A Cultural Study on Linguistic Metaphors of Love in Poetry

Abstract

Language is one of the cultural factors. Love, an abstract concept is mainly interpreted by metaphors which are considered as part of culture. It is consequently inevitable that the linguistic metaphors of love are under the influence of culture. In this research, we centre on investigating cultural factors in linguistic metaphors of romantic love in Vietnamese modern poetry, and then compare them to those in English. It is shown in our findings that linguistic metaphors of romantic love are considerably influenced by lifestyles, habits and customs and geographical conditions. Therefore, there are many variations in the ways of expressing romantic love between Vietnamese and English although the conceptualization is chiefly similar.