Cultural metaphors of “Humans are food” in Vietnamese proverbs and idioms

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Introduction

Food is one of the most fundamental aspects of human life because it plays an important role in our daily life. It is clear that we cannot survive without food. Therefore, the concept of “food” is one of the most common and universal concepts in human experience. Food can be understood as either natural or processed. Processed food is a human-made product involving various stages of preparation, cooking, and presentation. Creating food does not necessarily have to go through all of these processes. For example, raw vegetables are a dish that only needs to be prepared, such as being washed, cut, sterilized usually by soaking in salt water, drained, and whether mixed with spices or not. The nature or the basic value of food is to provide nutrition to nourish the body. In addition, food also satisfies human senses in terms of colour, flavour, and quality of the dish. These aesthetic and sensory values become particularly important once basic nutritional needs have been satisfied. In other words, when people are full, they care about “delicious food”.

To date, relatively few studies have examined food from the perspective of cultural linguistics. Therefore, this study seeks to explore food-related metaphors in Vietnamese idioms and proverbs and the cognitive processes underlying them. The concept of “food” in Vietnamese language is the variety that is related to all the aspects in the life such as behaviour, spirit, characteristics. In this article, some common aspects will be pointed out through patterns of cultural metaphors. This article aims at exploring cultural metaphors of food in Vietnamese idioms and proverbs. From that perspective, interpretations about the cultural features in creating the meaning of food idioms and proverbs are given to improve the all the comments on food metaphors.

Literature review

Comparative studies of Vietnamese and English idioms and proverbs related to the food domain are limited, particularly regarding the systematic application of cognitive linguistic and cultural linguistic theoretical frameworks. Existing studies mainly focus on analysing each language individually or making superficial comparisons without adequately delving into the cognitive mechanisms and cultural patterns that govern them.

Ngô Minh Nguyệt [2014] surveyed the semantic field of food in Chinese and Vietnamese, and suggested points for comparison with English. The study indicated that some Vietnamese idioms do not have direct formal equivalents in English, but functional equivalents can be found. A limitation of the work is that it did not use modern theoretical frameworks to analyse characteristic cultural categories and how they are conceptualized differently across the two cultures.

Continuing this research direction, Nguyễn Thị Bích Hợp [2015] analysed conceptual metaphors with food as the source domain in Vietnamese, making some preliminary comparisons with English. The author identified important mappings from the culinary domain to abstract domains such as economic circumstances, personal capacity, and uselessness. The study also pointed out functionally equivalent expressions between the two languages ​​in expressing abstract concepts through culinary imagery. However, this work mainly focused on Vietnamese and did not deeply analyse cultural equivalence or differences in cultural schemas between the two languages.

From a cultural anthropological perspective, Nguyễn Thị Bảy [2014] analysed the role of culinary culture in Vietnamese proverbs, emphasizing the central role of food in family life. When compared with English proverbs related to cooking and work organization, the study points out differences in the conceptualization of the role of family and social relationships between the two cultures. However, this study did not apply Sharifian’s [2017] cultural linguistics theoretical framework to systematically analyse the components of cultural conceptualization such as cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors.

Liêu Thanh Nhàn [2020] expanded the scope of research to the realm of kitchen utensils, establishing the main conceptual metaphor models in Vietnamese with the source domain being kitchen objects. The author also made comparisons with English on several levels, reflecting the differences between Vietnamese agricultural culture, where cooking utensils are associated with food production, and Western industrial culture, where they are more closely associated with domestic convenience and technological innovation, such as modern ovens, non‑stick pans, and a wide range of labour‑saving kitchen appliances. Despite its positive contributions to expanding the scope of research on culinary metaphors, this study has not fully explored cognitive elements such as image schemas and cultural models, nor has it deeply analysed the cultural mechanisms behind these metaphors.

Unlike ordinary metaphors, a personal rhetorical device used to embellish sentences, cultural metaphors, which are often studied in cognitive linguistics, are an entire system of unconscious thinking and beliefs of a community, shaped over centuries. Within the framework of cultural linguistics, cultural metaphors are positioned as a special form of cultural conceptualization, that is, ways of understanding and organizing experience that are formed and shared at the level of a cultural community, not products of isolated individual thinking. Cultural metaphors are not a separate type of metaphor but rather a product of the culturalization process of three basic types of metaphors (orientational metaphors, structural metaphors, ontological metaphors) as they are strongly shaped by collective cultural models.

Sharifian [2017: 17-18] defined cultural metaphors as a special form of cultural conceptualization, which consists of ways of understanding and organizing experience that are formed and shared at the level of a cultural community, not products of isolated individual thinking. This means that cultural metaphors do not arise from the spontaneous creation of an individual but are distilled, acknowledged, and disseminated through generations within a community as part of a shared knowledge system. According to Sharifian [2017: 18], cultural metaphors are not a separate type of metaphor but rather a form of cross-domain conceptualization. Any metaphor belonging to the three basic conceptual metaphor categories, when strongly shaped by cultural models, such as the beliefs, values, and knowledge schemas shared within a community, can become a cultural metaphor.

The key mechanism that transforms personal metaphors into cultural metaphors is distributed cognition. According to Sharifian [2017], distributed cognition is the theory according to which information or knowledge are not confined to individuals’ minds but are distributed across language, cultural artefacts, and rituals; shared among members of a community; and transmitted across generations.

In the context of cuisine, the mechanism of distributed cognition is clear. For example, the concept of “cơm” in Vietnamese culture is not merely individual knowledge about a food item, but a collective cognitive schema dispersed across multiple layers of expression: in language (hundreds of idioms and proverbs containing the word “cơm”- cooked rice), in rituals (“cúng cơm tổ tiên” - making a food offering to the ancestors, “mời cơm khách” - inviting the guests to join the meal), in social practices (“bữa cơm gia đình” - family meals), as a greeting (“ăn cơm chưa?” - have you eaten yet?), in objects (“nồi cơm” - rice pots), as symbols (“chén/bát cơm” - rice bowls), in moral values, and in social organization. All these layers of expression together create and reinforce each other, forming a collective conceptualization system of “cơm” that every member of the Vietnamese cultural community receives and participates in recreating.

All these layers interact to create and reinforce one another, forming a collective conceptualization of “cơm” that members of the Vietnamese cultural community inherit and continuously reproduce.

This distributed cognitive mechanism explains why culinary idioms and proverbs are not arbitrary rhetorical expressions of individuals, but rather repositories of collective cultural knowledge. When a Vietnamese person uses the idiom “cơm lành canh ngọt” (good rice and sweet soup) to describe family happiness, they are not creating a new comparison but rather activating a shared cultural schema that encompasses the entire value system of family, gender roles, harmony, and mutual nurturing. The listener understands immediately, not because they decipher the metaphor from the beginning, but because they participate in that distributed cognitive system.

Thus, according to Sharifian [2017], cultural metaphors have three core characteristics. First, they are collective knowledge, not personal knowledge. Second, they are disseminated and reproduced across multiple cultural channels, such as language, ritual, and practice. Third, they encode cultural patterns, which are deep-seated knowledge structures about how the world works according to a community's conception. These three characteristics make cultural metaphors an important tool for studying not only language but also culture, as they are a window into how a community conceptualizes and organizes its experiences.

Cultural metaphors are cultural concepts

In the field of cultural linguistics, cultural metaphors are considered cultural concepts formed and maintained within the common cultural patterns of a linguistic community [Palmer 1996]. Many metaphors originate from familiar areas of life such as folk medicine or religious beliefs. Sharifian [2017] uses the term cultural metaphor to study collective cognitive patterns reflected in the language of a community. Similar to other conceptual metaphors, cultural metaphors consist of two basic components: the source domain and the target domain, corresponding to two conceptual domains that are related in the process of meaning formation. Typically, the source domain is a concrete, familiar, and easily recognizable domain that has been clearly experienced or imagined by people. In contrast, the target domain may be more abstract, hard to describe, or connected to novel experiences. Through the use of structures, qualities, and patterns from the source domain, the target domain becomes easier to understand, thus allowing individuals to grasp complex ideas with the aid of previous knowledge.

To better understand the process by which meanings are formed within conceptual metaphors, it is first necessary to explain the difference between conceptual domains and source-target domain pairs. Though they are closely related, the two serve separate roles in cognition. As described by Langacker [2014], conceptual domains are cognitive constructs through which people categorize experiences. They include many different types of knowledge, such as love, war, journeys, or time. Each conceptual domain exists as a relatively independent cognitive unit, used when people understand or communicate a specific experience. For example, the conceptual domain of “food” includes all knowledge about the concept and the cultural values associated with it.

Meanwhile, the source and target domains play a central role in the process of creating conceptual metaphors. The source domain is usually a concrete, familiar domain that provides imagery and structure to support understanding of a more abstract target domain. For example, in the metaphor “Ideas are food”, the source domain is “food,” while the target domain is “ideas”, which is an abstract concept difficult to perceive directly. Thanks to the mapping between these two domains, people can understand “ideas” through the experience of eating, for example: “hungry for ideas”, “ideas have already matured”.

An important characteristic of conceptual domains is their flexibility. Depending on the context, a conceptual domain can act as either a source or a target domain. For example, the concept of “cuisine” can be used as a source domain to explain abstract phenomena. Conversely, in some other cases, “cuisine” itself becomes the target domain interpreted through another source domain. This demonstrates the dynamic relationship between conceptual domains and source-target domain pairs, reflecting how conceptual metaphors connect the concrete and abstract worlds. This dynamic interaction contributes to shaping how humans perceive, interpret, and experience the world around them.

Applying the theory of source and target domains to the analysis of cultural metaphors, this article examines the metaphor “Humans are food” in the following sections.

Corpus and methodology

All the linguistic data on food idioms and proverbs used in this study were extracted from different research works, including: The grand Vietnamese dictionary [Nguyễn Như Ý 1999]; Vietnamese proverbs and idioms [Nguyễn Lân 2003]; A Brief Explanation of Proverbs [Lê Văn Hoè 1952, 1953]; Dictionary of Explanations of Vietnamese Idioms [Nguyễn Như Ý et al. 1997]; Dictionary of Vietnamese Proverbs [Nguyễn Đức Dương 2010] and VietCorpus. These sources provide a comprehensive view of the treasure trove of Vietnamese idioms and proverbs, reflecting the richness of expressions from traditional to modern.

The corpus comprises 120 Vietnamese idioms and proverbs belonging to the conceptual domain of food. The findings are thus restricted to proverb- and idiom-based usage in standard written Vietnamese, rather than to the Vietnamese language system as a whole. The criteria for identifying “food idioms and proverbs” were as follows: a unit is included in the corpus when it simultaneously satisfies two conditions: (i) it contains a lexical element belonging to the food domain on the linguistic surface; and (ii) that food element acts as a source domain in the metaphorical mapping mechanism, rather than appearing solely in its literal sense. Units that only refer to food literally or are purely descriptive are excluded from the corpus. Idioms with two parts, where only one part contains a food element, are retained if the culinary part acts as the source domain that dominates the overall meaning of the unit.

The selection of corpus sources adheres to four core criteria: (i) representativeness, a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of food culture; (ii) scientific reliability based on academic prestige and rigorous compilation methods; (iii) broad coverage from traditional to modern expressions; and (iv) accessibility allowing for corpus verification and comparison. This article employs an integrated research methodology, encompassing qualitative, quantitative, and descriptive analysis, to comprehensively explore the linguistic and cultural characteristics of Vietnamese food idioms and proverbs. Each idiom or proverb was assigned to a single dominant flavour–emotion category to avoid double counting.

Results and discussion

“Humans are food” metaphors are represented by two domains in which the source domain is “food”, and the target domain is “humans”. The mapping from the source domain to the target domain is established through the properties and relations associated with these two domains as shown in Table 1.

 

Table 1. The mapping from the source domain to the target domain

HUMAN (target domain)	FOOD (source domain)	Formulas	Cultural meaning	Rate
Ingratitude	Throw away without thinking	Vắt chanh bỏ vỏ. (Squeezing the lemon and discarding the peel)	Exploiting others to achieve goals without regard for their well-being.	13.3%
Raising difficulties	Twist and turn, pick and choose every detail	Bẻ hành bẻ tỏi. (Breaking onion and breaking garlic)	Causing difficulties for others	1.6%
Opportunist	Abnormal condition	Mượn gió bẻ măng. / Đục nước béo cò. (Taking advantage of strong wind to break bamboo shoots. /Unclear water creates food advantages for the stork.)	Taking advantage of other people’s difficult circumstances for one’s own benefit.	5%
Badness	Stale, spoiled, rot	Cá không ăn muối cá ươn. (Fish that is not salted will rot quickly.)	Children will not become good people if they don’t listen to their parents.	10%

Source: compiled by authors

 

The metaphors related to “ingratitude” account for over 13.3%. The action of squeezing and discarding in the expression “vắt chanh bỏ vỏ” gives us the idea of ingratitude in human behaviour. The concept of “chanh” shows us that it is a sour fruit and contains a lot of water inside. Lemon juice has many uses, such as making refreshing drinks or serving as a seasoning in food. People often extract lemon juice by the action of “vắt”, and the remaining “vỏ” is considered worthless and is thrown away. With that way of thinking, “Vắt chanh bỏ vỏ” conveys the metaphorical notion of ingratitude. Here, the lemon is understood as a person, and when someone takes advantage of his or her value to achieve their own goals, they are ready to abandon him or her, not caring or taking responsibility for him or her anymore. That shows ingratitude in life.

The metaphor related to “raising difficulties” is expressed through the expression “bẻ hành bẻ tỏi”, which means “breaking onions and breaking garlic”. Based on the image schema of “hành” and “tỏi”, the spice is made up of many small branches. The action of “bẻ hành” or “bẻ tỏi” is understood as “bóc” (peeling) onions and garlic into small branches. In this way, the above idiom creates a conceptual metaphor about twisting, nit-picking, and demanding from one thing to another, causing trouble and discomfort for others.

The rate of metaphors related to opportunists is 5%. The typical idiom “mượn gió bẻ măng” refers “taking advantage of strong wind to break bamboo shoots”. It is usually used by Vietnamese people with the idea of ​​​​opportunistic actions, taking advantage of bad situations for personal gains by greedy people. For this way of thinking, the image of wind and bamboo shoots is perceived through the cultural schema of “bụi tre” (bamboo clump) of Vietnamese people. Bamboo clumps, also known as bamboo bushes, often grow in clumps, including mature bamboo trees, young bamboo trees and young bamboo shoots. Bamboo shoots are very brittle and easy to break. Unlike mature bamboo trees, they have a certain flexibility to be able to lean in the direction of the wind from different directions. Bamboo shoots can be broken very easily if exposed to strong winds. That is why the idiom “mượn gió bẻ măng” is used with the idea of ​​taking advantage of unfavourable situations for personal gains. Also, the idiom “đục nước béo cò” has the same meaning.

The metaphors related to the “badness” account for 10%. In particular, the badness of children is expressed in the saying: “cá không ăn muối cá ươn”, which means that “fish that is not salted will rot quickly”. It expresses the idea that if children do not listen to their parents’ advice, they will face unfortunate issues, much like in the case that if fish is salted, they will not spoil. This is a practical experience that Vietnamese ancestors have summarized through their perceptions of how to preserve fish in catching seafood. From the “humans are food” metaphor, through the survey the data, we also found some metaphors at a lower level, which is “human feeling is flavour”, “human characteristic is flavour”, and “anger is a method of food cooking”.

“Human feeling is flavour” metaphor is understood through two domains (feelings: target domain, flavours: source domain) as can be seen in Table 2.

 

Table 2. Cultural conceptualization of “human feeling is flavour” metaphor

FEELINGS (target domain)	FLAVOURS (source domain)	Formulas	Cultural meaning	Rate
Happy	Sweet	Cơm dẻo canh ngọt; Cơm lành canh ngọt	A good marital relationship	22.5%
Unhappy, enduring suffering	Bitter Bitter + spicy Sour + spicy/ bitter	Cơm con thì đắng. Ngậm đắng nuốt cay;Trăm đắng ngàn cay. Chua cay; chua chát.	A person who has to endure both physical and mental hardship	25%
Averment		Ghét cay ghét đắng	Hatred
Jealous	Spicy	Ớt nào mà ớt chẳng cay	The jealousy of women	1.6%

Source: compiled by authors

 

The data of flavours show that, there are 25% Vietnamese idioms and proverbs using the combination between bitter and spicy, sour and spicy or sour and bitter to give the concepts of unhappy or enduring suffering. While the percentage of sweet flavour referring to happiness occupies 22.5% and 1.6% of spicy flavours expressing jealousy. From Table 2, we can see that, in general “human feeling is flavour” metaphor can be divided into two groups, which are “good feeling is sweet” and “bad feeling is bitter and spicy”. These metaphors can be analysed as follows [Thành Ngữ Tục Ngữ Việt Nam].

First, “Happy is sweet” has formulas “cơm lành canh ngọt; cơm dẻo canh ngọt”, which means that “husband and wife should treat each other well and get along well”. Vietnamese people use the images of “cơm lành” (good rice) and “canh ngọt” (delicous soup) to talk about the good relationship between husband and wife. But it is noticed that “ngọt” (sweet) in Vietnamese can be used in different contexts, so it has such meanings as “sweet, good, and delicious”. In this case, its meaning is “delicious”. Another example of the metaphor “happiness is sweet” is “nói ngọt lọt đến xương”. It means that sweet words can make the listeners feel very happy and believe in everything the speakers say. However, “mật ngọt chết ruồi” is exceptional because sweet flavour in this context is a trap. It does not mean the normally sweet flavour when we talk about the human feeling.

Second, “Unhappiness/ enduring suffering is bitter and spicy” is represented through the formulas “ngậm đắng nuốt cay”; “trăm đắng ngàn cay” which mean that someone has to endure suffering or hardship without any complaints. He or she tries to live in a very miserable condition, and no one can help him or her. Therefore, the idioms above use “đắng” (bitter) and “cay” (spicy) to refer the hard and unhappy life of the Vietnamese.

Third, “Averment is bitter and spicy” is manifested through “ghét cay ghét đắng”, which means that someone hates another so much that he or she feels very bad, and he or she cannot bear when seeing or thinking about that one. Based on the perceptions of flavour bitter and spicy that makes them feel uncomfortable, Vietnamese people use “đắng” (bitter) and “cay” (spicy) to talk about averment.

Finally, “Jealousness is spicy” is presented through “ớt nào mà ớt chẳng cay” that refers to a woman who is very jealous in the relationship with her boyfriend or husband. She is always worried about his leaving for another girl or women. Therefore, she cannot control her emotion and becomes so angry that she acts excessively. By the way of perceptions about chilli-pepper that is very hot and spicy (cay), this image is attached to a jealous girl or woman.

 “Human characteristic is flavour” has the source domain, which is “flavour” and the target domain, which is “human characteristic”. With this metaphor, the mapping from the source domain to the target domain can be seen in Table 3.

 

Table 3. Cultural conceptualization of “human characteristic is flavour” metaphor

CHARACTERISTIC (target domain)	FLAVOURS (source domain)	Formulas	Cultural meaning	Rate
Sharp tongue	Sour	Chanh chua	Referring to sharp-tongued women	3.3%
Experience	Spicy	Gừng càng già càng cay	The older a person is, the more experience that person has.	0.5%
Poor communication skills	Salty, Tasteless	Mất mặn mất nhạt	Someone communicates rudely	4.1%
Uninteresting	Tasteless	Nhạt/Lạt như nước ốc	Referring to someone with a bland personality who leaves no impression or emotion	1.6%

Source: compiled by authors

 

The result revealed that over 3.3% idioms and proverbs use sour flavour to refer to a woman or a girl who has a sharp tongue. If someone has sharp-tongued characteristic, she is easy to make listeners feel uncomfortable because of her rudeness in a conversation. From the thinking of a lemon that is full of sour water inside, “chanh chua” is used as an idiom to talk about sharp-tongued women or girls in Vietnamese culture. Moreover, spicy flavour refers to someone’s experience, which accounts for 0.5% of the total. The Vietnamese idiom “gừng càng già càng cay” usually means that the older a woman is, the more experienced she becomes. The concept of this idiom is generated from the fact that if the ginger is older, its flavour will be spicier. Therefore, “cay” in this context refers to “experienced” while ginger refers to a person. Structurally, the proverb is general with the meaning: ‘the older, the more experienced’, but in everyday usage, it is frequently applied to older women.”

Besides, in Vietnamese idioms and proverbs, the tasteless and salty flavour mentions a person’s poor communication skills characteristic with the rate at 4.1%. This is illustrated by “mất mặn mất nhạt”, which means that someone is rude in treatment without respect, scolding without regarding for affection. Last but not least, the proof for “human characteristic is flavour” metaphor is that the tastelessness expresses an uninteresting human’s characteristic such as “nhạt như nước ốc”, or “lạt như nước ốc”. “Nhạt/ lạt”, which means a tasteless flavour, is compared to the water people use to boil snails that are a popular dish of Vietnamese people in the past when they were in very poor condition.

The rate of metaphors “Anger is a method of food cooking” accounts for over 11.3%. The source domain is “method of food cooking” and the target domain is “anger”. The mapping from the source domain to the target domain of this metaphor as can be seen in Table 4.

 

Table 4. Cultural conceptualization of “anger is a method of food cooking” metaphor

ANGER (target domain)	METHOD OF FOOD COOKING (source domain)	Formulas	Cultural meaning	Rate
Anger	Chop the chopping board	Giận cá chém thớt	Shift the blame on to an innocent	11.3 %
	Turn down the heat	Cơm sôi bớt lửa	Advising someone to calm down in stressful situations
	Add more oil to make the fire bigger	Lửa cháy còn đổ thêm dầu/Thêm dầu vào lửa	Blaming someone for not controlling their anger and making the situation worse
	Boil	Giận sôi máu	Referring to uncontrollable anger

Source: compiled by authors

 

The metaphor “anger is method of food cooking” is showed through the idiom “giận cá chém thớt”. It means that someone who is angry with you vents their anger on an innocent person. Anger is understood as the action “chém thớt” (chop the chopping board), in which, the image of the fish and the chopping board are understood as people. The act of chopping is understood as an act to release all the suppressed anger inside the body. The concept is perceived based on the cultural schema of Vietnamese “the way of fish preparing” of Vietnamese people, who do not use scissors and specialized tools to cut fish, but use knives and chopping boards as the two most basic tools to prepare food in general.

According to Thanh Nhật Minh [2023], “cơm sôi bớt lửa, chồng giận bớt lời” is about ​​advising the wife and the husband to always be patient with each other to maintain harmony in the relationship, especially when the couple has conflicts. Based on the cultural perceptions of “cooking rice”. The cultural schema of “cooking rice” of the ancient Vietnamese includes the images of a rice pot, a stove, dry firewood, and fire, etc. When rice is put in the pot and placed on the stove, people will use straw or dry firewood to boil it. When the rice boils, the dry firewood continues to be burned at a lower temperature than at the original state until the water in the pot evaporates. The practical experience shows that if when the rice boils, and the temperature is not reduced lower, the rice will easily become burnt and stick to the pot, and that is why Vietnamese people often say “cơm sôi bớt lửa” (when the rice boils, reduce the heat). The sentence is related to the cognitive metaphor “anger is fire/heat”. There, “sôi” (boiling) and “lửa” (fire) imply anger. The idea of ​​the saying is that when a husband or wife is angry, the other one should be humble and reconcile and should not get angry or talk too much because the incident will lead to bad consequences. Still, there are some more examples to prove for “anger is a method of food cooking” such as “lửa cháy còn đổ thêm dầu”; “thêm dầu vào lửa”; “giận sôi máu”. All of these are very popular in Vietnamese daily life.

Conclusion

The present research study analyses the cultural metaphor “Humans are food” through a number of Vietnamese idioms and proverbs, demonstrating that apart from being a basic physiological requirement, food serves as an abundant source domain in conceptualizing humans, their feelings, social relationships, and values. It is also analyses a total of 120 idioms and proverbs relating to food and illustrates the manner in which food-related Vietnamese culture can be seen in metaphorical terms.

Four main cultural metaphor schemas were observed in the analysis. First, the metaphorical schema “Humans are Food” views individuals in terms of food entities and the processes associated with them. Under this schema, food plays a role in assessing human behaviour and social qualities, resulting in metaphors such as ingratitude, opportunism, badness, and the tendency to create difficulties for others. Of these categories, ingratitude makes up the biggest portion (13.3%), badness takes second place (10%), opportunism follows (5%), while making trouble makes up the smallest share (1.6%).

Second, the use of the metaphor “Human feelings are flavours” illustrates a well-thought-out link between sensory experience and emotions. A particular trend in the distribution of flavours among metaphors is an evaluative one. Positive emotions are mostly associated with sweetness, in that happiness makes up to 22.5% of the total data. On the contrary, negative emotions are conveyed with the use of bitter, spicy, and sour flavours. The suffering and endurance emotions form the largest percentage (25%) of all, with hatred and jealousy depicted by bitter-spicy and spicy flavours respectively.

Third, the use of the metaphor “Human characteristics are flavours” represents the correlation of flavour attributes with personality traits and social behaviour. The sour attribute is correlated with a person who is very sharp-tongued; spicy with a mature person; and no flavour or losing the flavour refers to someone who communicates poorly or has an uninteresting personality.

Fourth, the phrase “anger is a method of cooking the food” illustrates how emotion is framed using a process related to cooking. The act of chopping, boiling, lowering the temperature, or even pouring oil into the fire represents culturally constructed ways of making sense of anger and conflict resolution. These expressions are based on cultural traditions known to Vietnamese speakers.

On the whole, the results have adequately achieved the objectives of the study by describing the major cultural metaphor models in relation to food and providing the cultural conceptualizations underlying them. Above all, the study has shown that the metaphor “Humans are food” is more than a mere linguistic device; rather, it is a cultural cognitive model used for evaluating moral, emotional, and social experiences. The process of distributed cultural cognition helps maintain and pass down cultural knowledge from generation to generation. By doing so, this research shows the way that the Vietnamese think about human life, which is conceptualized based on one of the most basic domains in their lives, namely, food. This can make significant contributions to the fields of Vietnamese metaphorical thinking and cultural linguistics.

About the authors

Thi Phuong Lan Bui

Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City; Academy of Public Administration and Governance

Author for correspondence.
Email: landhnv@gmail.com

Ph.D student at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City; Lecturer, Ho Chi Minh City Campus, Academy of Public Administration and Governance

Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh City; Ho Chi Minh City

Huu Duc Pham

Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City

Email: phduc@hcmiu.edu.vn
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4564-7986

Assoc. Prof., Dr. in applied linguistics, Senior lecturer, International University, School of Languages

Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh City

References

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