Metonymy as the transferences of meaning: A contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese

          I certify my authority of the Study Project Report submitted entitled                  in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.  If vocabulary is one of the most essential parts of a language, enriching vocabulary plays a very important role in learning and using that language. Among many issues related to vocabulary, transference of meaning is now being paid a lot of attention because being aware of this will be helpful to any language learners. While studying about the transference of meaning we have found that metonymy, a means of transference of meaning basing on contiguity between objects, is a powerful way to use language effectively and creatively. However, not many people are aware of it and not many studies have chosen metonymy as their main subject. For that reason we choose the metonymy as the subject to study and make a contrastive analysis between that in English and Vietnamese. The study is aimed at giving readers a general view on the metonymy as the transference of meaning in English and pointing out the features that English and Vietnamese share with, and differ from, each other in the ways of forming and using metonymy. Besides, we suggest some activities for teachers of English to help their students and learners of English to enrich their vocabulary as well as avoid and self-correct mistakes in communication and translation. This research consists of three main parts. The first part, Introduction, gives general information about the rationale, the aim, the scope, the methods and certainly the design of the study. The second part, Development, includes four chapters. Chapter 1 discusses some related matter to the study as language, word, meaning of word and the changes of those. The last part in this chapter presents the term transference of meaning, its causes and its means. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 are the focus of the study which give an overview of metonymy in English and Vietnamese, then contrast them to find out any similarities and differences. The final chapter is the implication in language teaching and translation. The last part, Conclusion, summarizes what have been discussed in the study and gives some general comments on the use of metonymy in English and Vietnamese as well as supplies some suggestions for further study.      Abstract Table of contents  
  

 



      Chapter 1:    1.1. Language and the change of language 1.1.1. What is language? 1.1.2. Reasons for the change of language 1.1.3. How language changes 1.2. Word and its meaning 1.2.1. What is the word? 1.2.2. Word meaning 1.2.3 The change and development of meaning 1.3. Transference of meaning 1.3.1. What is transference of meaning? 1.3.2. Means of meaning transference Chapter 2:             2.1. What is Metonymy? 2.2. Metonymy vs. Metaphor 2.3. Types of metonymy 2.3.1. Direct, or primary, metonymy 2.3.2. Indirect, or secondary, metonymy 2.3.3. Partial metonymy Page 1 1 2 2 2 3 4 4 4 4 5 6 6 6 7 8 10 10 11 13 13 14 16 16 17 17 2.4. Cases of metonymy 2.4.1. Name of container to refer to the thing contained 2.4.2. Name of parts of human body used as symbols 2.4.3. The concrete to refer to the abstract. 2.4.4. Materials to refer to the things made of the materials. 2.4.5. Name of the author to refer to his work 2.4.6. Part to refer to a whole and vice versa. 2.4.7. Symbol to refer to representative 2.4.8. Others. Chapter 3:                3.1. Metonymy in Vietnamese 3.1.1. Container – contained 3.1.2. Concrete – abstract 3.1.3. Name of author – his work 3.1.4. Part - whole and whole – part 3.1.5 Owner (people) and things owned (clothes, properties) 3.1.6. Specific quantities – general quantities; singular – plurals. 3.1.7 Others. 3.2. The similarities between metonymy in English and that in Vietnamese 3.3. The differences between metonymy in English and that in Vietnamese Chapter 4:
          4.1. Implications in English language teaching to Vietnamese learners. 4.2. Implications in English – Vietnamese translation and vice versa.
  1.   2.     18 18 18 19 20 21 21 23 23 25 25 25 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 32 34 34 36 37 37 38 39 1
  
    As is well-known, a language is the cultural environment of its native speakers. No language can be analysed or learned without entering into the cultural traditions of its speakers. For a linguist, it is very important to produce a complete description of these cultural traditions to underpin his ideas. Thus any phenomenon appearing in a language should be studied and described in close connection with its cultural usage and its cultural environment. Metonymy is an important way of expressing ideas, a cognitive process, consisting in the transference of meaning based on associations. A metonymic description of a subject is an essential part of any language therefore metonymic thinking can be considered as an element of the cultural identity of a person. However, in everyday life we use language without any awareness of the term metonymy in mind. Even in linguistics, it seems that metonymy has been paid little concern in comparison with another means of meaning transference called metaphor. Besides, while teaching English for Vietnamese students, most of them are at pre- intermediate level of English, we find that they are sometimes shocked when encountering some cases like: The ham sandwich has asked for the bill. English is our mother tongue. Also they tend to spend a lot of time to find the English equivalents for the expressions of Vietnamese such as: Ngay khi công vi
c c giao mi ngi u phi x n tay áo lên làm ngay. Chân i mà d chng ri – Du xa chín núi không nguôi m t lòng. These problems deeply rooted from people’s unawareness of the term metonymy as well as the similarities and differences between metonymy in English and Vietnamese. 2 Therefore, we choose the metonymy as the subject to study and make a contrastive analysis between which in English and Vietnamese.

  This study has both theoretical and practical aims. Theoretically, it is intended to provide a thorough and systematic study on the metonymy as the transference of meaning in English. Besides, it is aimed at finding the features that English and Vietnamese share with, and differ from, each other in the ways of forming and using metonymy. Practically, this study is intended to help Vietnamese learners of English to have an insight into metonymy as the transference of meaning in English as well as in their mother tongue so that they can enrich their vocabulary, avoid and self-correct mistakes in communication and translation. Teachers of English can also benefit from this study when we are going to describe some activities helping students enrich their vocabulary through learning metonymy.


 The study will touch to the different cases of metonymy as the transference of meaning in English and Vietnamese and find the similarities and differences in the way each language employs metonymy. However, for the limitation of personal knowledge and ability, this study only analyses things basing on some most common metonymy of the words that can be found and traditionally used in communication in both languages.
  In this study the two languages namely English and Vietnamese are compared and contrasted. Here, English is treated as the instrumental language and Vietnamese is the target language. Therefore, any cases of metonymy in English will be mentioned and analysed first, then they will be compared and contrasted with Vietnamese to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages. We have read some books and researches discussing the metonymy in both English and Vietnamese and extracted some general cases of metonymy in English and Vietnamese which is the means of meaning transference. Basing ourselves on that we supplement more 3 data from our real situations and analyse them separately in each language. At last, we formulate the contrasts which have been identified by the before analyses.   Part I is Introduction providing with the rationale, the aims, the scope, the methodology and the overall structure of the study. This introductory part functions as the leading direction for the whole study about why it comes into being, for what purposes it is used, what exactly it studies, how it is carried out and how it is organised. Part II is Development, the body of the thesis, including four chapters. Chapter 1 Theoritical bacground discusses some related matter to the study. In the first part we will look at language in general and its changes which can partly explain the reasons of meaning transference later. We also spend time to study about words and word meaning including approaches to word meaning and the changes of word meaning. The last part in this chapter presents the term transference of meaning, its causes and its means. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 are the focus of the study. Chapter 2 Metonymy as the transference of meaning in English. In this chapter we will attempt to define the term “metonymy”, compare it with another means of transference of meaning named “metaphor”, classify it into two types, and then go into details in the cases of metonymy. This chapter provides an overall view about metonymy, therefore all necessary information for analysing and contrasting in the next chapter is mentioned. Chapter 3 is called A contrastive analysis of Metonymy in English and in Vietnamese. In order to make a contrastive analysis, we will take a look at the metonymy in Vietnamese. Then, the similarities and differences between metonymy in English and in Vietnamese will be discussed. The last chapter, Implications for language teaching and translation, will give some ideas that will be helpful to teachers of language in their language teaching career and to translators in the process of translation relating to this subject. Part III is Conclusion providing the summary of what has been analysed and found as well as some concluding remarks made to these findings. Lastly, it supplies some suggestions for further study. 4
  
   !  !!"      1.1.1. What is language? Being the centre concept of linguistics, “language” is treated differently from different angles. Language firstly is considered to be a system of communicating with other people using sounds, symbols and words in expressing a meaning, idea or thought. This language can be used in many forms, primarily through oral and written communications as well as using expressions through body language. Sapir (1921:8) defined it as ‘a purely human non- instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols’. According to this definition only humans possesses language and it is unlike any other system of communication of animals. Therefore people can develop and characterize language. However, it is not the truth that people can just use it to convey “ideas, emotions and desires”. More than that, it is undeniable that people possesses many systems of voluntarily produced symbols like gestures, postures, eye-gaze, etc. that metaphorically called ‘body language’. Saussure (1960:8) defined language as ‘both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty’. This definition suggests that language is distinguished from speech and that it is a social product and its unity is a collection of necessary conventions which is accepted and exercised by members in the society or community. It is obvious that language does not stay the same as a set of constant things but changes over time in both its forms and contents (meanings). 5 1.1.2. Reasons for the change of language Language change, according to the Wikipedia, is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. All languages are continually changing. At any given moment the English language, for example, has a huge variety within itself, and this variety is known as synchronic variation. From these different forms comes the effect on language over time known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines concern themselves with studying language change: historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Historical linguists examine how a language was spoken in the past and seek to determine how present languages derive from it and are related to one another. Sociolinguists are interested in the origins of language changes and want to explain how society and changes in society influence language. Languages change for a variety of reasons. In his report “Language change”, available at National Science Foundation website, Mahoney has pointed out some causes of language change as follow. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic and political pressures. History records many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization and migration. Even without these kinds of influences, a language can change dramatically if enough users alter the way they speak it. Frequently, the needs of speakers drive language change. New technologies, industries, products and experiences simply require new words. Plastic, cell phones and the Internet didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time, for example. By using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change. But the unique way that individuals speak also fuels language change. That’s because no two individuals use a language in exactly the same way. The vocabulary and phrases people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status and other factors. Through our interactions, we pick up new words and sayings and integrate them into our speech. Teens and young adults for example, often use different words and phrases from their parents. Some of them spread through the population and slowly change the language. 6 1.1.3. How language changes According to Mahoney, there are three main aspects of language change over time: vocabulary, sentence structure and pronunciations. Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get combined or shortened. Some words are even created by mistake. As noted in the Linguistic Society of America's publication Is English Changing?, pea is one such example. Up until about 400 years ago, pease referred to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people mistakenly assumed that the word pease was the plural form of pea, and a new word was born. While vocabulary can change quickly, sentence structure—the order of words in a sentence— changes more slowly. Yet it is clear that today’s English speakers construct sentences very differently from Chaucer and Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Changes in sound are somewhat harder to document, but at least as interesting. For example, during the so-called “Great Vowel Shift” 500 years ago, English speakers modified their vowel pronunciation dramatically. This shift represents the biggest difference between the pronunciations of so called Middle and Modern English. !#$     1.2.1. What is the word? Like other terms in linguistics, ‘words’ is defined in many different ways basing on different angels from which the researchers or linguists view the language or depending on the purposes of each study. Jack C. Richards in “Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistics” defined a word as “the smallest of the linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing”. However, it is not easy to apply this criterion consistently in the cases of function words (like ‘the’, etc.) and contraction (like ‘can’ and ‘can’t’, etc.) (p.406) According to A. Meillet, ‘the word is defined by a combinating between a certain meaning and sound structure which shows a grammatical feature.’ This definition relates to three aspects of the word: semantics (meaning), phonology (sound structure) and grammatical function (grammatical feature). Also concerning to both the form and the content of the word, Hoang Tat Truong in “Basic English Lexicology” (1993:2) defines the word as “dialectical unity of form and content, 7 independent unit of language capable to form a sentence by itself.” However, we can find the new point here that it clarifies the independent characteristic of the word as a language unit. In the following parts of this thesis we can simply take this as the working definition provided that we are aware of a problem that the relationship between form and content is not always one-to-one. This relationship can be direct or indirect, then one word can mean different things indirectly. 1.2.2. Word meaning There has been quite a number of attempts designed to define what the meanings of the word is. From one of the oldest views – the theory of naming – a word in a language stands for or refers to an object. It means that words are just names or labels for the things. While this idea works very well with nouns, it is not really easy to extend the theory with other parts of speech such as prepositions, adjectives, articles, etc. Moreover, this theory is workable in the real world containing objects which we can see or know, but it seems that the theory can not work effectively in the imaginary world made up of things such as fairy, angel, etc. or the abstract things. Because of the naming theory’s limitation, linguists try to explain the term in another way. They realize that it is needed to distinguish what a word denotes from what they can be used to refer to. According to this view, word meaning can be divided into denotation and reference. Denotation is the ability of a word to identify all those things or objects that are correctly covered by it. The denotation of a word or expression is the invariant and utterance- independent. Reference is the relationship that holds between a word or expression and the objects it refers to. Reference, therefore, is variable and utterance- dependent. Nguyen Hoa in his book “An introduction to Semantics” (2001: 14-16) has discussed many theories of meaning of which we hereby can mention some of the following. According to the referential (or denotational) approach, the meaning of a word or expression is what it refers to, denotes, or stands for. The ideational (or mentalistic) theories, on the other hand, considers it the idea, or concept associated with it in the mind of anyone who knows and understands the word. The meaning of word, according to the verificationist theory, is determined by the verifiability of the sentences, or propositions, containing it, i.e. the