“DOG” IN CHINESE AND VIETNAMESE LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Abstract

Dog is one of 12 zodiac animals closely associated with the cultures of Vietnam and China. Domesticated by human a long time ago, dog is discovered as possessing several interesting characteristics related to human life. Therefore, the name of this friendly animal is contained in a considerable number of words, idioms, proverbs with a rich variety of meaning layers, which clearly reflect the two peoples’ construal and conceptualization of the animal as well as their use of dog-related metaphors. By means of research techniques such as statistics,
description, analysis,… and the data collected from dictionaries and literary works, an attempt is made to analyze, compare and contrast the meaning layers of words, idioms and proverbs containing ‘dog’ and dog-related metaphors in Chinese with those in Vietnamese, pointing out the
similarities and differences in the languages and cultures of the two countries.