Conceptual Metaphors of Time in Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry

Abstract

This study investigates the system of conceptual metaphors of time in contemporary Vietnamese poetry from a cognitive linguistic perspective, with the aim of identifying source domains, target domains, mapping patterns, and aesthetic features associated with the poetics of the era. The corpus consists of fourteen poetry collections by representative contemporary authors, analyzed qualitatively within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) in combination with statistical and classificatory methods. The findings reveal twelve conceptual metaphors comprising a total of eighty-nine mappings, encompassing both universal source domains (HUMAN, SPACE, OBJECT, etc.) and culturally specific ones (POISON, DIRT, etc.). Notably, “mapping indeterminacy” emerges as a salient aesthetic strategy, reflecting a poetics of fragmentation, existential sensibility, and surrealist inspiration, while simultaneously opening a “space of free association” for readers. The research contributes to clarifying the characteristics of contemporary Vietnamese poetic thought and provides supplementary data for the study of conceptual metaphors in artistic language.