Conceptualization of death as the cognitive metaphor “DEATH IS SLEEP” in Vietnamese

Abstract

The conceptual metaphor “DEAD IS SLEEP” has been used in many different contexts. The research has shown the relationship between embodied experience and the way Vietnamese people reflect an abstract concept through a concrete one. The research also explains the replication mechanism between two spatial domains - the source domain “Sleep” and the target domain “Death” as well as the organization of the mapping schema of this conceptual metaphor in the linguistic thinking of Vietnamese people.