Ontological Metaphors in the Culinary Domain in Vietnamese and English Idioms and Proverbs: Reification Mechanisms and Cultural Variation

Abstract

This article investigates the mechanism of reification in ontological metaphors within the culinary domain through an analysis of 408 Vietnamese idioms and proverbs and their English equivalents. Drawing upon an integrated theoretical basis combining Kövecses's Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Sharifian's Cultural Linguistics, the study identifies five major ontological metaphor models and analyzes their mapping mechanisms across three hierarchical levels: universal, cultural variation, and linguistic expression. The findings reveal that ontological metaphors account for 38,5% of the corpus, operating on a shared embodied basis yet culturalized along divergent orientations: ethics- and community-oriented in Vietnamese versus rationality- and individual-oriented in English. These findings offer practical implications for bilingual lexicography and language pedagogy.