VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
o0o
NGUYỄN VĂN NGHĨA
TYPICAL CULTURAL FEATURES IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE FABLES ABOUT PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE:
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VĂN HÓA ĐIỂN HÌNH
TRONG CÁC TRUYỆN NGỤ NGÔN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
NÓI VỀ TRIẾT LÝ CUỘC SỐNG M.A MINOR THESIS

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VĂN HÓA ĐIỂN HÌNH
TRONG CÁC TRUYỆN NGỤ NGÔN TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
NÓI VỀ TRIẾT LÝ CUỘC SỐNG M.A minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
Supervisor: PHẠM XUÂN THỌ, MA.
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN LINGUISTICS

HANOI – 2010 iv
Table of contents Page



3.1. Subjects 11
3.1.1. English fables 11
3.1.2. Vietnamese fables 11
3.3. Data collection and data analysis procedures 12 Chapter 4: Results and discussions 14

4.1. Typical cultural features of English fables about philosophy of life. 14
4.1.1. Features of the settings and objects. 14
4.1.2. Features of the characters. 17
.4.1.3. The features of the language used by the characters. 20
4.1.4. Features of the ways the philosophy of life is expressed 23
4.2. The TCFs in Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life 24
4.2.1. Features of the settings and objects. 24
4.2.2. Features of the characters 26
4.2.2.1. Characters as humans 26

vi
4.2.2.2. Characters as animals 28
4.2.3. Features of the language 30
4.2.4. Features of the way the philosophies of life are expressed 32
4.3. The similarities and differences of the TCFs in English and Vietnamese fables about
philosophy of life 34
4.3.1. Similarities 34
4.3.2. Differences 35

Chapter 5: Conclusion 37
5.1. Major findings 37

D: Domestic animals
ND: Non domestic animals
H: Humans
A: Animals
DA: Domestic animals
NDA: Non-domestic animals
FR: Family-related relation
C: Career relation
SR: Social relation
L: Language used by characters in the conversation
ES: Explicitly stated
IS: Implicitly stated

viii

List of tables

Table 1: TCFs of the settings and objects in English fables about philosophy of life
Table 2: TCFs of characters in English fables.
Table 3: Features of the language in the conversations of English fables
Table 4: Features of the ways the philosophy of life is stated in English fable
Table 5: TCFs of the settings and objects in Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life
Table 6: TCFs of characters in Vietnamese fables.
Table 7: Features of the language in the conversations of Vietnamese fables
Table 8: Features of the ways the philosophy of life is expressed in Vietnamese fables
fable.
Among fables of various themes, those about philosophies of life appear to be the most
remarkable. These are the most attractive of all types of fables. The world of animals or

2
humans - mostly in the past, speaks of the moral lessons which are still relevant in present life.
Apart from the moral lessons, another attraction in fables is the cultural features embedded in
each story. The settings, characters, language, and the way characters treat one another reveal
the cultural identities of certain nations, regions and these are the most attractive parts of
fables.

1.2. Aims and research questions

Conducting the study, the author sets several limited aims. First of all, the study is to find
out the typical cultural features (TCFs) in fables in English as well as in Vietnamese. As a
matter of fact, there are a number of cultural features in fables, but the author’s focus is only
on the typical ones. That is, only the most remarkable features are taken into account. The
second thing this study has to do is to contrast these typical cultural features in the fables in
the two languages, finding out the similarities and the differences. In order to do so, the study
will have to search for the answers to the following research questions:
1. What are the typical cultural features in English fables about philosophy of life?
2. What are the typical cultural features in Vietnamese fables about philosophy of life?
3. What are the similarities of the typical cultural features in English and Vietnamese
fables about philosophy of life?
4. What are the differences of the typical cultural features in English and Vietnamese
fables about philosophy of life?

1.3. Significance of the study

The study is of great significance to not only culture researchers but those whose interests

Results and Discussions. The final chapter presents a summary of the findings, limitations of
the study as well as suggestions for further research.

4
Chapter 2: Literature View

In this chapter basic concepts relevant to the study will be reviewed with the aim of finding
out what has been about the topic as well as forming a theoretical framework for the study.

2.1. Culture

As stated earlier, culture is not tangible, only perceptive to human senses. There have been a
large number of publications regarding culture from different points of view. Some authors do
their best to give its definitions; others both give the definitions and discuss certain aspects of
culture. As a consequence, the publications about culture are plentiful not only in number but
also in its aspects as well.
As is known, scholars all over the world have defined and regarded culture differently. In
fact, it is believed that there is no commonly - shared definition. According to Gooddenough
(1964:36), a proper definition of culture must ultimately derive from the operations by which
we describe particular cultures. Because these operations are still in early stages of
formulation and development, it is not yet possible to state precisely just what we mean when
we speak of a society’s culture. He adds:
“As I see it, a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate
in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for anyone of themselves.
Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the
end product of learning, knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term”. (p.36)
By this definition, we should note that culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not

Meanwhile, when discussing the concept of culture, Risager (2006:32) briefly presents three
dimensions of the concept of culture described by the Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt
Baumann (1999). They are:
The hierarchical concept of culture
The differential concept of culture
The generic concept of culture

6
In the hierarchical concept, Baumann (1999) regards a culture as something that the
individual human being or individual society either “has” or “does not have” or “has” at a
higher or lower level. This concept cannot exist in the plural and it is always value-laden. The
criteria for what “culture” is – and thus the “ideal human” – are something for which a
struggle takes place in a society. To attain culture is actually to attain an ideal nature: “There is
an ideal nature of human beings, and the culture means the conscious, strenuous and
prolonged effort to attain this ideal, to bring the actual life – process into line with the highest
potential of the human vocation.” (Baumann, 1999:7).
The differential concept of culture, according to Baumann (1999), has to do with culture as
something that “marks off” group of people from each other. This concept can be used in
plural. Following this concept, a culture is typically a cohesive unit that various
anthropologists have described with the aid of such terms as ethos, genius, pattern,
configuration, style and the like. Baumann (1999) adds that “a culture has the nature of a
system that is self – contained and resists mixing; it mainly alters as the result of encounters
with other cultures (“cultural clashes”)”. Baumann (1999) also assumes that cultures viewed in
such a way can be compared, and the comparison can result in cultural universals being
collected and categorised. Culture can be both “from the outside” and “from the inside”; the
former involves observing behaviour on the basis of a general or universal apparatus, while
the latter involves listening to and trying to understand what categories are relevant for the
indigenous people themselves – consciously or unconsciously (Baumann, 1999, quoted in
Risager, 2006:33).
The generic concept of culture, on the other hand, has to do with what is common to


century, a collective concept of culture developed alongside the individual one. The collective
concept of culture has to be divided into a hierarchical and a non-hierarchical variant. The
hierarchical variant is the earlier, and it deals with either the societal conditions for the
individual process of cultivation, or with what “cultivated people” have in common. (p.36)
With reference to the aesthetic concept of culture, Risarger (2006) assumes that in the course
of the 19
th
century, a number of special spheres crystalise in connection with modern
development, including “art” with its subsections including literature, visual arts and music.
These become a reference for the aesthetic concept of culture which develops during the same
period, alongside other concepts of culture, and which adopts a narrowing, individual and
hierarchising direction that focuses in particular on artistic products as supreme achievements
of symbolic – aesthetic creativeness.

8
Like many authors who are interested in culture, Claude Lévi – Strauss (1958), an European
sociologist and anthropologist proposes that all cultures reflect fundamental and universal
principles of human mind. Cultures were shared creations of human minds. Meanwhile,
Keesing (1974:78-79) when discussing Lévi – Strauss’s points of view supposes that the mind
imposes culturally patterned order, a logic of binary contrast, of relations, and transformation,
on a continuous changing and often random world. The gulf between the cultural realm, where
man imposes his arbitrary order, and the realm of nature becomes a major axis of symbolic
polarity: “nature vs. culture” is a fundamental conceptual opposition in many all – times and
places.
To conclude, there is no limit in the discussion of culture. This is a multi-facet subject
matter. Yet, through the overview of the publications involved, we can focus our attention on
some issues like the definition, concept of culture seen from different angles or the
relationship between culture and anthropology.


in fables in a way that is easily understood because it is always the same. They keep the same
characteristics from story to story.
 A lion is noble
 A rooster is boastful
 A peacock is proud
 A fox is cunning
 A wolf is fierce
 A horse is brave
 A donkey is hard-working
Fables frequently have as their central characters animals that are given anthropomorphic
characteristics such as the ability to reason and speak. In antiquity, Aesop presented a wide
range of animals as protagonists, including "the Tortoise and the Hare" who famously engage
in a race against each other; and, in another classic fable, a fox which rejects grapes that are
out of reach, as probably being sour ("sour grapes"). (Wikipedia)
In summary, fables belong to fiction in literature. A fable is a simple story with the
characters as persons, animals or even inanimate objects. At the end of each story, a lesson or

10
moral is often drawn and this is the most typical feature of fable. The characters and content of
a fable are always influenced by cultural factors.

2.2.2. Fables about philosophy of life.

It is agreed that fables have a wide range of themes. It can be either about human relationships
expressed through animal behaviours or the explanation of a natural phenomenon, or simply it
is about humans’ daily interactions. However, in this study, those about philosophies of life
are the major concern. The question asked here is “What is philosophy of life?” As shown in
Dictionary.reference.com, philosophy of life is “any philosophical view or vision of the nature
or purpose of life or of the way that life should be lived”. Literally, this definition is
satisfactory and clear in the common sense. However, in the article “The philosophy of life”

from the website An English-Zone.com. It is also noted that An English-zone.com is a
webpage for online English learning and teaching . This is a reliable website in terms of
academic English and is very well – known in the field of teaching and learning English as a
foreign language (EFL). The English language used on this webpage is the standard one; and
the collection of Aesop’s fables on this webpage is used as the material for reading skills.
Therefore, these fables are quite reliable for academic purposes.

3.1.2. Vietnamese fables

The 15 Vietnamese fables in this study are taken from the book “Tổng tập văn học dân gian
người Việt - Tập 10: Truyện ngụ ngôn” (The great collection of Vietnamese folk literature –
Volume 10: Fables) by Social Science Publishing House, Hanoi (2003). The book consists of
hundreds of fables of different types like prose, poetry. In particular, all the fables are
collected from different regions of Vietnam; therefore, the regional diversity is guaranteed. In
this study only those of prose are taken as the subject of the study. 12
3.2. Data collection and data analysis procedures

15 fables of philosophy of life in English and 15 fables of philosophy of life in Vietnamese
were chosen from the two sources above. They were then carefully read and analyzed in terms
of the following features in order to answer the first two research questions:
- The objects and settings : First, the setting is the situation in which the story takes place and
the characters interact with each other. The settings might be either rural, urban or in the
mountainous area. The story might take place in a room, at the market or in the field. In
addition, there are a large number of objects in the fables. They might be the objects used in
everyday life at home or anywhere else. These objects are very important for finding out the
cultural features because they are obviously influenced by cultural factors.
- The characters: The characters in fable are diversified. They might be human: farmers,


14
Chapter 4: Results and discussions

In this chapter, the results of the study will be discussed with relevant citations from fables in
English and Vietnamese. The four research questions will be answered in turn.

4.1. Typical cultural features of English fables about philosophy of life.

4.1.1. Features of the settings and objects.

R % U % D % ND %
CA 4 26.6 0 0 1 6.7 2 13.3
CHA 3 20 0 0 3 20 0 0
CH 4 26.6 0 0 3 20 1 6.7
Total 11 73.2 0 0 7 46.7 3 20
S
O
Table 1: The TCFs of the settings and objects in English fables about philosophy of life

CA: Fables with characters as animals
CHA: Fables with characters as humans and animals
CH: Fables with characters as humans
S: Settings
O: Objects
R: Rural setting
U: Urban setting
D: Domestic animals
ND: Non domestic animals


objects, farming products also bear some typical cultural identities. For example, “fleece”,
“wool”, “flesh” (The widow and the sheep) are farming products from the animals. They are
typical in the life of the Western people. In addition, the tools associated with them are also
taken into account in terms of culture. “The shearer”, which farmers use to shear sheep is a

16
typical tool in the West. Besides, there are many non-domestic objects which bear certain
cultural identities. The “oak” tree is an example: “… He asked a man felling oaks …” (The
hunter and the woodman). The oak is a typical tree in forests in Western cultures.
In short, the settings and objects in Easop’s fables embed European cultural identities not
only of the ancient time but at present. They help distinguish the European culture with
cultures anywhere else. These settings and objects are so popular in the West that they have
become stereotyped whenever Western rural life is mentioned.
CA: Fables with characters as animals
CHA: Fables with characters as humans and animals
CH: Fables with characters as humans DA: Domestic animals
NDA: Non-domestic animals
FR: Family-related relation
C: Career relation
SR: Social relation 18
As shown in Table 2, the number of fables that have characters as animals is relatively high.
The percentage of fables that have domestic and non-domestic animals as characters is 40 %
and 53% respectively. Clearly, when a certain animal acts as the character of a fable, it bears
many cultural features.
First, cultural identities can be recognized by the types of animals themselves. Concerning
the characters as domestic animals, they are the ones kept for food (flesh, milk) or for products
(horn, wool) such as “lamb” and “sheep” (The wolf and the lamb, The shepherd and the wolf
and The widow and the sheep); or they are kept for their services like drawing force for
ploughing lands or transporting crops like “donkey” (The salt merchant and his donkey). It is
noted that these animals are very typical of domestic animals in Western families. The features
above might be due to the conditions of geography, climate and other socio-cultural factors in
the West. In the West, there are many green fields, pastures, meadows and prairies that are
favorable for keeping cattle such as sheep, goats, horses and donkeys. These animals, in turn,
provide different services and products to their owners. Thus, there is an interrelation between
these characters and their owners, which forms a distinctive culture.
As far as non-domestic animals are concerned, these animals are diversified in terms of
species. They are “the wolf” in “The wolf and the lamb” or “The shepherd and the wolf”;