Mood Metaphors Expressing Negation in Vietnamese Dialogue

Abstract

The identification and analysis of the role of mood metaphor in expressing negation in Vietnamese is important for clarifying the mechanism of grammatical metaphor and reflecting the communicative characteristics of Vietnamese speakers. Based on the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study investigates mood metaphor as a type of grammatical metaphor conveying negation, using a corpus of dialogues from 25 Vietnamese films (1974–2023). Statistical analysis records 275 instances of mood metaphor, among which interrogative mood metaphors are the most frequent (61.4%), followed by declarative, exclamative, and imperative forms. The study proposes 05 typical structural patterns of mood metaphor, in which direct negative clauses are transformed into other mood types to adjust interpersonal meaning in accordance with Vietnamese politeness conventions. The findings contribute to supporting the applicability of Systemic Functional Linguistics in general and grammatical metaphor theory in particular, beyond English, while providing a valuable reference source for the teaching and research of Vietnamese.