Comparison Of Metaphor In Love In The Chinese And Vietnamese

Metaphor is a hot topic that the Chinese and Vietnamese language researched from the80s of last century to the present. Some scholars such as:(Lakoff&Turner,1989:203) Lakoff(1987) and Johnson (1987) offered the theory to identify metaphor. From early, when some scholars began to study the language, the problem of the nature of metaphor has always been headache linguists and philosophers, in few dozen years, people began to realize the importance of it for human’s language and knowledge. Metaphor in study of tradition language is said to be a different variation of normative language, is a rhetorical phenomenon used for speech. However, the perspective of cognitive linguistics on metaphor can reflect a concept with another concept in a systematic way-a reciprocal way through the human’s perception and reasoning. Thus, metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also is a human’s cognitive phenomenon. Metaphor is a cognitive activity in which people take the nature of this thing to say clearly and explain the nature of other thing. Moreover, metaphorical form of expression is excluded outside the category of normative language which means that the normative language does not include metaphor. The traditional arguments was rejected by the modern researches on metaphor. Metaphor is "principles always existed in language; sense of metaphor is " a semantic reflection between layers of meaning of two different phenomena"(I.A. Richards,1994). Traditional rhetorical metaphor was redefined as "expression metaphor" which is a method of expressing the layer of meaning that the definition reflects. Nowadays, metaphor is no longer just a phenomenon of languages, it is actually a phenomenon of human’s thinking, moreover "all languages are metaphorical"(Lakoff,1980). Lakoff and Johnson have collected a lot of practical examples for demonstrating:the concept of metaphor is the basis for the structure of language. Based on a few examples of two scholars, this text have been analyzed and compared emotional metaphor, studied in depth the concept of metaphor in love in Chinese and Vietnamese. Based on the analysis, this comparison helps us understand that the metaphor embedded in language, thought and how closely with China-Vietnam culture.It can be said that human’s feelings are the most complex things. It is difficult to use words to express. Most of the human’s emotions are explained, imagined by metaphor. Emotional metaphor is also a common psychological phenomenon, emotions exist in every corner of the human’s soul as well as in every corner of the human’s habitat, it is a part for human to feel and visualize experience about the outside world. Therefore, it is natural to become an eternal topic for the peoples discussing lively. Each person born in this world always have emotion, complex feelings follow us until the end of life. It is often said the bitterness and the sweetness in life (happiness, dolorous, indignation, fun... etc.)may be because of love is an abstract concept through the concept about taste to visualize and explain the concept about emotions. Human’s emotion is often explained through metaphorical form, it makes it easy to understand the abstract concept about human’s emotion much more. There have been many experts and scholars in the world have done a lot of research and analysis, using the concept of metaphor combine with the emotional research. In1986, in the book "Metaphors of Anger, Pride and Love" Kovecses summed up the concept system about metaphor of love in a variety of material analysis, and proposed the use of the typical theory (prototype) to analyze and study the truest emotion factors of the people. The study and comparison about emotional metaphor of China-Vietnam scholars also quite a lot, though so far the comparison in metaphor of love I still have not found the related documents. Emotional metaphors in old Chinese and diversity metaphors on love of Vietnamese always have the special characteristics and attraction. In Chinese and Vietnamese, emotional metaphor has long been interested which has intimate relationship with the emotionally rich metaphor in Chinese and Vietnamese. Love is an emotion, but it is the most abundant, the most significant emotion, is an eternal topic:it is an integral part of human’s life, just as a year has four seasons:spring, summer, autumn and winter. Love is spring, so we do not understand why spring is a symbol of love? Probably because the spring is warm, neither cold nor hot, blooming, is the season people expect that most. Love is emotion that people respect the most, is the most beautiful, sweetest. So the author has study in-depth about comparing metaphor of love in Chinese and Vietnamese. Furthermore, this research has expanded our knowledge about the structure inside the metaphor system of love of the both China and Vietnam. Particularly for the current status of research about Chinese and Vietnamese still has lack of depth study of pragmatics and semantics in metaphor of love. The references are not much. This text makes comparison of metaphor in love in the Chinese and Vietnamese and cultural awareness that comes from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, discusses the characteristics in semantics structure of metaphor of love in Chinese and Vietnamese, from which arguments about the cognitive basis of the production of metaphor along with related categories that metaphor extended. We believe that this topic is very meaningful to the Chinese people want to learn about the culture’s emotional metaphors of Vietnamese people as well as Vietnamese people want to learn about the culture metaphors of Chinese along with learning about the culture and vocabulary of Chinese and Vietnamese.