VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE-STUDIES HONG DIU THU LIFE AND DEATH METAPHORS IN SOME SHORT
STORIES BY JACK LONDON FROM COGNITIVE
PERSPECTIVE

ẨN DỤ VỀ SỐNG VÀ CHẾT TRONG MỘT SỐ TRUYỆN
NGẮN CỦA JACK LONDON DƯỚI GÓC NHÌN TRI NHẬN

M.A Minor Programme Thesis
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15
HA NOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE-STUDIES HONG DIU THU


1.2.2. Objectives of the study 2
1.3. Significance of the study 3
1.4. Scope of the study 3
1.5. Structure of the study 3
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
2.1 Overview of different theories on metaphor 5
2.2. Conceptual metaphor 6
2.2.1. What is meant by “conceptual metaphor”? 6
2.2.2. How metaphor structures our thoughts 6
2.2.3. Mapping as a major function of metaphors 7
2.3. Highlighting and Hiding 8
2.4. Coherence and Consistence 8
2.5. Previous studies related to the theme of this thesis 9
2.6. Summary 11
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 12
3.1. Principles governing the research 12
3.1.1. Principles governing the research type 12
3.1.2. Principles for the formulation of research questions 13
3.2. Methods employed for the research 14
3.2.1. Data collections instruments 15
3.2.2. Data analysis techniques 15
3.2.3. Data analysis procedure 16
v

3.3. Summary 16
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 17
4.1. Life Metaphors 17
4.1.1. Life is a journey 17
4.1.2. Life is a fighting/ Life is a battle 20
4.1.3. Life is fire/ heat/ warmth 24

Johnson (1980), there is a set of metaphorical concepts with which we
conceptualize the world, or better, our worldviews. Following this, metaphor is
rather a matter of daily life experience, or a matter ―of thought and reason‖ (Lakoff,
1993: 208) than merely a matter of language.
Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 6) claim that part of ―the human conceptual system is
metaphorically structured and defined.‖ This means that we tend to conceptualize
metaphorically certain aspects of life in a systematic way. These authors offer a
wide range of metaphors that cover basic aspects of life by structuring
metaphorically one concept in terms of another.
Apparently, the high frequency of metaphor in general and conceptual metaphor in
literature is one of the interesting fields for linguistics because it has an undeniable
influence on the poetic character of a literary works. Moreover, literature seems to
be the superior choice to consider the product of imagination which reflects the real
life. Because of the woven of imagination and real life, the language used on
literature is not only imaginative but also realistic, which allows people to examine
metaphors in both ―ordinary and extraordinary‖ perspectives.
There are a number of researchers and linguists take metaphors in literature as
favorite topic for their studying. As Semino & Steen, (2008: 233) metaphors in
literature is considered ―more create, novel, original, striking, rich, interesting,
complex, difficult, and interpretable‖ than conventional metaphor. Among various
metaphor concepts, Life and Death metaphors have been taken into consideration
by many linguistics. But it seems that the Life and Death metaphors are often
2

investigated separately. For that reason, the present paper would like to take
investigation in both metaphor concepts for the image of Life and Death.
Jack London, whose fiction clearly indicates the ways in which both his personal
experiences and his reading shaped his outlook, always showed the theme of man's
attempts to survive the forces of nature, the threat of savages, and the competition
with other fortune seekers. In Jack London‘s short stories, the battle between Life

1.4. Scope of the study
The present study takes its basic theoretical background from the work of Lakoff &
Johnson (1980), Lakoff & Turner (1989), and Lakoff (2006), where metaphorical
expression is conceived as the surface realization of cross-domain mapping in the
128 conceptual systems.
Due to the limited time, space and the author‘s ability, the present paper just
investigates the conceptual metaphors for Life and Death expressed in some famous
works by Jack London in the light of theory raised by G. Lakoff & M. Johnson.
1.5. Structure of the study
The study consists of five chapters.
Chapter 1, Introduction, is spared for the presentation of the rationale, aims,
significance, scope, and the structure of the study.
Chapter 2, Literature review, provides the necessary information about the
theoretical background related to metaphor based on Lakoff & Johnson‘s
perspective.
Chapter 3, Methodology, provides information about the principles that govern the
research and the methods to be employed.
4

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, presents the findings obtained and sound
discussions on those findings.
Chapter 5, Conclusion, provides a recapitulation of the main issues and problems
presented in the study. The main content in this chapter is the specific conclusions
on each of the research question. Also, implications for teaching and suggestion for
further research have been supplied. This subsection brings about the practical value
to the thesis from which readers can, to different degrees, benefit.
5

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

metaphor ―that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in
arguing‖.
2.2. Conceptual metaphor
2.2.1. What is meant by “conceptual metaphor”?
The word ―metaphor‖ means to ―carry over‖ or to ―transfer‖. For Lakoff & Johnson
(1980: 5), metaphor is used for us to realize ―one kind of thing in terms of another‖.
A metaphorical expression can be just one word, or it can be a phrase or a sentence.
It is even possible to regard an entire story as a metaphor for life or the world
(Goatly, 2011: 109). The following part will look into the structure and mechanics
of metaphor in order to arrive at a definition of metaphor that will be used in this
study.
2.2.2. How metaphor structures our thoughts
According to Lakoff and Johnson‘s theory, a conceptual metaphor is a concept
about the world. By adding the conceptual level to the linguistic level of metaphor,
the theory of conceptual metaphor expands the idea of metaphor. This means that
metaphor consists of conceptual metaphors, which is cognitive in nature, and
various linguistic expressions of these conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson,
2003: 50).
We can take TIME IS MONEY metaphor as a common example of how metaphor
is more than a matter of language, this metaphor enable us to use expressions such
as ―that flat tire cost me an hour‟ (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003: 8), TIME IS MONEY
metaphor also allows us to treat our time as something value that should not be
wasted or should at least be spent or even invested wisely.
7

It is the fact that metaphor not only rules the way we think of the world, but also
how we interact with it. An unconventional conceptual metaphor, on the other hand,
would require an unconventional linguistic expression, at least to a certain degree.
(Lakoff & Tunrner, 1989: 50)
2.2.3. Mapping as a major function of metaphors

it is not relevant. On the other hand, metaphorical structuring also keeps the focus
off certain aspects of a concept because these aspects do not fit in with that
metaphor. So part of a concept is highlighted, while other parts remain hidden.
Lakoff & Johnson use ARGUMENT IS WAR as an example. In this metaphorical
concept, we focus on the aspect of attack and defence in arguments. This aspect of
the metaphor, therefore, is highlighted. What is left out, however, is that you also
have a cooperative aspect to argument. Lakoff and Johnson write that the person
you are having an argument with could also be seen as someone who is ―giving you
his time, a valuable commodity, in an effort at mutual understanding‖. But the
cooperative aspect of argument is hidden because we use the metaphorical concept
ARGUMENT IS WAR. Metaphorical concepts thus always have a part which is
used and an unused part.
The metaphorical concept Lakoff and Johnson use to show how the used part and
the unused part work can also be seen in metaphor THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS.
The part of the metaphor which is being used can be found in expressions such as
―Is that the foundation of your theory‖ and ―The theory needs more support‖. On
the contrary, buildings have aspects beside the outer shell and construction. They
have doors, windows, a roof, rooms, hallways, etc. These aspects of buildings are
unused in our everyday language when using the metaphor.
2.4. Coherence and Consistence
Lakoff and Johnson mention that metaphorical concepts can be coherent or
consistent. Consistent metaphors ―form a single image,‖ while coherent metaphors
are ―subcategories of a major category and therefore share a major common
9

entailment‖. They do not form a single image but they ―fit together.‖ These authors
use two metaphors to clarify this idea.
The first example is TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor, this metaphor is
expressed in sentences such as ―Time flies‖, ―The time will come‖, and ―The time
for action has arrived‖

use of metaphoric processes on which our conceptual systems are based, poets
address our most important issues, as life and death, and help us illuminate them
through the extension, composition, and criticism of the basic metaphoric tools
through which we comprehend reality.
To the same topic, Nguyen, (2011) investigates the metaphor of life, death and time
in English and Vietnamese in the light of cognitive semantics based on the frame
work by Lakoff and Turner. The researcher tries to find out the similarities and
differences in the use of conceptual metaphors for life, death and time in English
and Vietnamese. The study brings about some contribution to not only the theory
and the appropriate use of conceptual metaphors but the translation work as well.
The study also points out that cultural awareness is at the heart of intercultural
communication. A lot of this has to do with language and behavior; with
pragmatics, beliefs and values. But intercultural communication should also
highlight the areas of commonality as well as divergence in terms of cultural and
linguistic behavior. All too often culturally stereotypical behavior is objectified and
described with insufficient reference to underlying factors that help explain and
elucidate. A conceptual approach to language can draw into focus areas of
divergence and commonality at another level of awareness and provides an extra
dimension to the understanding of linguistic and cultural norms. More specifically,
advanced learners in particular need to develop a "metaphoric competence" if they
are to attain a level of proficiency in English that will equip them for professional
11

lives that require a high level of language awareness, knowledge, understanding and
resourcefulness.
Another research on this theme is taken by Ruiz (2007) in which the researcher
studies how several death metaphors for example Death is departure, Death is cold,
Death is sleep are able to account for the basic meaning and interpretation of more
than thirty popular tales and myths. Besides, the researcher offers the possibility of
classifying tales according either to the basic metaphor they contain or to the

inquiry into meaning‖. By systematic he means ―planned, ordered and public‖,
following rules agreed upon by members of the qualitative research community. By
empirical, he means that this type of inquiry is grounded in the world of experience.
Inquiry into meaning says researchers try to understand how others make sense of
their experience. Denzin and Lincoln (2000: 3) claim that qualitative research
involves an interpretive and naturalistic approach: ―This means that qualitative
researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to
interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them‖.
In the ground-breaking work ―Metaphors We Live By‖ (1980), Lakoff and Johnson
showed that metaphors are in fact a fundamental, structuring mechanism in the way
we interact with and perceive the world around us; a linguistic phenomenon so
common and easily accessible that we often do not notice that something is in fact a
metaphor.
As stated before, the purpose of this research is to find out the conceptual metaphor
of Life and Death in Jack London‘s short stories. For sayings of Life and Death,
Lakoff and Turner (1989: 1-2) present a very common basic conceptual metaphor in
western culture know as Death is departure. Instead of saying someone has died, it
is very common to say that someone is gone or that he has left this world or that he
has passed on. In the Western culture, life and death are extremely common to be
spoken of, written and even thought with a set of basic conceptual metaphors.
According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 3), we often fail to notice them as
metaphors at all because of their mundane nature. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 6) go
13

on to explain that the reason for this is that human thought processes are largely
metaphorical, and that metaphor is in fact a primary tool for understanding our
world and ourselves.
Because of the fact that metaphors reside in thought instead of only in words, and
that we know unconsciously and automatically many basic metaphors for
understanding life, the writer does not have to state in detail and explain the

is consistent with the target is mapped onto the target.
In order to answer the second research question the researcher looks into the
connection between Life and Death in terms of cognitive perspective which is
inherited from the Western culture. According to Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphorical
structuring is always partial and never total and that metaphorical concepts can be
coherent or consistent. Consistent metaphors ―form a single image,‖ while coherent
metaphors are ―subcategories of a major category and therefore share a major
common entailment‖. They do not form a single image but they ―fit together.‖ For
that reason, the researcher tries work out the link between the Life and Death
metaphor.
Finally, the purpose of this study is never to find every single metaphor of Life and
death – or something that can be counted separately – within these selected short
stories, but instead to gain a general understanding of the use of these metaphor in
literature and then to find out the possible implication for English language teaching
and learning.
3.2. Methods employed for the research
The major methods which are used for this method are documentary analysis and
observation. First of all, official documents include journals and textbooks are
collected. Any of these might give useful information, but they do not all provide
objective for the purpose of the research; therefore, they have to be contextualized
within the circumstances which the research needs for. The task for the researcher
is not to take such documents at face value, but to find out how they were
constructed, and how they are used and interpreted. This is why the researcher has
15

to take observation as one of the favored approaches. Here, the researcher adopts a
role as a member of American society to get a more comprehensive perspective of
life and death in everyday language.
3.2.1. Data collections instruments
Because of the particular characteristics of the study, it seems that reading and

collected, the researcher starts analyzing and classifying the data into the suitable
categories of the thesis purpose. After that, the researcher synthesizes all the
metaphors to come the conclusion on the first research question by drawing image-
schematic structures of the sources which are mapped onto the target domain from
the point of view by Lakoff and Kövecses. To find the connection between Life and
Death in terms of cognitive perspective, the researcher try to interpret the possibility
of forming a single image or just being subcategories of a major metaphor of the
mapping which are found in the first research question based on Lakoff‘s view.
3.3. Summary
To conclude, in this chapter the two main methodological points haven been
presented. (i) The major principles governing the research. (ii) The main methods
employed for the research which includes collections instrument, data analysis
techniques and data analysis procedure.
17

CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Life Metaphors
4.1.1. Life is a journey
Traditionally, metaphor, along with other parts of ―creative‖ speech like similes,
hyperboles, etc., is viewed as fundamentally linguistic in nature and is ―assigned a
peripheral role in language, as an ornament or, at best, a mechanism for filling
lexical gaps in the language‖ (Deignan, 2005: 2) . In their groundbreaking work
―Metaphors We Live By‖, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 4) maintained the idea that

―Ah, there it was that the long trail began. Well, he had lasted longest.‖ (Lost face)
―Prince was led away by these uncrowned heroes who had seen history made, who
regarded the great and the romantic as but the ordinary and the incidental in the
routine of life.‖ (An Odyssey of the North)
―Since then my life had been one long peregrination - from the Orient to the
Occident, from the Arctic to the Antarctic to find myself at last, an able seaman at
thirty, in the full vigour of my manhood, drowning in San Francisco bay because of
a disastrously successful attempt to desert my ship.‖(A thousand deaths)
Traveler is Human
The way a traveler is described as part of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY conceptual
metaphor can be very revealing through the mapping of the traveler as human as in
the sentence ―Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead
world, he trembles at his audacity realizes that his is a maggot's life nothing more.‖
(The white silence)
A traveler‘s physical trouble can be considered the difficulty in accomplishing a
goal. This can be considered an extension of the Traveler - Human mapping. If a
19

traveler conducts her journey and reaches her destination injured, blind, in physical
pain, etc., it implies an unexpected, additional degree of difficulty.
―Then began as grim a tragedy of existence as was ever played a sick man that
crawled, a sick wolf that limped, two creatures dragging their dying carcasses
across the desolation and hunting each other's lives.‖ (Love of life)
A further extension of the mapping has to do with the burden of the traveler. Here
we see the incorporation of the DIFFICULTY IS A BURDEN conceptual metaphor
into LIFE IS A JOURNEY. In general, the challenge of the journey grows
exponentially alongside the size and weight of the traveler‘s burden, something that
is reflected in the recorded speech samples below:
―He had carried his life too long in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsaw to
Nulato, to shudder at mere dying‖. (Lost face)

that place, the priest stood in my way, and spoke soft words, and said a man in
anger should go neither to the right nor left, but straight to God‖.
To describe coming to an impasse in life, that is to feel left without choices, the
journey without any choices invoke the imagery of a dead-end as in ―From the
beginning, at Warsaw, at St. Petersburg, in the Siberian mines, in Kamtchatka, on
the crazy boats of the fur-thieves, Fate had been driving him to this end”. (Love of
life).
4.1.2. Life is a fighting/ Life is a battle
It is the fact that not all metaphors for Life are positive. The battle perspective is
often assumed by people who feel like the whole world is against them. The
characters in short stories by Jack London often hold this school of thought because
they experience a lot of stress, and conflict with the nature. This ubiquitous survival
thesis takes on protean forms in London's early stories. For examples, not only is
21

man forced to do battle with nature, with animals, but also with other men to
survive.
When mapping the metaphor LIFE IS A FIGHTING/ LIFE IS A BATTLE, it is
important to notice that we don't just talk about LIFE in terms of A BATTLE/ A
FIGHTING. People can actually win or lose in the battle. They often consider the
person they are fighting with an opponent. People attack other positions and they
defend their own. They may gain and lose ground and also plan and use strategies.
If people find a position indefensible, they can abandon it and take a new line of
attack. Many of the things people do when they are in fighting are partially
structured by the concept of fighting. Though there is no physical battle, there is a
verbal battle, and the structure of an argument - attack, defense, counterattack, etc. -
clearly reflects this. It is in this sense that the LIFE IS A FIGHTING/ LIFE IS A
BATTLE metaphor is one that people live by in this culture; it structures the actions
people perform in arguing.
In Jack London‘s short stories, we can find numerous sentences reflecting this