Characteristics of Conceptual Metaphor: A Case of Metaphorical Expressions Based on Human Senses in Vietnamese

Conceptual Metaphor (CM) is the main factor in the thinking process of people as well as in the way people perceive the around world and at the same time. Although they are using conceptual metaphors, they do not find it is a metaphor. In the view of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) - a quite new approach in linguistics considering language as part of general cognition and thinking. Regarding language as an essential part of cognition, the field of metaphors has been focused on in the research of linguistics in the world. This may be explained that researchers have found the general characteristics of metaphors in languages. Vietnamese is not an exception, especially in expressing CM based on human senses (HSs). In other words, in Vietnamese, people use conceptual metaphors in a way that think or conceptualize the “target” domain through the “source” domain by experiencing their body parts and the nature systematically. This article refers to the characteristics of metaphors in the view of CL in detail along with special evidences in Vietnamese metaphorical expressions based on HSs. The related words and phrases were saved in order to serve examining their meanings if they were concrete or abstract in the view of CL in the online dictionaries so that the meanings of them were explained the most completely along with the descriptive, analytic and synthetic methods which are for describing the data collected to set up a foundation for analysis in clarifying the CM’s characteristics. The study brought a both general and particular view for learning a language with a hope to be applied in the research’s content for teaching, learning and translating for learners or researchers of Vietnamese more effectively.