A Study On The Metaphor Of Basic Temperature Words In Modern Vietnamese

There are four basic temperature words,"nóng,l（?）nh,（?）m,mát",denoting temperature in the vocabulary system of modern Vietnamese,which bear abundant cultural codes of the nation.The analysis of "nóng,l（?）nh,（?）m,mát"from the perspective of metaphor can facilitate the understanding of the mechanism of metaphorical cognition in modern Vietnamese,and further our knowledge on the culture of Vietnam and the logic of the thinking of Vietnamese as well.Under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory,the author adopted the four basic temperature words as the research object,combined quantitative and qualitative methods,with corpus obtained from dictionaries and literary works from the following three aspects:semantic extension,metaphorical mapping model and influencing factors.The paper attempt to figure out how the meaning of the basic temperature words extend,explore the metaphorical mapping model of the basic temperature words,and obtain the metaphorical meanings and target domains of these basic temperature words,and to search for the factors affecting the metaphorical cognition of the four basic temperature words.The research results indicate that,in terms of their meanings,these basic temperature words all denote temperature perception,psychological perception as well non-physiological and non-psychological concept,and some of them have physiological meanings.Generally,these basic temperature words basically follow an order of temperature perception,physiological perception,psychological perception and finally non-physiological and non-psychological concept.In terms of metaphorical mapping model,the four basic temperature words have 11 metaphorical mapping models with more variations rather than similarities in their targeted domains.Metaphorically,"nóng" and "l（?）nh" tend to denote negative concepts,while "（?）m" and "mát" tend to denote positive concepts.Synesthesia metaphor projection range includes olfaction,hearing and vision,which is basically mapping from lower modalities of sense onto higher ones.More importantly,we can get a glimpse of the unique national character from the conceptualization of the four basic temperature words metaphorically,which are influenced by Vietnam’s geographical environment,national culture and language.