Conceptual Metaphor of “Death Is a Journey” in Covid-19 Victim Memorial Messages Posted on Vnexpress.net and Rememberme2020.uk

Abstract

The conceptual metaphor of death is a journey is a universal concept, appearing in discourses with different contexts. Its basic structure is a path diagram consisting of a starting point, a route, and a destination. While investigating the memorial messages for victims who died due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we used the conceptual schema “journey” to clarify the mechanism of copying and mapping the characteristics of “death” from the source to the target domain to find out the basic attributes that are often used to talk about an “abstract” and “taboo” category. Through the analysis of memorial messages in two languages, the results of this study aim to show the cognitive mechanism of “death” in Vietnamese and English through the schema of “journey”, compare some similarities and differences between the Vietnamese and British perception of “death” through this conceptual metaphor, and provide implications for language research and teaching relating to cultural factors.