1. Full name of the researcher:Luong Thi Phuong
2. Gender:Female
3. Date of birth:26/01/1982
4. Place of birth:Ninh Binh Province
5. Decision to recognize graduate students:4416/2019/QD-XHNV dated November 26, 2019 of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi
6. Changes in training process (if any):Are not
7. Thesis topic: Metaphors of war sources in English and Vietnamese
8. Major:Linguistics
9. Code:922 9020.01
10. Scientific instructor:Assoc.Prof.Dr. Nguyen Hong Con
11. Summary of new results of the thesis:
Research purpose:
Further clarifying the characteristics and roles of cognitive metaphors with war source domains in general and war source domain metaphors in English and Vietnamese in particular;
Clarifying the similarities and differences of war metaphors in English and Vietnamese and explaining those similarities and differences from linguistic and cultural perspectives.
Research subjects:
The research object of the thesis is the source domain metaphors of war (ADCT) in the discourse of English and Vietnamese online articles and news about politics, economics, health, sports, taken from official websites of the UK, USA, Australia, Canada... and Vietnam.
Research method:
- The method of language description is used to analyze and describe the types and characteristics of war conceptual metaphors.
- The Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) method introduced by Charteris-Black (2004) includes three main contents: Metaphor identification, Metaphor interpretation and Metaphor explanation.
- The comparative method is used to determine the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in news discourse of the two languages.
- Statistical and classification methods are used to survey, compile data, classify and systematize source domains and types of conceptual metaphors.
Main results of the thesis:
- On the characteristics and role of war metaphors:
With the total volume of research texts in the two languages being almost equal, the total number of occurrences of metaphorical expressions in English is 8328, in Vietnamese is 6974. Thus, ADCT has a much higher prevalence in English press discourse than in Vietnamese. Among the four fields, sports news discourse has the highest proportion of ADCT in both English and Vietnamese. Meanwhile, the lowest proportion of ADCT is found in English medical press discourse and Vietnamese economic press.
The research has resulted in a conceptual mapping system of the supernominal war metaphor: Social life is war, 3 subnominal mappings: Elements in social life are war elements, Activities in social life are military activities, Results of activities in social life are results of war. At the same time, on the basis of this mapping system, the topic has built four mapping systems with 8 detailed component mappings in the political, economic, and sports target domains, and 9 component mappings in the medical target domain. The research results of the thesis have confirmed the systematic, hierarchical, and contextual nature of ADCTs in both languages. Furthermore, the statistical and analytical results in the target domains demonstrate that the source domain metaphor of war has a very wide scope because it can be applied to many situations, states, and activities in many different areas of social life.
- About similarities and differences:
In general, at the supernomial level, the conceptual mappings of ADCT between English and Vietnamese show more similarities than differences, including similarities in the structure of the mapping system, mapping relations, metaphor types, and the prevalence of ADCT linguistic expressions in some mappings. In addition, the two languages have similarities in the interpretation of the meanings of most metaphorical expressions. It can be concluded that ADCT is a type of conceptual metaphor with a fairly high universality, sharing many common points and being accepted and used in many different cultures. We find that it is the similar or similar embodied experiences in the source domain of war and the target domains such as politics, economics, medicine, and sports that make ADCT in the two languages have certain similarities.
However, at the lower nominal levels, the mappings show many differences between the two languages and between the target domains, in terms of frequency of use, the meaning of central expressions, and the meaning of metaphors in the target domains. To explain this result, we analyzed some differences in political institutions, history, economic characteristics, culture, and thinking of Western countries compared to Vietnam.
New contributions of the thesis:
- The thesis is the first work in Vietnam to study the conceptual metaphor of war in news discourse on a relatively wide scale of four fields: politics, economics, health and sports, with a large corpus from several English-speaking countries and compared with Vietnamese corpus. Therefore, the results of the thesis have a high generalizability in terms of the popularity and characteristics of war metaphors in the social life of the two languages.
- The thesis has built a detailed conceptual mapping system for war metaphors in each researched field, analyzed and described many aspects of war metaphors that have not been studied in depth before, identified typical similarities and differences in writing style, culture and thinking of English and Vietnamese language users through the conceptualization of war in social life. From there, the thesis helps to expand and enrich the perception of the objective world through war metaphors.
- The research results of the thesis will contribute to consolidating the theory of cognitive linguistics, systematizing the basic issues of war conceptual metaphors based on the analysis of English and Vietnamese news discourse sources. The research results of the thesis will have application value in teaching and research on conceptual metaphors, intercultural communication, analysis of journalistic discourse texts as well as translation and writing in journalism.
Scientific significance:
- The research results of the thesis will contribute to clarifying the way of thinking and cognitive models of people about the categories of war, politics, economics, health and sports reflected in the process of perceiving the objective world.
- The research in the thesis also contributes to clarifying the concept, expressive characteristics, semantics, pragmatics and mapping mechanism of war conceptual metaphors in English and Vietnamese news discourse.
- Researching war metaphors from the perspective of cognitive linguistics with English-Vietnamese comparison has great significance in understanding and exploiting the characteristics and nature of thinking and culture of English and Vietnamese users.
Practical significance:
- This study will contribute to helping those who do language research have more information, theories and deeper understanding of the conceptual metaphor of war in political, economic, medical and sports journalism discourse in English and Vietnamese. Moreover, the analysis, description and explanation in the thesis can help language teachers and learners in particular and those who participate in intercultural communication in general to understand more deeply the role and characteristics of the conceptual metaphor of war in communication, thereby focusing on the flexible and effective application of this metaphor in teaching, learning and communicating in English as well as Vietnamese.
- At the same time, the results of the thesis will be useful for the translation of documents on politics, economics, medicine and sports, and the compilation and design of specialized English teaching materials in these four fields. Thanks to that, we hope to contribute to improving the quality of documents and the effectiveness of teaching subjects such as English, translation, linguistics and cross-cultural communication.
- The research results of the topic will also partly support and enrich the vocabulary and understanding of writing style and culture for journalism students and journalists.
12. Further research directions:
Study of war metaphors in many other contexts such as print, literature, and colloquialisms.
A detailed study of the effects of war metaphors on language learners.
Research on interlingual ADCT translation.
13. Publications related to the thesis:
1. Luong Thi Phuong (2019), “Investigating The Effects of Task Repetition on Fluency and Accuracy in English Oral Performance of Low Level Adult Students: A Case Study at Vietnam Air Defence and Air Force Academy”, Journal of Military Foreign Language Science, No. 19, ISSN 2525-2232, pp. 26-37.
2. Luong Thi Phuong (2022), “War metaphors in Vietnamese online sports news: A cognitive study on conceptual mappings”, Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Issues of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU, Code: ISBN: 978-604-9990-98-4, pp. 1021-1041.
3. Luong Thi Phuong (2023), “War metaphors in online business news: a cognitive study of English and Vietnamese discourse”, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Issues of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU, Code: ISBN: 978-604-43-1656-7, pp. 761-782.
4. Luong Thi Phuong (2023), “Mapping layers of the conceptual metaphor of war source domain in English political news”, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 9 (2b), ISSN 2354-1172, pp. 183-195. Available at: http://journal.ussh.vnu.edu.vn/index.php/vjossh/article/view/8321
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1172/vjossh.v9i2b.8321
5. Luong Thi Phuong (2024), A cognitive study of war metaphor in English online medical news, Proceedings of the International Graduate Research Symposium 2024 (IGRS 2024), University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, (Approved for publication, awaiting publication).
INFORMATION ON DOCTORAL THESIS
1. Full name:Luong Thi Phuong
2. Sex:Female
3. Date of birth: 26/01/1982
4. Place of birth:Ninh Binh
5. Admission decision number:4416/2019/QD-XHNV, dated November 26, 2019 by VNU Hanoi, University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
6. Changes in academic process:None
7. Official thesis title: War metaphor in English and Vietnamese
8. Major:Linguistics
9. Code:922 9020.01
10. Supervisor:Associate Professor-Doctor Nguyen Hong Con
11. Summary of the new findings of the thesis:
Thesis objectives:
- Further shed light on the characteristics and roles of war metaphors in general and war metaphors in English and Vietnamese news discourse in particular;
- Specify the similarities and differences of war metaphors in English and Vietnamese and explain those similarities and differences from a linguistic and cultural perspective.
Research subjects:
War–related metaphorical expressions in the discourse of English and Vietnamese online articles and newsletters in the fields of politics, economics, healthcare and sports taken from official websites of the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and Vietnam.
Research methodology:
- The method of linguistic description was used to analyze and describe the types and characteristics of conceptual metaphor of war.
- The Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) method, introduced by Charteris-Black (2004), includes three main stages: Metaphor identification, Metaphor interpretation and Metaphor explanation.
- The comparison and contrast method was used to specify the similar and different characteristics of war metaphors intraculturally and cross-culturally.
- Statistical and classification techniques were used to survey, compile data, classify and systematize source domains and types of war metaphors.
Major findings:
- In terms of the characteristics and roles of war metaphor:
With total text capacity in the two languages being nearly equivalent, the total number of war-related metaphorical tokens in English is 8328 and in Vietnamese is 6974. Thus, the war metaphor has a much higher repetition in English news discourse than in Vietnamese. Of the four fields, sports discourse has the most occurrences of war metaphors in both English and Vietnamese. Meanwhile, the smallest number of repetitions was found in the discourse of English medical news and Vietnamese economic news.
The research results in a conceptual mapping system of war metaphor, with the umbrella mapping being Social life as war, and 3 derivative mappings: Elements in social life as war elements, Activities in social life as military activities, Results of activities in social life as results of war. Based on this mapping scheme, four mapping systems with 8 constituent mappings in the target domains of politics, economics and sport, as well as 9 constituent mappings in healthcare. The study findings demonstrate the systematic, hierarchical and context-dependent nature of war metaphors in both English and Vietnamese news. Furthermore, the statistical and analytical findings in the target domains attest to the fact that war metaphor is large in scope as can express various situations, states, and activities in different fields of social life.
- In terms of the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese war metaphors:
Basically, the generic conceptual mappings of English and Vietnamese war metaphors demonstrate more similarities than differences, including similarities in mapping system structure, mapping relations, metaphor types and the prevalence of metaphorical linguistic expressions in some mappings. In addition, the two languages share interpretation of the meaning of most metaphorical expressions. It can be concluded that war metaphor is fairly universal, sharing a number of common characteristics, being accepted and used in different cultures. Generally, it is the similar or nearly similar experiences in the source domain of war and the target domains of politics, economics, healthcare and sport that make war metaphor in the two languages have certain correlations.
However, at specific levels, the mappings show considerable differences between the two languages and among target domains, regarding frequency of use, meaning of central expressions, and meaning of metaphor in the target domains. The reasons for such discrepancies may lie in the differences in political institutions, national history, economic characteristics, culture and thinking of some Western countries compared to Vietnam.
12. Further research directions:
- Research on war metaphors in other contexts such as printed newspapers, literary books, and daily conversational languages.
- Research on the effects of war metaphors on language receivers.
- Research on cross-linguistic translation of war metaphor.
13. Thesis-related publications:
Luong Thi Phuong (2019), “Investigating The Effects of Task Repetition on Fluency and Accuracy in English Oral Performance of Low Level Adult Students: A Case Study at Vietnam Air Defense and Air Force Academy”, Journal of Military Foreign Language Studies Vol. 19, ISSN 2525-2232, pp. 26-37.
Luong Thi Phuong (2022), “War metaphors in Vietnamese online sports news: A cognitive study on conceptual mappings”, Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Issues of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU Hanoi, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Code: ISBN: 978-604-9990-98-4, pp. 1021-1041.
Luong Thi Phuong (2023), “War metaphors in online business news: a cognitive study of English and Vietnamese discourse”, Proceedings of The Second International Conference on the Issues of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU Hanoi, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, ISBN: 978-604-43-1656-7, pp. 761-782.
Luong Thi Phuong (2023), “Mapping levels of the war metaphor in English political news”, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Volume 9 (2b), pp. 183-194. ISSN 2354-1172. Available at: http://journal.ussh.vnu.edu.vn/index.php/vjossh/article/view/8321
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1172/vjossh.v9i2b.8321
Luong Thi Phuong (2024), “A cognitive study of war metaphor in English online medical news”, Proceedings of the International Graduate Research Symposium 2024 (IGRS 2024), VNU Hanoi, University of Languages & International Studies, (Reviewed and accepted, Pending publication).
