3) Life has cheated her

The non-human entities death, wind, and life are given qualities, such as robbing,

whistling, and cheating In this way, humans can come to a better understanding of the abstract

concepts, for the person now serves as the source domain

Lakoff and Turner (1989: 73) insist that “In some metaphors, a person in one schema is understood in terms of a person in another” that is related to

1.3 Image schemas

Image-schemas, for instance, container, path, force, part-whole,

centre-periphery, and link are meaningful, dynamic patterns which recur in everyday action and

thought and which allow us to mentally structure our experiences and perceptions (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987, 1989; Turner, 1992, 1996; Gibbs and Colston, 1995) In Johnson‟s words (1987: 29) “image schemata operates at a level of mental organization that falls between abstract propositional structures, on the one side, and particular concrete images, on the other”

We usually map this image schema onto abstract target domains which do not inherently contain image, such as wakefulness, alertness and living, to be understood in terms

of physical objects and spatial relations Image schemas can be divided into five schemas as

follow (Lakoff, 1987: 272-275) For Lakoff (1987), the container schema that defines the predicates in and out would work as the basis for understanding the body as a container, the visual field, and set models, among others The part-whole schema is transferred to domains such as families, teams, organizations, marriage, etc The link schema helps conceptualize social and interpersonal relationships The centre-periphery schema gives us the difference

between the important things or matters, understood as central, and less important or

secondary matters considered to be peripheral Finally, the source-path-goal schema gives the

clue for purposes in our daily life as destinations of a journey

According to Lakoff (1987), these image schemas might be so deeply grounded in common human experience that they constitute universal linguistic cognitive structures Many

of the schemas clearly derive from the most immediate of all our experience of the human body

Johnson (1987) explained the mechanism of transfer from some domains into more abstract domains According to this author, there are metaphors that map image into abstract domains, preserving their basic logic The metaphors used are not arbitrary but motivated by structures inherent in everyday bodily experience

1.4 Collocation

In recent linguistic studies, the term “collocation” is often associated with Firth (1957) Firth maintains that meaning by collocation is lexical meaning “at the syntagmatic level” Firth (1951, quoted in Palmer, 1981: 75) claimed that: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” and this keeping company- collocation, he called, was part of the meaning

of a word.”

Collocation, as is defined by Robbins (1989: 65), is the habitual association of a word in

a language with other particular words in sentences Leech (1974: 20) also discusses collocative meaning He holds that collocative meaning comprises the associations a word acquires by virtue of the meanings of words which are likely to occur in its environment Palmer (1981: 76) argues that collocation is not simply a master of association of ideas;

it is sometimes fairly idiosyncratic and cannot be predicted by virtue of the meaning of the

associated words For example, white pain is common enough to say, but white milk is not, though milk is white; and blond hair is acceptable while blond door is not, though with the same color Other examples are those of “rancid” and “addle” meaning stale, rotten, bad:

“rancid” collocating only with bacon and butter, “addle” with brains and eggs, and “milk” with neither “rancid” nor “addle” but with sour

In Baker‟s discussion of collocation (1992: 49), every lexeme can be said to have a collocational range, which refers to the set of collocates or other words typically associated with the word in question Some words have a broader collocational range than others, for instances, “run” and “shrug” at the end of the scale “Run” has a vast collocational range with

some of its typical collocates, such as company, business, show, car, stockings, tights, nose,

wild, debt, bill, course, water, and color among others In contrast, “Shrug” has a restricted

collocational range, typically collocating with shoulders

Beekman and Callow (1974, quoted in Baker, 1992: 50) suggests two main factors that can influence the collocational range of a word One is its level of specificity: the more general a lexeme is, the broader it is collocational range; the more specific it is, the more

restricted its collocational range For example, “bury” collocating with people, a treasure,

one’s head, feelings, and memories; but “inter” with people only The second factor is the

number of senses the world has The tends to attract a different set for each sense; for

example, “run”, in its sense of manage, collocates with company, institution and business; in

its sense of operate or provide, it occurs with “service” or “course” It follows that there is a

strong relationship between the number of senses of a word and its collocational range

It is obvious that collocation involves the associations of ideas, and the meaning of the entire expression can be predicted from the meaning of individual lexemes Some collocations, however, are idiosyncratic and the meaning cannot be predicted from the meaning of individual lexemes Collocation can be unrestricted with a wide collocational range, but restricted with a limited collocational range

1.5 The notion love in English

In principle, sadness, anger, and fear are emotions, and so is love In general, it is

usually considered that emotions are natural body-experiences that are then expressed through language and that language, in turn, is often described as irrational and subjective That is, what we first feel our bodies, later comes out of our mouths in the form of a discourse which

is, in some way, opposed to reason Emotions are also said to be gestated in the unconscious and not in the will Recently, it is considered that emotions are not the exclusive preserve of the individual‟s interiority, process, determinants, and consequences of emotions depend on language use Thus, we will deal with the strict relationship between emotions and language Especially, we will deal with one emotion, which has been, in the history of mankind in

Western culture, really important (Oatley, 2004) We refer to love, understood in the broadest

sense Love has helped to define the essence of human-beings Without a history of love and lovers, we would know nothing on how to cope with such a fundamental emotion as well as on why this particular emotion has been investigated in its many facets and the strength of the interest when it comes to the relationship between emotions and language

Collins Cobuild Dictionary (2003: 855) defines love as a very strong feeling of affection

towards someone whom you are romantically or sexually attracted to

The instances of the noun love were first categorized according to their participants, at

least one of whom (or which) experiences love, and one is the target/cause(r) object of love,

mutually being ideal The notion of participant domains is included in the definitions, because

one cannot always strictly pinpoint who or what (animal, imaginary being, etc.) is experiencing the motion, while it does tend to be possible to say whether the love being expressed concerns romance or family relationships, for example The definitions of these kinds of love run as follow (Tissari, 2003: 2, 260-361)

(a) The participants of family love (storge) are members of the same family This love

occurs in the participant domain of family

(b) The participants of marital love (storge-eros) are spouses This love occurs in the

participant domain of marriage

(c) The participants of sexual love (eros) are (potential) lovers This love occurs in the

participant domain of sexuality

(d) The participants of friendship love (philia) are neither members of the same family,

spouses of one another, or (potential) lovers, but this love occurs in the domain of friendship, between people share thoughts and interests, or out of a wish to do something good to another human being

(e) The participants of religious love (agape) include God, or a god, at least indirectly

through a divine command or inspiration, and this love occurs between a human and a divine being, or pertains to someone who acts out of faith

(f) At least one of the participants of „love of “thing”‟ is non-human (animal or inanimate) This love occurs in the participant domain of the “rest of the world”, in contrast to the above

It is difficult to have these definitions logically, but it is also assumed that these categories attest prototype effects and partly overlap with each other (Lakoff, 1987: 91-114; Tissari, 2003: 9-78, 242-244)

In this study, I mainly focus on the noun love by calling the word love, assuming that

they share these senses and, consequently, a considerable amount of conceptual content The design of the study and the data analysis will be represented in the following section

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

In this chapter, the research questions will be restated in 2.1, the data will be described in 2.2, the analytical framework of the study will be introduced in detail in 2.3, and data analysis and discussion will be presented in 2.4 This is the central focus of the present study, the

conceptualization of love in English,

2.1 Research questions

The question below is the heart of the study:

- How is love conceptualized in English evidenced in some English expressions of love?

2.2 Data collection

In this analysis which follows, I concentrate on the basic noun love in some set expressions The metaphors containing the word love in expressions are especially typical,

while the verb is much more seldom accompanied

An inventory of more than 115 English expressions used to talk about the emotion love

in English was compiled from dictionaries and some plays of Shakespeare, more than 20

expressions of love have been collected from the plays, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet,

Othello, Two Noble Kinsmen, Richard III, Taming, and Coriolonus In the novels, love is

appeared in many expressions Moreover, the data is also compiled from the website http://www.quotegarden.com/love.htm, accessed on July 8th, 2010 This website collects and acknowledges many expressions of love Some Vietnamese expressions are found to compare

with the conceptualization of love in the English expressions

The expressions in the data were grouped into source domains (container, fire/ heat, social superior or opponent, valuable commodity, natural/ physical forces, fluid in a container,

journey, nutrient, rapture, insanity, and unity of two complementary parts) The following part

represents the analytical framework to analyze the data

2.3 Analytical framework

According to structural metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 and Kovecses,

1986), love is conceptualized as journey, war, container, a fluid in a container, natural/

physical forces, rapture, insanity, captive animal, nutrient, valuable commodity, war, patient, madness, magic, unity of two complementary, fire/ heat, social superior or opponent, hidden object, and collaborative work In the following section, the details of all the source domains will be outlined

2.3.1 Love is a container

The meaning of container is understood or implied when love is used with prepositions

such as “in” and “out” For instance, “A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears.” or “Sadly when we're falling out of love, we often don't see it coming.”

2.3.2 Love is a journey

Love is used as a journey when it is combined with the nouns such as course, track, or

distance and with the verbs like come, walk, run, trip or go For instance: “The course of true

love never did run smoothly.” or “You have to walk carefully in the beginning of live; the running across fields into your lover‟s arms can come only later when you‟re sure they won‟t

love if you trip.” Love is also combined with the prepositional phrase on the rock, for example,

“I‟m having a love affair with this guy but it‟s on the rocks.”

2.3.3 Love is a fluid in a container

The verbs such as fill, pour out, popple, moisten, or well up are used to conceptualize

love as a fluid in a container They combine with love in the expressions, for example, “She

was overflowing with love.” or “She was filled with love.”

Some nouns like fountain, dew, or ocean, and the adjective such as full is used to

represent love as a fluid in a container for instance, “Love is like dew falls on both nettles and lilies.” Or “Love is a an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses”

2.3.4 Love is madness

The words like crazy, blind, madness, or out of mind are collocated with love in some

expressions to conceptualize it as madness, for example “And most of all would flee from the

cruel madness of love.” or “He was blinded by love.”

2.3.5 Love is insanity

Love is used with the adjectives such as blind, incapable or stupid to conceptualize love

as insanity For example, “Love is being stupid together.” The nouns like folly or fool and the

verbs such as rave, drive out of mind, unable to think straight or distract are combined with

love to conceptualized love as insanity, for instances, “(1) Love drives me out of mind” or

“Well, love is insanity The ancient Greeks knew that It is the taking over of the rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can’t even think straight.”

2.3.6 Love is rapture

The meaning of rapture is understood or implied when love is used with the verbs such

as intoxicate or drunk and the adjectives such as giddy, high, ecstasy, silly or irresistible For

example, “He is intoxicated with love.” or “Anyone can be passionate, but it takes the real love to be silly.”

2.3.7 Love is natural/ physical forces

The meaning of natural force or physical force is understood when love is combined with the verbs such as carry away, attract, revolve, take away, touch, restrain, or open, for

example, “She was carried away by love.” or “If love has touched you, naught remain but

so.” Also, in this kind of metaphor love is collocated with the nouns such as electricity,

energy, misty rains, flood or atmosphere, for example “Let your love be like the misty rains,

coming softly, but flooding the river.”

2.3.8 Love is fire/ heat

Love is used as fire or heat when it is combined with the verbs such as burn, scorch, stir

up, ignite, put out, warm, melt, kindle, consume, throb, or light For example: “Love burns

across the infinitude.” or “His love has warmed my heart.” It is also used with the nouns, for instance, smoke or flame Let‟s see the examples: “Love is a smoke made with the fume of

sigh.” or “Love must be as much as light, as it is flame.”

2.3.9 Love is a nutrient

The meaning of a nutrient is understood when love is collocated with the verbs such as

starve, live, need, scoop or thrive For instance, “I cannot live without love.” or “Scoop love

from him.” Moreover, the nouns like refreshment, hunger, vitamin, or food are used to

understand love as a nutrient, for instance, “The hunger for love is much more difficult to

remove than the hunger for bread.” or “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”

2.3.10 Love is a valuable commodity (in an economic exchange)

Love is conceptualized as a valuable commodity when it is collocated with the verbs and

the nouns, such as give, get, exchange, invest, lose, buy or get out of For instance, “Success;

happiness and the ability to give and receive love all hinge on our relationship.”, “Love is neither bought nor sold.” or “Love is priceless.”

2.3.11 Love is a social superior and opponent

Love is implied as a social or superior and opponent when it is used with the verbs such

as, rule, dominate, seize, overcome, fight off, force, beat, struggle or conquer For example:

“She is completely ruled by love.” and “She was struggling with her feeling of love.” It is