www.ijellh.com
306
In (1) English uses
“a honey tongue” and “a heart of gall” while Vietnamese uses “a
buddha tongue” and “a heart of snake” to state the same meaning “one has beautiful words
but his heart is rude/evil”.
In (2) English uses
the image of “heart” in “ cross one’s heart and hope to die” to
indicate a promise released by a person
whereas Vietnamese applies “Thề sống thề chết” (an
expression of swearing-
“thề” means “swearing”) without using the word “heart” to mean the
same thing.
In (3) The word “heart” is used in the expression “to wear one’s heart upon one’s
sleeve” to display one's feelings openly and habitually, rather than keep them private while
Vietnamese uses “ruột” (intestine) and “da” (skin) to show the equivalent meaning.
Conclusion
In this paper, the author set out to explore whether English and Vietnamese share the
conceptual metaphor or not. Then, the author also demonstrated that the conceptual metaphor
in both languages share the same type of coherence, and this coherence is shaped by the
model. The finding showed that
language and culture has a close relationship and each
culture and its language has both similar and different concepts. The findings also benefit
English learning and teaching. I
f learners are explained about structures of concepts behind
structures of idioms, they will be able to infer the meaning and remember idioms and more
easily and productively. This is different from the views of some teachers and authors of
textbooks who suppose that idioms cannot be reasoned. Through analysis, we know that
teaching metaphor depending on exploiting conceptual metaphors will support students to
study idioms better and help motivate them in learning activities.