CRITICAL METAPHOR ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK AND ITS APPLICATION TO METAPHORS OF THE VIETNAMESE RESISTANCE WAR AGAINST THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

With the ground-breaking introduction of the book “Metaphors we live by” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), metaphor shifted from being viewed as a rhetorical tool to a cognitive mechanism. However, this work did not address critical metaphor from a pragmatic perspective. This gap was later filled by the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis – CMA (Charteris Black, 2004) – an integrated framework of sematic, cognitive and pragmatic dimensions. Accordingly, speakers’ communicative intentions in a specific context reveal the underlying ideologies embedded in metaphor choices. Despite its potential, CMA has scarcely been used studies on conceptual metaphors by Vietnamese scholars. Therefore, this study aims to provide a detailed introduction to the CMA framework and illustrate its application through an analysis of metaphors of the Vietnamese resistance war against the United States in articles from the New York Times.