An Investigation Into Conceptual Metaphors Of “Fire” In American And Vietnamese 20th Century Poetry

Abstract

Based on the theories of conceptual metaphor, this thesis carries out an investigation into conceptual metaphors of “fire” in American and Vietnamese 20th century poetry. This is our attempt to find out the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors of “fire” used in 20th century poems in American and Vietnamese. To achieve the purposes, this paper chooses the descriptive, quantitative and qualitative approaches throughout the study. There are approximately 600 metaphorical expressions of “fire” collected from American and Vietnamese poems in books, newspapers and on the Internet. The findings presented sixteen source domains which occur in conceptual metaphors of “fire” in American, Vietnamese, or both. We found that American and Vietnamese share a lot of conceptual metaphors of “fire”. However, there remains some conceptual metaphors of “fire” that occurs in American but not in Vietnamese and via versa. Basing on the findings of the thesis, some implications for teaching, learning and translating of conceptual metaphors will be suggested. Furthermore, this thesis is useful for Vietnamese learners of English to be successful in cross- cultural communication.