Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of languages and international studies -----o0o----- HOANG THI NGOC DIEM THESIS SUMMARY TV news in English and Vietnamese (Phân tích tin truyền hình tiếng Anh tiếng Việt) Major: English Linguistics Code: 62 22 15 01 A Thesis Submitted in Total Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Ha Cam Tam, PhD Assoc. Prof. Tran Xuan Diep (PhD) Ha Noi - 2014 PART I - Introduction 1. Rationale The media has now become one of the principal means of getting information about the world. Not only for information, are the media also used for various purposes including entertainment, education, national identity enhancement or even political ones. Among media channels, television seems to be increasingly popular and favoured as access to television is widening to everyone and every corner of the world. It is largely believed that the media are always there, and have come to be taken for granted as an integral part of most people’s lives. With its crucial role, the power of the media cannot be denied. They are a “site for the production and circulation of social meanings, i.e. to a great extent the media decide the significance of things that happen in the world for any given culture” (Thornborrow, 2004:56). Within the research circle, the media has been explored a great deal so far. With regards to TV news alone, much interest has been shown in the field of linguistics. Hohn (1995) investigated linguistic features of BBC Radio and Radio to find out the similarities and differences between them. In 2006, Luginbuehl presented the result of comparing news stories in American and Swiss TV news since the 60s in view of “culturality”. His conclusion stated that Swiss TV news showed a detached way of reporting while CBS news displayed close and immediate reports; cultural differences were also found in different journalistic roles. At the same time, Senokozlieva and her co-researchers (2006) also examined the relationship between culture and selected formal characteristics of newscasts from three regions: The United States of America, Germany and the Arab world. Their findings showed that in collectivist societies like the Arab world, there were more displays of groups or individuals who are contextualized by others than in the individualistic US. Most recently, Shi Hong-mei (2008) conducted a critical analysis on turn-taking organization in English news interviews in China and her results showed the influence of the power and ideology on turn-taking; the interviewer with the institutional role, could interrupt or insert their turn-taking to control, direct the talk as intended plan. Apart from the findings that those authors have made about news above, news and television news are also of great importance in reasoning the way human mind sees events and representing them via language. This can be a great opportunity to theoretically and practically contribute to the field of cognitive linguistics. However, to the best of my knowledge, comprehensive investigations into news features of Vietnamese and British broadcasting from cognitive linguistics and seem to be rare. From pedagogical approach, newscasts in general are a rich source of authentic materials for foreign language learning and teaching. News is practically integrated into textbooks, English software, interactive websites for e-learning, and are used to develop all skills as well as particular subjects like translation and interpretation. BBC itself also opens a free link for English learners (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml) with various activities. Besides, access to visual original news is undoubtedly becoming common for self-learning. However, for Vietnamese learners of English, the use of news broadcasts in learning seems spontaneous. The news language itself as well as differences in news broadcasts between British culture and Vietnamese culture has not yet been introduced systematically to learners and teachers. Newscasts are merely seen by many as an authentic source for practice or one of the accesses to native speakers or real-life English. Despite the increasing popularity of television news broadcast and its important functions in shaping human perception as well as reasoning the relationship between human mind, meaning construction and language presentation, from a look into previous studies on news broadcasts and an investigation in practical applications of news in teaching, to the best of my knowledge, investigations into comparing news of Vietnamese and British broadcasting from cognitive approach seem few and far between. Basing on that account, the author would like to conduct an investigation of VTV1 news and BBC World News products to make a contribution to the large gap of news language analysis, hence give suggestions for English language learning and teaching. The author does hope the results of the study will be of potential concern to those who have interest in linguistics, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, mass communication and inter-cultural study. 2. Objectives of the study The objectives of this study are: - To investigate the ways by which mental spaces and conceptual blending are realized in English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts, - To find out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts with regards to mental spaces and conceptual blending, - To explore Figure-Ground presentation in English and Vietnamese news broadcasts, and finally To make further contribution to support linguistic circle in general and cognitive linguistics in particular, English language learning and teaching, and those who have interest in this area. 3. Scope of the study Television news broadcasts as a part of the media are an endless source of data for various study approaches. The thesis focuses on television news in English and Vietnamese covering the topic of natural disasters. The reasons for the choice of news topic are discussed in chapter 2, part II of this dissertation. The main source of data is daily news from BBC World News channel and VTV1 newscasts. News broadcasts are studied from cognitive linguistics perspective with the assistance of corpusbased analysis techniques. The analytical framework is centered on mental spaces, conceptual blending and Figure-Ground theories. Other news topics, other sources of news as well as other linguistic approaches to news language fall beyond the scope of this study. PART II - DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: literature review 1.1. Background of news language 1.2. Cognitive linguistics 1.2.1. Overview It has long been clear that cognitive development proceeds with the acquisition of language and that the two developmental processes are not only temporally but also causally connected. According to a traditional view of what causes what, “it is the structure and operation of the mind that determines the grammatical and semantic structure of languages” (Lyons, 1995). Any linguistic theory that is based on the traditional view of the direction of causation between the mind and language is referred to as cognitivism. 1.2.2. The nature of cognitive linguistics According to Lakoff (1992) and other cognitive linguists such as Evans and Green (2006), there are two key commitments that make cognitive linguistics a distinctive enterprise. They are Generalisation commitment and Cognitive commitment. Especially, together with these two commitments, the nature of cognitive linguistics is basically focused on addressing the relationship between language, the mind and experience which is thoroughly discussed in the embodied cognition thesis. 1.3. Mental spaces 1.3.1. Definition and categorization In the very broad area of cognitive semantics, mental space theories are a potential land for researches. Mental spaces, theories developed by Fauconnier (1997), “are very partial assemblies constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action. They contain elements and are structured by frames and cognitive models”. In other words, mental spaces are constructed and modified as thought and discourse unfolds and are connected to each other by various kinds of mappings, in particular identity and analogy mappings. It has been hypothesized that at the neural level, mental spaces are sets of activated neuronal assemblies and that the connections between elements correspond to coactivation-bindings. In this view, mental spaces operate in working memory but are built up partly by activating structures available from long-term memory. Interestingly, because mental space theory offers a unified and consistent means of understanding reference, co-reference, and the comprehension of stories and descriptions whether they are currently real, historical, imagined, hypothesised or happening remotely, Stockkwell (2002:96) classified mental space into four main types: - Time spaces – current space or displacement into past or future, typically indicated by temporal adverbials, tense and aspect. - Space spaces – geographical spaces, typically indicated by locative adverbials, and verbs of movement. - Domain spaces – an area of activity, such as work, games, scientific experiment, and so on. - Hypothetical spaces – conditional situations, hypothetical and unrealized possibilities, suggestions for plans and speculation. 1.3.2. Speech space Related to time spaces, apart from temporal adverbials, tense, aspect, Fauconnier (1997) particularly emphasizes on Time which is created by speech verbs. They no longer work on present or past meaning but set up spaces portioning out the content of what is said, and these speech spaces have the following important special properties, according to Fauconnier (1997:89): - They have an inherent strong Viewpoint Role filled by the speaker or experiencer of the reported speech event. - The Speech Space represents a time period that minimally includes the time of the reported speech event (but may be larger). The Speech Space and all spaces subordinate to it constitute a Speech Domain. A configuration containing a Speech Domain has two inherent Viewpoints, the one from the Base, and one from the Speech Space. - Spaces in the Speech Domain are assigned a FACT or PREDICTION status with respect to the Speech Space. Spaces in the Speech Domain may be accessed via the following access paths: + directly from the Speech Space; + directly from the Base; + from the Base via the Speech Space. 1.3.3. Space builders A mental space is constructed with space builders. Language has many devices to guide the construction and connection of mental spaces. Fauconnier (2006) divides spaces building elements into two types – discourse configurations and grammatical devices for cognitive construction. Firstly, with regards to discourse configuration, the builders include any language expression that has a meaning potential in a complete discourse and in a context. When approached in this way, grammatical clues, also crucial to the building process, are themselves insufficient to set up internationally structured domains and situational clues. Such discourse elements may include, according to Fauconnier (1997:39, 40): - Information regarding what new spaces are being set up, typically expressed by means of space builders (For example: Susan wishes, Susan hopes, in 1998, etc); - clues as to what space is currently in focus, what its connection to the base is, and how accessible it is; this information is typically expressed by means of grammatical tenses and moods (for example: In reality, If it rains, in that story, etc); - descriptions that introduce new elements (and possibly their counterparts) into spaces (Max, Napoleon, having the name Napoleon, etc); descriptions or anaphors or names that identify existing elements (and possibly their counterparts); - lexical information that connects the mental-space elements to frames and cognitive models from background knowledge; this information structures the spaces internally by taking advantage of available pre-structured background schemas; such pre-structured schemas can, however, be altered or elaborated within the constructions under way; presuppositional markings that allow some of the structure to be instantly propagated through the space configuration; - pragmatic and rhetoric information, conveyed by words like “even”, “but”, “already”, which typically signal implicit scales for reasoning and argumentation (for example: a vicious snake). The second type, grammatical devices, is composed of a variety of grammatical forms to open a new space or shift focus to a new part of an existing space. They can be locatives (‘in’, ‘at’), adverbials (‘actually’, ‘really’), prepositional phrases, subject-verb complexes or conditionals (‘if’, ‘when’. Additionally, Spaces are structured by names and descriptions, tense, mood and other aspectuals, by presuppositions, and by trans-spatial operators. These are the copulative verbs in English such as ‘be’, ‘become’ and ‘remain’. They link elements in different spaces. 1.4. Conceptual blending 1.4.1. Basic concepts Extended narratives have also been discussed in mental space theory, through the useful notion of conceptual blending. Fauconnier & Turner (2003) started to study conceptual blending systematically in 1993, when they discovered the structural uniformity and wide application of the notion. Since then, important work has been done on the theory of conceptual blending, and its empirical manifestations in mathematics, social science, literature, linguistics, and music. There have been proposals for the mathematical and computational modeling of the operation, and experimental research within neuroscience on the corresponding neural and cognitive processes. In the two authors’ view, (Fauconnier & Turner, 2003), conceptual blending is a basic mental operation that leads to new meaning, global insight, and conceptual compressions useful for memory and manipulation of otherwise diffuse ranges of meaning. It plays a fundamental role in the construction of meaning in everyday life, in the arts and sciences, and especially in the social and behavioral sciences. The essence of the operation is to construct a partial match between two input mental spaces, to project selectively from those inputs into a novel 'blended' mental space, which then dynamically develops emergent structure. Mental spaces are small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action –they are very partial assemblies containing elements, structured by frames and cognitive models. It has been suggested that the capacity for complex conceptual blending ("double-scope" integration) is the crucial capacity needed for thought and language. 1.5. Figure and Ground 1.5.1. Background concepts In cognitive linguistics, the notion of Figure and Ground is a basic and powerful idea which has been explored to develop a detailed grammatical semantic framework as well as very general and abstract ideas across discourses. Peter Stockwell (2002) has successfully employed Figure and Ground notion to understand general literaturary critical concepts. Talmy (2000) calls Figure the concept that needs anchoring and Ground the concept that does the anchoring. In the example “The bike is near the house”, the “bike” as the Figure and the “house” as the Ground can satisfy most of the characteristics in the list above. The next property of Figure and Ground that is of concern in this study is the semantic factors in relation with their grammatical relations. In other examples discussed above, the Figure and Ground functions of the two nominals or two events vary in correlation with their grammatical relation: subject as Figure and oblique object as Ground, event in the main clause as Figure and that in subordinate clause as Ground. But in some cases, the nominals keep the same semantic function, even with different grammatical relation. The sentences below can best exemplify this: a. Smoke (F) slowly filled the room (G). b. The room (G) slowly filled with smoke (F). (Talmy, 2000:333) In both these sentences, whether as subject or object, the room remains its Ground function as reference entity that serves to characterize the path of the smoke, with its Figure function as variably located entity. There is clearly a semantic difference between such inverse forms, but it seems to involve other factors than variable-point versus reference-point functions. Chapter 2: Research methodology 2.1. Research questions The study was conducted to find out the answers to the following research questions: (1) How are mental spaces realized in English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts? (2) What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts regarding mental spaces? (3) What are the features of conceptual blending in English and Vietnamese news broadcasts? (4) What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts regarding conceptual blending? (5) How are Figure-Ground principles presented in English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts? (6) What are the similarities and differences in Figure-Ground relationships between English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts? 2.2. Analytical framework – corpus-assisted cognitive semantics 2.5.1. Cognitive framework As discussed in the previous chapter, the data of the study were analyzed from cognitive view, particularly, under the light of mental spaces, conceptual blending and Figure and Ground. The theoretical background of mental spaces and conceptual blending was based on Fauconnier’s viewpoint (Fauconnier, 1997, 2003) and the classification of mental spaces proposed by Stockwell (2002). News reports were study to explore features in speech spaces, hypothetical spaces and blended spaces. To conduct the analysis, space builders, which were synthesized by Fauconnier (1997), were used. Hence, the analytical angle for issues related to mental spaces was designed as follows: - To examine speech space, verbs of speech were put much considerations. Speech verbs (like “say”, ‘announce” or “tell”) set up spaces partitioning out the content of what is said. Reported speech was also used to make comparison and contrast. Additionally, status of senders (those who were involved in reporting the events) was also traced out to find out the sources of information. - In terms of hypothetical space, expressions for advice, order, prediction, estimation and evaluation were put attention to. Related modal verbs (e.g. must, should, may, might), lexical verbs (e.g.: advise), adverbs (e.g.: possibly, certainly, extremely, etc), adjectives (possible, certain, huge, likely, etc) were studied and put into statistic. - The framework for conceptual blending was focused on condition sentences, comparative sentences, metaphors and metonymy. The use of metaphors was most commonly found in describing the occurring action of the disasters and in emphasizing their consequences or human suffering. To identify the salient use of metaphors, collocations for disasters were first sorted out and synthesized. The second matter that was explored in news language was Figure and Ground. The theoretical background was based on Talmy’s viewpoint (Talmy, 2000) as discussed in the previous chapter. The analysis was 10 emphasized on roles of entities and precedence principles. That is, entities appearing in the news stories were investigated to see their roles as Figure and Ground. Particularly, there were two entities that were studied in depth, compared and contrasted to see their roles and change of roles. They are the disaster itself and the affected area. Then, precedence principles were applied to study the basic and reverse form of Figure and Ground. All the builders and research elements mentioned above were synthesized and presented in the table below: (a). Space builders of mental spaces developed from Fauconnier’s theory (1997) Space builder Speech spaces Hypothetical space Conceptual blending Verbs of speech Advice (modal verbs, modal adjectives, modal adverbs, lexical verbs) Collocation Indirect quotes Order/command (lexical verbs, modal verbs, modal adjectives) Comparison Direct quotes Prediction Senders Estimation Evaluation Metaphors Metonymy Condition sentences (b). Analytical framework of Figure-Ground based on Talmy’s viewpoint (2000) Code\Item Figure Disaster Affected area Ground Disaster Affected area Precedence Basic reverse 2.5.2. Corpus assisted analysis To examine all studied phenomena, the authentic texts were compiled to make two parallel corpora. Technically, a concordance tool – textSTAT – was exploited to process the corpora. It helped to trace out space builders, expressions as well as their frequency. It was also useful in finding out the words in context and provides citations for illustration. Furthermore, this concordance tool also helped the author to set up a collection of collocations for natural disasters which was very helpful in 13 Furthermore, up till now there is no agreement on the size of a corpus to warrantee valid results. While there are corpora composed of millions of words like the BNC (British National Corpus) with 100 million words and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American) with 425 million words, there are also much smaller corpora in size such as SEC (Spoken English Corpus of radio broadcasts) with 53.000 words or the PWC (Polytechnic of Wales Corpus of children speech) with 65.000 words. Therefore, it can be argued that, with the feature of the data collected from transcribed spoken language and restricted to the channel of television news focusing on the domain of natural disasters, together with the purpose of the study as to look deeply into the cognitive side of the language use, the corpora used in this study is representative enough to produce reliable and valid conclusions. 2.4. Data collection instruments Video recording is the main method of collecting data of this research. The software Snagit – The Windows Screen Capture Utility version 9.1.2 retrieved from www.techsmith.com was exploited as the main recording tool. For news clips which were already available online, they were downloaded with a software and refined to make sure they met the requirements of the study. Once the newscasts were captured, they were all manually transcribed into texts. The transcription work was complied with the typical rule of transcribing data which is “Transcripts not predetermine what phenomenon is going to study. Transcripts routinely provide extremely detailed information about what people say and how people say it” (Markee, 2000:55). However, the focus of this study is the news texts only. Therefore, factors such as intonation, pauses were not taken into accounts and noted in the transcripts. For those newscasts the transcripts of which were already done or available, the texts were examined to eliminate unrelated elements such as figures, figures or advertisements. Last but not least, a concordance tool is essential in sorting out most of the search indicators. The software TextSTAT is chosen as the main concordance tool of this corpus-based study because it is easy to use, free of charge, and most importantly, it can work with Vietnamese texts, which not all concordance tools can do. For better reliability and validity of my research results, I know great caution and care should be put into the work of collection. News was recorded at prime time of the day from both channels. Then, news items were refined with the restriction to studied topics. The recording was done continuously in years (from 2009 to 2012) to yield representative corpora. 14 Chapter 3: mental spaces in English and Vietnamese news 3.1. Speech space Speech spaces were various in both corpora. More than one sender appeared in almost all newscasts. Besides, speech spaces embedded in another speech act space were also available in both sources. Particularly, in both corpora, speech verbs were quite various. Neutral verbs like “say” in English news or “cho biết” in Vietnamese news were used more frequently, with more than 60% and nearly 20% respectively, much higher than the percentage of corresponding verbs. Apart from those verbs, the information appeared to be reported from different angles. English news used more speech verbs with functions like “warning”, “blaming”, “complaining” while Vietnamese news had verbs like “khẳng định”, “nhấn mạnh”, “ước tính”, which brought more colours and senses to the news. In short, the information in both corpora of news seemed to come from more various sources with more direct interview and direct details from different personal spaces. However, the differences seem to be outdone by the similarities. The first difference lies in the frequency of speech verbs and quotation. Hits English news Vietnamese news Direct quotes Indirect quotes Direct quotes Indirect quotes 200 361 2.5 4.5 Mean Median 125 95 1.4 1.0 Table 1: Comparison of quotations in English and Vietnamese news As can be seen from the table above, the total number of both direct and indirect quotes of English news was much higher than that of Vietnamese news. Specifically, the quantity of direct quotes in English news nearly doubled that of direct quotes in Vietnamese news, and similarly the figure of indirect quotes in English news was four times as high as that in Vietnamese news. This evidence can be supported with the proof of the use of the indirect quotation expression “theo”, with 49.4%, which was the dominant figure. With regards to senders, some interesting findings in comparison and contrast were noted out. Senders of all statuses, social ranks were involved, from Prime Minister to farmers, from government institutions to international organizations. Interestingly, ordinary people were most mentioned in both two corpora, as seen in Table 2. 15 Senders English news 46% 6.8% Vietnamese news People (người dân, bà con) 35.8% Field reporters, 1.7% correspondents Table 2: Comparison of senders between English news and Vietnamese news However, difference was found in the presence of field reporters and correspondents. In English news, the role of the field reporters seemed not to be less important than the news reader. They were present in almost all news, counting for 50% of the total selected news items. Compared to all sorts of senders, they counted for more than 10%. This made the news more factive, current and persuasive. Whereas, in Vietnamese news, the news readers were mainly in charge of delivering many news broadcasts, field reporters were absent in many stories, they were totally present in 24% of the selected news broadcasts. Most prominently, three types of speech spaces were found in both corpora but they had different frequency as presented in the table below. News with the news reader as the only sender News without direct quotes News with different types of senders (with both direct and indirect quotes) English news 7.5% (6/80) Vietnamese news 23% (21/92) 25% (20/80) 67.5% (54/80) 50% (46/92) 27% (25/92) Table 3: Comparison of speech spaces in English and Vietnamese news As can be seen from the table and graph above, the percentage of the newsreader as the only sender in Vietnamese news tripled that in English news and similarly, the proportion of news without direct quotes in Vietnamese corpus was much higher, 50%, doubling that of English corpus. In contrast, English news had a larger percentage of news with different types of senders with both direct and indirect quotes, at 67.5% while this figure in Vietnamese was only about one-third, 27%. From all the major findings above related to speech spaces, it can be inferred that the English news was more direct with the presence of various senders of different status. They directly took part in giving the news, making it more live and factive. More direct quotes were inserted in the news, which made the disaster more urgent and serious, causing great impact on the audience. However, Vietnamese news had its different way of attracting the viewers. The news readers seemed to be a reliable sender who reported the event on his own for most of the time. 16 Direct and indirect quotes were used but not with a prevailing percentage. 3.2. Hypothetical spaces With regards to the use of advice and command, surprising figures were sorted out. First of all, advice and command were found more common in Vietnamese news, with the total number of hits of both nearly tripling that of English news (see table 22). More interestingly, command or obligation was much more popular in Vietnamese news, at more than 90%. Meanwhile, the percentage of advice and command was approximately similar in English news, 55% and 45% respectively. English news Vietnamese news Advice Command Advice Command Total hits 49 39 14 212 Frequency 55% 45% 6% 94% Table 4: Comparison of advice and command between English and Vietnamese news This phenomenon can be explained cognitively that Vietnamese people when delivering news preferred adding personal ideas such as advice in urgent situations so that it could help others. Additionally, news was also the channel to convey order from the authorities or related institution (e.g.: Central Office of Flood Prevention) for people to take action in avoiding, preventing the disasters or minimize the damages. Whereas, this was not seen often in English news as news was used mostly for transferring information or factively reporting an event. The situation was also similar with prediction and possibility in news in terms of the number of hits. The table below illustrated the differences between the two corpora. Predicting possibilities was seen more common in Vietnamese news, with 204 hits while this figure in English news was only 48, about times lower than that of Vietnamese news. Prediction and possibility Total hits Possibility Necessity English news 48 89.6% 10.4% Vietnamese news 204 94.6% 5.4% Table 5: Comparison of prediction and possibility between English and Vietnamese news However, when sorting prediction expressions into strong and weak possibility, similarity was found. Both sources of news preferred predicting weak possibilities. 17 For the use of expressions to estimate quantities, minor differences were also found. English news tended to resort various structures with quite equal ratios, 51.5% and 48.5%. Compared with Vietnamese news broadcasts, comparative structures in English news were more frequently used, nearly doubling the number of comparative structures in Vietnamese news. Meanwhile, approximative expressions were dominant in Vietnamese news, counting for 72.8%. Quantity estimation English news 51.5% Vietnamese news Approximative 72.8% expressions Comparative expressions 48.5% 27.2% Table 6: Comparison of quantity estimating expressions between English news and Vietnamese news In summary, the use of advice, command and prediction in Vietnamese news turned out to overdone the corresponding phenomena of the English news stories. The Vietnamese news readers and involved senders in the news seemed to prefer giving their advice and command to those who were concerned in the events and predictions were made quite regularly, particularly predictions for what would happen in the coming time. Meanwhile, the English news had the intention to transfer the facts and events to the audience. Prediction and personal ideas, comments were also given but with a very limited number of uses. These frequent hypothetical spaces made the Vietnamese news more subjective. Meanwhile, English news was more factive with denotative description with words corresponding the level of destruction, damages of the disasters. CHAPTER 4: CONCEPTUAL BLENDING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWS 4.1. Condition and comparison The two sources of news both used condition and comparison expressions to describe events. Reasoning, mappings among spaces were needed to have the whole view of what was happening at the time of speaking. However, their frequency was different in each corpus. The Vietnamese news frequently used more conditions and comparisons to describe the event, which required the viewers to assort to their knowledge of previous events to thoroughly understand the described situation. For example: 18 - dù trước mắt nhiều khó khăn sống mỉm cười với họ so với hàng chục nghìn người mạng sống trận động đất kinh hoàng vừa qua. - Mất mát lớn so với xóm nhỏ ven sông. Meanwhile, in English news, input spaces were mostly about the factive information related to the disasters: - It is very unlikely if anyone else can be found alive. - Above-average rainfall could be required in coming weeks if drought is not to spread more widely. 4.2. Conceptual blending with occurrence verbs With regards to the use of verbs to describe how disasters happened, difference rather than similarity was found. English news had the tendency to use more metaphors in verbs that trigger mapping between spaces to describe how the disasters happened. The metaphors frequently used in English news were “hit” and “strike”. They denote the strong movement and sudden happening of the disaster. It can be illustrated in the figure below. Meanwhile, neutral verbs were preferred in Vietnamese news, for example the verb “xảy ra” was most used. Metaphors were also used but with a minimal percentage. 4.3. Conceptual blending in imagery descriptions To find out the differences between the two corpora of news, firstly all the descriptions in Appendix and were studied, except for the verbs mentioned above. Then they are filtered according to the use of metaphors and metonyms. Expressions Total English news fading hope (3) frying pan of (1) scorching heat (1) a trail of tragedy (1) paralyzed (2) flash (flood) (2) rip a path through (2) 12 hits Vietnamese news trái tim không đập (3) trắng tay (3) tê liệt (5) mát đau lòng (1) lo lắng đến thắt ruột (1) sản xuất/ vụ mùa/ sản lượng lúa bấp bênh (3) buốt da buốt thịt (2) lạnh buốt (1) tâm chấn (4) tâm bão (14) rốn lũ (3) nỗi đau (3) khô khát (1) 44 hits Table 7: Imagery language in English and Vietnamese news 19 As can be seen from Table 7, in Vietnamese news, the input spaces were mostly related to human senses or human body parts (see table 17, appendix 1). Integrated in other input spaces which were the sight of the disasters, the use of these metaphor and metonyms created a generic space, which was the full picture of the disaster including severe effects and human sufferings. As can be referred from table above, conceptual blending also happened in English news but the mapping process was mainly based on action or movement such as “frying”, “scorching”, “fading” or “flash”. This helped describe the strong scale and high intensity of the disasters. In summary, in terms of conceptual blending, English news and Vietnamese news shared both similarities and differences. Both news styles used input spaces as facts or figures of prior or other events in comparisons. However, they differed in the following features. Mappings in English news were mostly based strong verbs, action and movement, which created a strong impression on how disasters occurred. Meanwhile, Vietnamese news favoured mappings related to imagery language to describe the effects and human feelings as well as suffering in the disasters. CHAPTER 5: FIGURE AND GROUND IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWS Putting the two sources of findings into comparison and contrast, both similarities and differences were found. Firstly, there were many features in common between English and Vietnamese news regarding the roles entities involved in the events, the precedence principle and Figure-Ground conceptualization in complex sentences. The only and prominent difference was found in the change of the role of entities – The disaster and the affected area - as Figure and Ground when they were compared to each other. Disaster – Affected area relationship Affected area = Ground Precedence English news Vietnamese news Basic A hail storm (F) has struck the Australian city of Melbourne (G). Một trận mưa to kết hợp với lốc xoáy (F) xảy vào khoảng 17h25 phút chiều ngày hôm qua hai xã Diễn Hồng Diễn Luyên huyện Diễn Châu 20 Affected Ground area = Reverse Affected Figure area = Basic Pakistan (G) was hit by the worst flood (F) in 80 years. Not seen Affected area = Figure Disaster = Ground Reverse Not seen Basic Not seen Disaster = Ground Disaster = Figure Reverse Basic Disaster = Figure Reverse Not seen Suspected tornadoes (F) have struck two areas of England (G). The town of Zhouqu (G) was severely hit by the landslides (F) after the heavy rains. tỉnh Nghệ An (G). Trên địa ban tỉnh Nghệ An (G) mưa to (F) kéo dài nhiều ngày. Vào thời điểm Tây Nguyên Nam Bộ (F) bước vào cao điểm nắng nóng thiếu hụt nước (G). Not seen Đến hôm khu vực (F) tiếp tục bước sang ngày thứ sáu nắng nóng liên tiếp đợt hai (G) kể từ đầu năm đến nay. Not seen Một số dư trấn (F) xảy khu vực bờ biển phía tây Malaisia (G). Vừa qua địa bàn xã Thanh Hóa huyện Tuyên hóa tỉnh Quảng Bình (G) xảy trận lốc xoáy kèm mưa đá (F) lớn lịch sử. Table 8: Figure – Ground comparison between Vietnamese and English news As synthesized in the table above, in English news there was one-way relationship between the affected area and the disaster. The disaster was always the entity that had unknown spatial (or temporal) properties to be determined and was recently in awareness while the affected area acted as a reference entity, having known properties that could characterize the Figure’s unknowns. The common sentence structures used here were active and passive voice. On the contrary, the roles of the two discussed 21 entities were interchangeable in Vietnamese news. The disaster could be Figure or Ground depending on the context. This can be made clearer with the comparison between happening verbs in English and Vietnamese news as presented in the table below: Occurence verbs (in active form) Subject as disaster, Object as affected area Subject as affected area; Object as disaster English news Hit (54), strike (46), happen (20), sweep (21), move (18), linger (4), drift (5), erupt (10) spill (2), approach (4) Vietnamese news Rút (29), quét qua (3), trút xuống (2), diễn biến (33), hoạt động (3), phun (4), hoành hành (5), kéo dài (38), bao trùm (6), xảy (88), xuất (16) Bước sang (2), bước vào (3), đón (2), chứng kiến (4) Table 9: Comparison of occurrence verbs between Vietnamese and English news From a close look, this difference between two corpora was made by the presence of types of happening verbs in concordance with their subjects. This helps to confirm the one-way relationship between the Disaster and the affected area. In all cases, the disasters functioned as Figure in relationship to the affected area. On the contrary, apart from functioning as the Figure, the disaster in Vietnamese news sometimes functioned as the Ground depending on the use of verbs as modelized in the figure below: Figure Disaster English news Ground Affected area Ground (Figure) Affected area (Disaster) Disaster news Vietnamese (Affected area) Figure (Ground) 22 Figure 5: Difference of Figure and Ground between English and Vietnamese news Again, the differences can be illustrated with the examples below: Vietnamese news Space: Time: English news Time Space The disaster (F) as moving entity in space/time (affected area - G) Mưa lũ ảnh hưởng bão số hai (F) diễn biến phức tạp nhiều địa phương (G). Mưa lũ (F) kéo dài nhiều ngày qua (G). Drought (F) may last until Christmas (G). Water shortages (F) could last until Christmas (G). Heavy snow (F) falls across Britain (G). > < > < The affected area (F) as moving entity in space/time (the disaster - G) Các khu vực vùng cao huyện Sapa tỉnh Lào Cai (F) phải vật lộn với trận mưa tuyết bất thường lịch sử (G). Miền Nam (F) bước vào mùa mưa (G). Not seen Additionally, as can be seen from the table above, metaphors were aslo used in both corpora. The event, particularly the way the affected area reacted to the disasters was personified. The Figure that was dependent on the reference background actually was conceptualized from human movement or suffering, which made the affected area the one that was 23 movable, recently on the scene. In reality, it was the people suffering from those disasters that had such movement or reactions. With regards to the use of metaphors like “hit”, “strike” “bước vào” or “bước sang” also denoted different conceptualization. In the English news, the “moving event” or “moving time” was the base for conceptual construction while in Vietnamese news, it was the “moving ego” that was the hub of meaning constitution. Apart from the use of metaphors like “bước vào” or “bước sang”, metonymy was also used as in “Đến hôm khu vực tiếp tục bước sang ngày thứ sáu nắng nóng liên tiếp đợt đợt hai kể từ đầu năm đến nay”. The name of the region was used to denote the inhabitants in that region. It can be concluded from this difference that the natural disasters were retold in different ways. The stories in BBC news were retold in a more objective way with the transform of the sentence structures from active to passive or vice versa with the unchanged roles of the entities including the disasters and the affected regions. However, in Vietnamese news, the accidents were retold with more attention to human sufferings, movement and reactions, which created subjective emphasis effects. 24 PART iii - Conclusion and implications 1. Summary of major findings and conclusion Theoretically, the study has systemized different theories in cognitive linguistics, critically commented and drawn out an appropriate theoretical framework for the subjects and objectives of the study. Particularly, theories and approaches to mental spaces, conceptual blending, Figure and Ground principles were discussed in detailed and systematically. Practically, the discussed theories were applied in conducting this study to compare English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts, and hence, to find out the similarities and differences between them regarding mental spaces, conceptual blending, Figure and Ground conceptualization. With the analysis and findings in the previous chapters, major findings can be summarized as follows. With regards to similarities, the two corpora shared some same features in all types of spaces. First, mental spaces were embedded in speech spaces in all news items. There was more than one mental space in each news item. Furthermore, all aspects of hypothetical spaces appeared in both corpora including conditions, comparisons, advice, evaluation, estimation and prediction. Similarly, conceptual blending was used to describe events in both corpora. Finally, both two corpora of news had the same configuration in the roles of Figure and Ground, that is, the disaster as the Figure and the affected area as the Ground. In terms of the differences, the followings are some prominent findings: - Speech spaces: There were more sources of information in English news, directly from many senders including news readers, field reporters, correspondents, witnesses, experts and ordinary people. The news was more direct from the speech space and from the base as a result of field reports and interviews. On the contrary, though there were also many senders in Vietnamese news, the news readers were the main source of information. Speech verbs were used but the spaces created by them mostly were embedded in the spaces of the senders as news anchors or news readers. The information in Vietnamese was more from the base via the speech space. It can be inferred from the findings that thanks to various speech spaces, the information in English news was more factive, persuasive with witnesses as well as experts or authorities directly involved. The information in Vietnamese news by contrast mostly came from the news readers. Different speech spaces were embedded in the speech space by the news readers. Hence, though the over picture of the disasters was given, the news items were less factive. 25 - Hypothetical spaces: In Vietnamese news, personal comments and subjective evaluation turned out to be an outstanding feature. Advice and prediction on probability was also common. While in English news, the events were described with more facts and proper words to narrate the incidents. This made the Vietnamese news more subjective and English news more objective. - Conceptual blending: Though metaphors were both used in the two source of news, those in English news were conceptualized with strong movement to denote the sudden and strong impact of the disasters. Differently, metaphors in Vietnamese news were from human feeling inputs, human movement and human senses. Therefore, the blended spaces in Vietnamese news were mostly about human suffering and losses. In other words, input spaces in English news broadcasts were more frequently associated with physical action, movement while mapping in Vietnamese news was mostly based on imagery inputs of human senses and body parts. Hence, this feature might add more bodily painful feelings to the audience while watching the Vietnamese news or partly exaggerate the accidents. Whereas, the conceptualization of strong and sudden movement in English news helped the viewers imagine the serious destruction of the disasters. - Figure and Ground: In English news broadcasts, there was one-way relationship between the affected area and the disaster. That is, the role of all of the disasters was consistent in all sentence types and with various uses of language. The disaster always functioned as Figure - the entity that had unknown spatial (or temporal) properties to be determined and was recently in awareness while the affected area acted as a reference entity, having known properties that could characterize the Figure’s unknowns. On the contrary, the roles of the two main entities – the disaster and the affected area - were interchangeable in Vietnamese news. The disaster could be Figure or Ground depending on the context. This difference between two corpora was made by the presence of metaphors and metonymy, and mostly metaphors. In the English news, the “moving event” or “moving time” was the base for conceptual construction while in Vietnamese news, with the assistance of metaphors, it was the “moving ego” that was the centre of meaning constitution. It can be concluded from these findings that the English news brought more factive, objective information to the viewers with the main focus on the disasters together with its damages and destruction to human being. In the meanwhile, the Vietnamese news brought more impact on human feelings, endurance with the subjective view of the sufferers. 26 It can be inferred from the major findings that there are some major differences between English and Vietnamese news. Because cognition is embodied, the way reality (i.e. natural disasters) was viewed and retold in news stories in each language had its own features. In English news, the disastrous events were reported with more current and up-to-date information. Things seemed and sounded like they were happening right at the time of speaking. Details of the disasters were described with more facts, numbers and directly from various points of view such as the news readers, the field reporters, region correspondents and witnesses. In other words, it can be said that English news was more direct, factive and objective. On the contrary, in Vietnamese news, stories were focused more on the consequences – what had happened – rather than on what was happening at the time of speaking. The information included not only the events themselves but also subjective advice, prediction and evaluation of the reporters and news makers. Description of the events was also concerned with subjective attitudes, compared with human feelings and endurance. It can be cognitively inferred that, the way of reporting news in English is more ego-independent. The event was focused on itself or the news had the function of objectively reporting events with full and updated details. Meanwhile, Vietnamese news was more ego-dependent. The ego was seen as the reference for description, prediction, advice and evaluation. Human sufferings and feelings were integrated while news stories were told. In summary, English news has the main function of delivering the events while Vietnamese news, apart from that function, has the purpose of making impacts on the audiences and giving advices and guidance in urgent disastrous situations. 2. Implications 2.1. Implications for English language learning and teaching As stated above, cognitive linguistics as well as corpus linguistics can provide useful findings in meanings and uses of words and structures of natural languages in general and in foreign language teaching methodology in particular. The author particularly agrees with the opinion of Mahlberg (2009) which states that “Communicative approaches and corpus linguistics share the view that language is used in context. […]. Now that corpus linguistics can provide new access to language in the real world and approaches to language teaching have been supported by corpus linguistic research, the teaching of vocabulary and structures can also be seen in a new light” (Mahlberg , 2009:109). Ly Toan Thang, a Vietnamese cognitive linguist, also claims that the investigation of cognitive processes in the case of English for Vietnamese learners is certainly significant because there are really 27 specific differences deeply rooted in cognition and culture of native speakers between the two languages (Ly Toan Thang, 2009:323). Thanks to their viewpoints, the author came up with some ideas of applying this research in ELL and ELT. 2.2. Implication for translation Translating news from English to Vietnamese and vice versa is not an easy task. This is closely related to cognition which is typical of the cultures of two language users. With the same phenomenon, different interpretation and description may occur, which brings different feelings to readers or users. For example, for the earthquake that happened in Haiti in 2010, the headline of BBC news was “Haiti earthquake”. Meanwhile, the headline in a Vietnamese news report was “Động đất Hai-ti: Một đống tro tàn”. As founded from this study, the Vietnamese news used more emphatic expressions and was more subjective. Therefore, to match with the Vietnamese style, translators should also be aware of the differences (Hoang Thi Ngoc Diem, 2012). 3. Suggestions for further study This study was conducted for a PhD research. The findings brought some potential aspects with regards to mental spaces and other aspects of cognitive semantics. Therefore, further study is encouraged to find out features in other cognitive aspects like frame semantics, or figure and ground theories. The method of this study is corpus-based analysis and it was proved to be a very productive way to yield valid and reliable statistics. However, the combination of other research methods is also recommended so that the same study may have other outstanding findings. 28 PUBLICATIONS AND PROJECTS RELATED TO THE DISSERTATION A. Journal articles: 1. Hoang, Thi Ngoc Diem (2014). Cognitive Differences between English and Vietnamese TV news - Authentic Materials for Language Teaching. In Proceeding of “The 5th Engaging with Vietnam - An interdisciplinary Dialogue Conference: Integrating Knowledge: The Multiple Ways of Knowing Vietnam”. Thainguyen University Publishing House. ISBN 978-604915143-9. 2. Hoàng Thị Ngọc Điểm. (2012). Không gian tâm lý tin tiếng Anh tiếng Việt. Tạp chí Ngôn ngữ. Số 6/2012. ISSN 0866-7519. 3. Hoàng Thị Ngọc Điểm. (2012). Khai thác khối liệu ngôn ngữ dạy học tiếng Anh. Kỷ yếu Hội thảo Ngữ học toàn quốc 2011. Hội ngôn ngữ học Việt Nam. 4. Hoang, Thi Ngoc Diem. (2012). Making News: A Successful Example of Project-Based Learning. Language Education in Asia, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012. ISSN 1838- 7365. B. Books: Hoàng Thị Ngọc Điểm. (2012). Thực Hành Dịch BBC. NXB Đại học Thái Nguyên. Hoang, Thi Ngoc Diem. (2009). Chapter 5: Magazine as project-based learning. In S. Rilling & M. Dantas-Whitney (Eds.), TESOL Classroom Practice Series: Authenticity in the Classroom and Beyond: Adult Learners (pp. 37-45). Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc. C. Scientific research: Đề Khoa học & Công nghệ cấp Đại học “Nghiên cứu khác biệt văn hoá tin tiếng Anh tiếng Việt để ứng dụng việc dạy học ngoại ngữ”. Mã số ĐH2011-09-04. Thời gian thực 2011-2012. D. Conference presentations: 1. (2014, February). Making news as a PBL sample. Presented at The 10th annual CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching, Cambodia. 2. (2013, December). Cognitive differences between English and Vietnamese TV news - authentic materials for language teaching. Presented at The 5th “Engaging with Vietnam: An interdisciplinary Dialogue” Conference Integrating Knowledge: The Multiple Ways of Knowing Vietnam, Vietnam. 3. (2013, November). Authentic online language learning in a global setting. Presented at 2013 Conference on “Globalization and Localization in Computer-Assisted Language Learning” jointly held by APACALL, PacCALL and UFLS – IJD at the University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Da Nang, Vietnam. (GloCALL 2013). 4. (2011, April). Corpus Exploitation in ELT. Presented at 16th National Language and Linguistics Conference – Da Nang, Vietnam. [...]... English news 51.5% Vietnamese news Approximative 72.8% expressions Comparative expressions 48.5% 27.2% Table 6: Comparison of quantity estimating expressions between English news and Vietnamese news In summary, the use of advice, command and prediction in Vietnamese news turned out to overdone the corresponding phenomena of the English news stories The Vietnamese news readers and involved senders in. .. popular in Vietnamese news, at more than 90% Meanwhile, the percentage of advice and command was approximately similar in English news, 55% and 45% respectively English news Vietnamese news Advice Command Advice Command Total hits 49 39 14 212 Frequency 55% 45% 6% 94% Table 4: Comparison of advice and command between English and Vietnamese news This phenomenon can be explained cognitively that Vietnamese. .. “scorching”, “fading” or “flash” This helped describe the strong scale and high intensity of the disasters In summary, in terms of conceptual blending, English news and Vietnamese news shared both similarities and differences Both news styles used input spaces as facts or figures of prior or other events in comparisons However, they differed in the following features Mappings in English news were mostly... verbs, action and movement, which created a strong impression on how disasters occurred Meanwhile, Vietnamese news favoured mappings related to imagery language to describe the effects and human feelings as well as suffering in the disasters CHAPTER 5: FIGURE AND GROUND IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWS Putting the two sources of findings into comparison and contrast, both similarities and differences... blending: Though metaphors were both used in the two source of news, those in English news were conceptualized with strong movement to denote the sudden and strong impact of the disasters Differently, metaphors in Vietnamese news were from human feeling inputs, human movement and human senses Therefore, the blended spaces in Vietnamese news were mostly about human suffering and losses In other words, input... feelings were integrated while news stories were told In summary, English news has the main function of delivering the events while Vietnamese news, apart from that function, has the purpose of making impacts on the audiences and giving advices and guidance in urgent disastrous situations 2 Implications 2.1 Implications for English language learning and teaching As stated above, cognitive linguistics... With regards to senders, some interesting findings in comparison and contrast were noted out Senders of all statuses, social ranks were involved, from Prime Minister to farmers, from government institutions to international organizations Interestingly, ordinary people were most mentioned in both two corpora, as seen in Table 2 15 Senders English news 46% 6.8% Vietnamese news People (người dân, bà con)... news tripled that in English news and similarly, the proportion of news without direct quotes in Vietnamese corpus was much higher, 50%, doubling that of English corpus In contrast, English news had a larger percentage of news with different types of senders with both direct and indirect quotes, at 67.5% while this figure in Vietnamese was only about one-third, 27% From all the major findings above related... quantities, minor differences were also found English news tended to resort various structures with quite equal ratios, 51.5% and 48.5% Compared with Vietnamese news broadcasts, comparative structures in English news were more frequently used, nearly doubling the number of comparative structures in Vietnamese news Meanwhile, approximative expressions were dominant in Vietnamese news, counting for 72.8%... Practically, the discussed theories were applied in conducting this study to compare English and Vietnamese television news broadcasts, and hence, to find out the similarities and differences between them regarding mental spaces, conceptual blending, Figure and Ground conceptualization With the analysis and findings in the previous chapters, major findings can be summarized as follows With regards to . estimating expressions between English news and Vietnamese news In summary, the use of advice, command and prediction in Vietnamese news turned out to overdone the corresponding phenomena of the English. quotes in English news nearly doubled that of direct quotes in Vietnamese news, and similarly the figure of indirect quotes in English news was four times as high as that in Vietnamese news. This. spaces in English and Vietnamese news As can be seen from the table and graph above, the percentage of the newsreader as the only sender in Vietnamese news tripled that in English news and similarly,