Conceptual Structures of Vietnamese Emotions Hien T
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Linguistics ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 7-15-2018 Conceptual Structures of Vietnamese Emotions Hien T. Tran University of New Mexico Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Tran, Hien T.. "Conceptual Structures of Vietnamese Emotions." (2018). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/58 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hien Thi Tran Candidate Linguistics Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Dr. Melissa Axelrod, Chairperson Dr. Sherman Wilcox Dr. Phyllis Perrin Wilcox Dr. Zouhair Maalej CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES OF VIETNAMESE EMOTIONS by HIEN THI TRAN B.A., Linguistics, Hanoi University, 1996 M.A., Linguistics, University of New Mexico, 2007 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July 2018 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank many people for their support and encouragement during my academic studies at the University of New Mexico. I am always grateful to Dr. Melissa Axelrod, my dissertation committee chair for her consistent inspiration, encouragement and guidance which helped me to complete this work. Dr. Axelrod is an exemplary professor. I consider myself very fortunate to have had her as my dissertation committee chair. I also thank the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Sherman Wilcox, Dr. Phyllis Wilcox and Dr. Zouhair Maalej for their insightful comments and suggestions on my dissertation and for their input for my future research. I want to express my sincere thanks to my wonderful friends: Judith Reynolds, Grandon Goertz, Melvatha Chee, Mihye Han and Thu Dam. They have always been very supportive and helpful over the years. I am thankful to have such good friends in my life. I also want to thank my family for their support before and during my academic journey. My parents, sisters, brother and the members of my extended family have been there for me when I needed encouragement and motivation. Their positive impact on my work and life has been a great contribution to the completion of this work. iii CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES OF VIETNAMESE EMOTIONS by HIEN THI TRAN B.A., Linguistics, Hanoi University, 1996 M.A., Linguistics, University of New Mexico, 2007 Ph.D., Linguistics, University of New Mexico, 2018 ABSTRACT This dissertation presents a comparative study of the metaphoric and metonymic systems underlying the conceptualizations of two emotions, anger and sadness, in Vietnamese, American English, and Chinese. The analytic and theoretical approach is based on previous studies by Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), Kövecses (1988), Barcelona (1986), King (1989) and Yu (1995). The research presented here on emotion concepts reveals cultural variation and potential universals in the conceptualization of emotions. These results support the “Cultural Embodied Prototype” view proposed by Kövecses (2004:14) which proposes that conceptualizations of human emotions is motivated by both physiological embodied experiences (physiological embodiment) and the particular system of social-cultural experiences, which Maalej (2004, 2007, 2008) calls cultural embodiment. This study, based on analysis of anger and sadness expressions in Vietnamese, presents conceptual metaphors, metonymies, and cognitive models of the two emotions in iv Vietnamese in order to examine the similarities and differences in the ways the two emotions are conceptualized in Vietnamese, Chinese, and American English. Recent research on metaphor (e.g., Steen 1999; Cameron 1999; Semino et al., 2004; Pragglejaz Group 2007) have stressed the importance of rigorous metaphor identification procedures. This study offers a new metaphor identification procedure, based on the principles of the MIP (Pragglejaz Group 2007), which is designed to improve the identification of conceptual metaphors, especially those in discourse contexts. I examine discourse contexts to focus, in particular, on the metaphors and metonymies of the emotions in the three languages in order to distinguish the physiological and cultural embodied experiences which motivate them. The results of this study show that the shared and possibly universal conceptualizations of emotions can be found at the generic level, while the cultural variations of emotion operate at the specific level. The study thus contributes to the research on universality versus cultural specificity of emotion conceptualizations by presenting linguistic evidence of the use of emotion language in Vietnamese. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Research questions ....................................................................................................... 2 1.2. Overview of the chapter ............................................................................................... 3 1.3. Studies of emotion concepts ........................................................................................ 4 1.4. Conceptual metaphor theory ...................................................................................... 12 1.5. Conceptual metonymy theory .................................................................................... 16 1.6. Cultural models .......................................................................................................... 20 1.7. Organization of this study .......................................................................................... 24 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................... 26 2.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 26 2.2. Embodiment theory ..................................................................................................................... 26 2.2.1. Embodiment theory ................................................................................................. 27 2.2.2. Physiological embodiment and cultural embodiment ............................................. 30 2.3. The “Embodied cultural prototype” view ................................................................................. 39 2.4. The embodiment of emotion ...................................................................................................... 43 2.5. Universality and cultural variations in emotion conceptualizations ....................................... 46 2.6. Summary and conclusions .......................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................... 52 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 52 3.2. Methodological overview ........................................................................................................... 52 3.2.1 Data collection method in metaphor research .......................................................... 53 3.2.2 Contexts ................................................................................................................... 58 3.3. Previous metaphor identification procedures ............................................................. 73 3.4. The methodology of this study ................................................................................................... 84 3.4.1. Data collection – Vietnamese emotions .................................................................. 84 3.4.2. Metaphor identification procedure .......................................................................... 89 3.5. Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 96 CHAPTER 4 ANGER CONCEPT IN VIETNAMESE ................................................... 98 vi 4. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 98 4.1 Overview of the Data ................................................................................................................... 98 4.1.1 Metonymies of anger ............................................................................................... 99 4.1.2 Metaphors of anger ................................................................................................ 100 4.2. Conceptual metonymies