TÌM HIỂU ý NGHĨA văn HOÁ của lời tỏ TÌNH TRONG các bài dân CA TIẾNG ANH và TIẾNG VIỆT

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CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT
I certify my authorship of the Thesis submitted today entitled:
AN INVESTIGATION INTO CULTURAL MEANING OF LOVE
DECLARATIONS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FOLKLORES
in terms of the Statement of Requirement for Theses and Field Study Reports in Masters’
Programmes of English Linguistics issued by the Higher Degree Committee.



Luu Thi Thanh Tu
July, 2009











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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyn
Vn , my supervisor, for his invaluable guidance, comments and corrections during the
time I carried out my thesis.

I would like to take this chance to thank all the lecturers in the Post Graduate
Department for helpful lectures that have helped me in gaining the background knowledge
to work on the thesis.
And my gratitude also goes to my beloved family who have supported me during the
time I completed the thesis.
Hanoi, July 2009


Lu Th Thanh Tú










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ABSTRACT
The communication of love is an important aspect of interpersonal relationships
across cultures. But saying “I love you” can be very delicate walk, with much gray area,
regarding what can and should be communicated about love, when, by whom and to
whom. Love is sometimes felt but not expressed, other times, love is expressed only
nonverbally; and still other times, it is communicated verbally, with or without nonverbal
manifestations.
In English and Vietnamese, the way people choose to express love is not the same as
it is affected by cultural values. Love declarations include in themselves people’s

viewpoints which are presented quite differently in the two languages. Hence, what needs
to be carried out in the study entitled “An investigation into the cultural meaning of love
declarations in English and Vietnamese folklores” will be an investigation of cultural
meaning of love declarations in folklores of the two languages in order to find out the
similarities and differences between them. The thesis also attempts to explain what are
behind the differences uncovered in the investigation.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part one: Introduction…………………………………………….5
1.1 Justification……………………………………………………………….5
1.2 Aim and objectives of the study………………………………………….6
1.3 Scope of the study……………………………………………………… 6
1.4 Methods of the study…………………………………………………… 7
1.5 Design of the study……………………………………………………… 7
Part two: Development…………………………………………….9
Chapter one: Theoretical background…………………………………………9
1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………….9
1.2 The relationship between language and culture………………………… 9
1.2.1 Nature, culture, language………………………………………………10
1.2.2 Communities and their effects on language users…………………… 11
1.3 Tropes 13
1.3.1 Simile 13
1.3.2 Metaphor 14
1.4 Folklore as a genre 14
1.4.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………… 14
1.4.2 Love declarations in folklore as a genre……………………………… 15
1.5 Summary………………………………………………………………….18
Chapter two: Love declarations in English folklores…………………………19
2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………….19

2.2 Nature, Culture and Language used in love declarations…………………19
2.3 Tropes of love declarations in English folklore………………………… 25
2.3.1 Simile used in love declarations in English folklore……………………25
2.3.2 Metaphor used in love declarations in English folklore……………… 25
2.4 Summary………………………………………………………………….26
Chapter three: Love declarations in Vietnamese folklore……………………27
3. 1 Introduction………………………………………………………………27
3. 2 Cultural images used in love declarations……………………………….28
3. 3 Tropes of love declarations in Vietnamese folklore…………………… 36
3.3.1 Simile in love declarations in Vietnamese folklore………………… 37
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3.3.2 Metaphor in love declarations in Vietnamese folklore……………….38
3.4 Summary……………………………………………………………… 40
Part three: Conclusion………………………………………… 41
3.1 Comparison between English and Vietnamese
love declarations in folklore……………………………………………… 41
3.1.1 Similarities…………………………………………………………….41
3.1.2 Differences…………………………………………………………….42
3.2 Summary of the thesis………………………………………………… 42
3.3 Implications from the study…………………………………………… 43
3.4 Suggestions for further study……………………………………………43
References……………………………………………………… 45

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PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 JUSTIFICATION
The communication of love is an important aspect of interpersonal relationships
across cultures. But saying “I love you” can be very delicate walk, with much gray area,
regarding what can and should be communicated about love, when, by whom and to
whom. Love is sometimes felt but not expressed, other times, love is expressed only
nonverbally; and still other times, it is communicated verbally, with or without nonverbal
manifestations.
In English and Vietnamese, the way people choose to express love is not the same as
it is affected by cultural values. Love declarations include in themselves people’s
viewpoints which are presented quite differently in the two languages. Hence, what needs
to be carried out in this study will be an investigation of cultural meaning of love
declarations in folklores of the two languages in order to find out the similarities and
differences between them. The thesis also attempts to explain what are behind the
differences uncovered in the investigation.
Our thesis is entitled “An investigation into the cultural meaning of love declarations

in English and Vietnamese folklores”. The choice of the thesis is generated from two
reasons: Firstly, as Swales (1990: 34) stated that “the concept of genre has maintained a
central position in folklore studies ever since the pioneering work in the early nineteenth
century”. The functionalist in folklore would rather stress socio-cultural value. For
Malinowski (1960, cited in Swales 1990:35) “folklore genres contribute to the maintenance
and survival of social groups because they serve social and spiritual needs”. Perhaps
inevitably, to assign cultural value also requires the investigator to pay attention to how a
community views and itself classify genre. This idea will lead to the fact that love
declaration is a mode of social communication and is only a genre among others, therefore,
we would like to investigate love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores to see
the similarities and differences of this genre in the two languages. Secondly, love
declarations, as mentioned above, reflect human’s ideology, so we wish to see how the
ideologies represented in the two languages.
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We optimistically hope that the thesis will help students of English, and students of
culture as it could provide an insight into the similarities and differences of love
declarations in English and Vietnamese folklores.
1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
A popularized view of emotion is that it is a physiological process associated with
the nervous system. Located all the core of the nervous system is a universal and essential
set of emotional states. One of these could be said to be love. Everybody experiences the
state of being in love at least once in a life time. While the universality of some emotional
state may not be in dispute, how person interprets and manifests those emotional
experiences will differ across cultures. Hence, this paper aims to advance an understanding
of emotion expression as a de-essentialised domain and to view it as “a cultural and
interpersonal process of naming, justifying, and persuading by people in relationship to
each other” (Lutz, 1998:5). We will take “love declaration” in Vietnamese and English
folklores as a point of access into cultural communication systems.
1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Within cultural meaning, our analytical task was therefore: a) describing the locution
“I love you” in love declaration with reference to its occurrence and non-occurrence, where
it occurs, with whom?, in what language(s) and dialect(s), in which verbal forms, about
which topics, as part of what interactional sequences, and with what observable
consequences; and b) interpreting the participants understandings of the love declaration
given the patterned contingencies under a) above. It is through holding the phenomena of
emotion expression as a constant that we will search the cultural variability in order to
understand the general forces and particular features of emotion expression. Our focus here
will be on the performance of communication patterns within intimate/personal
relationships.
Our interest then falls on the expression of love within intimate/personal
relationships. Our expectation is that the expression of love will be of those communicative
activities that give force and meaning to intimate/personal relationships. In intercultural
relationship it is our hypothesis that love declarations also function to locate and give voice
to cultural identity. Put simply, to say or not to say “I love you” can also be
communicating much about communal understandings of sociality, of person, and their
strategic activities.
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Within the scope of the thesis, the author investigates 100 love declarations in
English folklore and 100 love declarations in Vietnamese folklore.
1.4 METHOD OF THE STUDY
To fulfill the aim of the study, the main methods used are descriptive and
comparative.
The study deals with love declarations in English and Vietnamese folklores,
therefore, a great number of love declarations in English and Vietnamese folklore were
collected then 50 love declarations in each language have been carefully selected, after that
we try to analyse the love declarations in terms of cultural meanings, genre and tropes and
then synthesize the result to find out the similarities and differences of people’s attitudes in
the two languages. In fulfilling the focuses of the study in comparing the two languages’

love declarations, descriptive method has been applied to present prominent features of
love declarations in the two languages, the results achieved, in turn, are then compared and
contrasted to see the similarities and differences between the two languages in expressing
love.
The fundamental theories that are applied in the study is the cultural study of Robert
Lado (1960); Claire Kramsch (2000); and the linguistic study of poetry by Leech (1968)
and other Vietnamese researchers such as inh Gia Khánh, Chu Xuân Diên and others.
1.5 DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study is divided into three parts.
Part I- Introduction- introduces the justification, the aims, the objectives, the method,
the scope and the design of the study.
Part II- Development- consists of three chapters:
Chapter one presents the theoretical background to the study, the relationship of
language and culture and language cultural identity introduced by Claire Kramsch (2000)
and Robert Lado (1960) and some Vietnamese researchers such as Vu Ngoc Phan, Lu Huy
Nguyen, Dang Van Lung and Tran Thi An. It also presents the theoretical background of
tropes written by Leech (1969), Dennis Freeborn and some Vietnamese researchers such as
Dinh Gia Khanh et.al (2003), Chu Xuan Dien (2003), Le Van Chuong (2004) etc. This
chapter also consider folklore as a genre based on the idea presented by Swales (1990).
Chapter two describes love declarations in English folklore from two perspectives:
culture, and versification. In terms of culture, the description will be concerned with the
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relationship between language used in love declaration and culture/cultural identity. And
last but not least, in studying the versification, tropes are taken into consideration, and we
bring about an insight into the aspects such as metaphor, simile. Based on the above
perspectives, we try to find out people’s attitudes and feelings lying behind the expression
of love declaration in English folklore.
The resources for love declaration in English folklore are taken from traditional
ballads, tales, love songs and sayings.

Chapter three describes corresponding perspectives of love declaration in
Vietnamese Folklore.
Part three- Conclusion- compares cultural meanings of love declaration in English
and Vietnamese folklores to establish the similarities and differences of emotion
expressions across the two languages. We also summarize the issues studied in the thesis,
the implications and suggestions for further study.



















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PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 INTRODUCTION
“Language is the principle means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is
used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex
ways” (C. Kramsch, 2000). As the study deals with love declaration in English and
Vietnamese folklores, this chapter is concerned with establishing a theoretical framework
for the study, as a way to start, we will present some aspects of the theory of language and
culture such as the relationship between language and culture/ cultural identity etc.
Besides, as the thesis deals with love declaration in folklores, it will be better when other
aspects of concepts such as genre, cohesion, tropes… are also taken into consideration.
1.2 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
According to Claire Kramsch, language is the principle means we conduct our social
lives. When language is used in contexts of communication it is bound up with culture.
Firstly, the words people utter refer to common experience. They express facts,
ideas, or events that are communicable because they refer to a stock of knowledge about
the world that other people share. Words also reflect their authors’ attitudes and beliefs,
their points of view etc. In both cases “language expresses cultural reality” (C.Kramsch,
2000).
But members of a community or social group do not only express experience; they
also create experience through language. They give meaning to it through the medium they
choose to communicate with one another, for example, speaking on the telephone or face
to face, writing a letter or sending an e-mail message… The way in which people use the
spoken, written, or visual medium itself creates meanings that are understandable to the
group they belong to, for example, through a speaker’s tone of voice, accents,
conversational style, gestures and facial expressions. Through all as verbal and non-verbal
aspects, “language embodies cultural reality” (C. Kramsch, 2000).
Finally, language is system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value.
Speakers identify themselves and other through their use of language; they view their
language as a symbol of their social identity. The prohibition of its use is often perceived
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by its speakers as a rejection of their social group and their culture. Thus we can say that
“language symbolizes cultural reality”.
We shall deal with these three aspects of language and culture by considering the
following poem by Emily Dickinson
Essential oils- are wrung-
The attar from the Rose
Be not expected by Suns- alone-
It is the gift of Screws-
The General Rose- decay-
But this- in Lady’s Drawer
Make Summer- When the lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary
(Adapted from C. Kramsch, 2000)
1.2.1 Nature, culture, language
One way of thinking about culture is to contrast it with nature. According to C.
Kramsch “Nature refers to what is born and grows organically; culture refers to what has
been grown and groomed”.
Emily Dickinson’s poem expresses well the relationship of nature, culture and
language. A rose in a flower bed, says the poem, a generic rose is a phenomenon of nature.
Beautiful but faceless and nameless among others of the same species. Nature alone cannot
reveal nor preserve the particular beauty of a particular rose at a chosen moment in time.
Powerless to prevent the biological “decay” and the ultimate death of roses and of ladies,
nature can only make summer when the season is right.
Culture, by contrast, is not bound by biological time. Like nature, it is a “gift”, but of
different kind. Through a sophisticated technological procedure, developed especially to
extract the essence of roses, culture forces nature to reveal its “essential” potentialities. The
word “screws” suggests that this process is not without labour. By crushing the petals, a
great deal of the rose must be lost in order to get at its essence. The technology of the
screws constrains the exuberance of nature, in the same manner as the technology of the
world. Culture makes the rose petals into a rare perfume, purchased at high cost, for the

particular, personal use of a particular lady. The lady may die, but the fragrance of the
rose’s essence can make her immortal, in the same manner as the language of the poem
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immortalizes both the rose and the lady, and brings both back to life in the imagination of
its readers.
The poem itself bears testimony that nature and culture both need each other. The
poem wouldn’t have been written if there were not natural roses; but it not be understood if
it didn’t share with its readers some common assumptions and expectations about rose
gardens, technological achievements, historic associations regarding ladies, roses, and
perfumes Similarly, let us consider the poem “Tát nc u ình”, a Vietnamese folklore
to see the relationship between culture, nature and language:
“Hôm qua tát nc u ình
B quên chic áo trên cành hoa sen.
Em c thì cho anh xin
Hay là em  làm tin trong nhà
áo anh st ch ng tà
V anh cha có, m già cha khâu.
áo anh st ch ã lâu
Mai nh cô y v khâu cho cùng.
Khâu ri anh s tr công,
n khi ly chng, anh s giúp cho,
Giúp cho mt gánh xôi vò,
Mt con ln béo, mt vò ru tm.
Giúp em ôi chiu em nm,
ôi chn em p, ôi chm em eo.
Giúp em quan tám tin treo,
Quan nm tin ci li èo bung cau.”
According to Vietnamese culture, “gánh xôi vò”, ‘con ln béo’, ‘vò ru tm’, ‘ôi
chiu’, ‘ôi chn’, ‘quan tám tin treo’, ‘quan nm tin ci’, ‘bung cau’ are symbols of

a wedding. Those who share Vietnamese culture may understand that the man in the poem
borrows cultural symbols to express his love to his woman.
So let us come to the next concept.
1.2.2 Communities and their effects on Language Users.
According to C. Kramsch, “Social conventions, norms of social appropriateness,
are the product of communities of language users”. As in the Dickinson’s poem, poets and
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readers, florists and lovers, horticulturists, rose press manufacturers, perfume-makers and
users, create meanings through their words and actions. Likewise, the man and the woman
in “Tát nc u ình” use their words and actions to express their meanings.
Kramsch said that “people who identify themselves as member of social group
(family, neighborhood ) acquire common ways of viewing the world through their
interactions with other members of the same group” (C. Kramsch, 2000, 6). These views
are reinforced through institutions like the family, the school, the workplace through
their lives. Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way members of the
group use language - for example, what they choose to say and how they say it (C.
Kramsch, 2000, 6). Thus, in addition to the notion of speech community - “composed of
people who use the same linguistic code” (C. Kramsch), we can speak of discourse
communities to refer to the common ways in which members of a social group use
language to meet their social needs. Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological
features of their language differentiate them from others, but also the topics they choose to
talk about, the way they present information, the style with which they interact, in other
words, their discourse accent. For instance, English people often associate love with
blindness:
“Love’s a blind, and those that follow him too often lose their way”
Colley Cibler
Or:
“But love is blind, and lovers can not see
The pretty follies that themselves commit”

Shakespeare
Or:
“If love be blind,
It best agrees with night.”
Shakespeare
Whereas, Vietnamese people tend to associate love with the image of “tru cau”
For example:
Yêu nhau tru v cng say,
Ghét nhau cau u y khay chng màng.
Or:
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Tru bc khn trng cau ti,
Tru bc khn trng ãi ngi xinh xinh.
n cho nó tho tâm tình,
n cho nó tho s mình s ta.
Or:
Yêu nhau trao mt ming tru,
Giu thy giu m, a nhau n cùng.
(L Vn Nguyên et.al…)
It is possible to come to conclusion that, the association of love of both groups are
based on the differing values given to the understanding in both cultures. This is a view of
culture that focuses on the ways of thinking, behaving and valuing currently shared by
members of the same discourse community.
1.3 TROPES
In his book “A linguistic guide to English poetry” Leech (p.74) stated that “tropes
have been defined as devices involving alteration of the normal meaning of an expression”
and “tropes are foregrounded irregularities of content”. Freeborn (1996: 61) also said that
“a trope is a device that involves meaning”. The most familiar tropes in literary criticism
are simile, metaphor and metonymy. However, in this thesis, we will deal with simile and

metaphor for these tropes manifest in love declarations.
1.3.1 Simile
The Oxford learner’s dictionary (2003: 1526) defines that simile is a figure of speech
in which two things are compared using the word “like”, or “as”, or “as if”. Simile is like
a metaphor except that it makes the comparison explicit by using “like”, or “as”, or “as
if”. In simile the comparison between the two things is made explicit by an indirect
relationship where one thing or idea is expressed as being similar to another. For example:
Love’s like the measles- all the worst when it comes late in life.
(Douglas Jerrold)
Love is like the measles; we have to go through it.
(Jerome K. Jerome)
Simile, according to Leech (1969; 156) is an overt comparison, simile can specify the
ground of comparison. Most similes are linked by “like”, “as”. Similes may vary from a
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short, simple comparison to long, “extended similes”. In Vietnamese, the corresponding
words such as “nh”, “nh là”, “nh th” etc are used in simile. For example:
Ming ci nh th hoa ngâu,
Chic khn i u nh th hoa sen.
Or:
ôi ta nh th con ong,
Con qun con quýt, con trong con ngoài.
A simile, therefore, is explicit, the very circumstantiality of simile is limitation.
1.3.2 Metaphor
Leech (1969: 151) argued that “metaphor is so central to our notion of poetic
creation that it is often treated as a phenomenon in its own right, without reference to other
kinds of transferred meaning”. In considering a metaphor, we may consider the formula:
F = “Like L”. This implies that, the figurative meaning F is deriving from the literal
meaning L in having the sense “like L”. However, the simplest kind of metaphor is the use
of “be” in clause structure, for example:

Love is a boy, by poets styled.
Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.
(Samuel Butler)
Love is smoke made with the fume of sights.
(Shakespeare)
In studying metaphor, the concept of Tenor and Vehicle should be taken into
considerations. Tenor of the metaphor is what actually under discussion, Vehicle, on the
other hand, is the image or analogue in terms of which the tenor is represented. A metaphor
is generally more concise and immediate than the corresponding literal version, because of
the superimposition, in the same piece of language, of tenor and vehicle.
In the above examples, the vehicle are “boy”, “smoke” meanwhile the tenor is
“love”.
1.4 FOLKLORE AS A GENRE
1.4.1 Introduction
According to Swales (1990) a genre “comprises a class of communicative
events, of which the members share some sets of communication purposes. These purposes
constitute the rationale for the genre, the rationale, in its turn, shape the schematic structure
16

of discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style. In addition to
purpose, the exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of
structure, style content and intended audience”.
In folklore study, according to Swales (1990: 34) “the concept of genre has
maintained a central position in folklore studies ever since the pioneering work in the early
nineteenth century”. The functionalist in folklore would rather stress socio-cultural value.
For Malinowski (1960, cited in Swales 1990: 35) “folklore genres contribute to the
maintenance and survival of social groups because they serve social and spiritual needs.
Perhaps inevitably, to assign cultural value also requires the investigator to pay attention to
how a community views and itself classify genres”. Therefore, many folklore genres are
not so labeled according to the form itself but according to how it is received by the

community.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia defines folklore as a genre and it includes
ballad, tales, epic poem, song and saying (proverb and aphorism).
Now we will consider love declaration in folklore as a genre.
1.4.2 Love declaration in folklore as a genre
Love declarations, especially love declarations in folklore, are composed to express
love between men and women.
A love declaration has its diction (words and grammatical constructions used by
certain person), rhythm and versification (the principles of verse structure), figurative
language (the use of figures of speech such as metaphor, simile etc). Primarily, both
English and Vietnamese love declarations are for expressing love, we can find out the love
declarations such as:
In Vietnamese:
Qua ình ng nón trông ình,
ình bao nhiêu ngói thng mình by nhiêu.
Or:
Cm n m i b!a mt bng
Nc u"ng cm ch#ng  d thng em.
Or:
Cô kia áo trng lòa lòa,
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Li ây p t, trng cà vi anh.

In English:
Love imposes impossible tasks,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
But none more than any heart would ask,
I must know you're a true love of mine.
Scarborough Fair

Or:
Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.
Greensleeves
Love declarations in both English and Vietnamese folklores are severed to
propose a wedding. We can find out the verses that have the functions of proposing a
marriage:
In Vietnamese:
Cô kia ct c bên sông,
Có mu"n n nhãn thì lng sang ây.
Sang ây, anh nm c$ tay,
Anh hi câu này: Có ly anh không?
In English:
I love you more than anything else in the world. Come with me to my father’s
castle. You shall become my wife.
Little Snow-White
Or:
Many thanks for redeering me. You were the wife of an enchanted prince. Now
we can celebrate our wedding properly, for now I am the King of this land.
The Bear Prince
In addition to the issue of expressing love and proposing a wedding, love
declaration in relation to gender is the subject of the studies. For instance, males seem to
18

express their love more often than females. We can find love declarations said by men in
both English and Vietnamese folklores easily.
In Vietnamese:
Gió a cn bun ng% lên b

Mùng ai có rng cho ng% nh mt êm.
Or:
Tóc ngang lng v#a ch#ng em búi,
 chi dài b"i r"i d anh
In English:
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Without any seam nor needlework,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.
Tell her to wash it in yonder dry well,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Which never sprung water nor rain ever fell,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.
Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.
Scarborough Fair
In consideration love declarations in English and Vietnamese folklores, the
author has found out that, there are two ways of expressing love between men and women
in Vietnamese folklores: direct way and indirect way. If a direct love declaration can
prevent its audience from misunderstanding, it is likely to make its audience embarrassed.
Whereas, an indirect love declaration can prevent its audience from being embarrassed and
it also brings an insight that the proposer is a delicate, polite and intelligent person. We can
find a lot of indirect love declaration in Vietnamese folklore:
Bây gi mn mi hi ào
Vn hng ã có ai vào hay cha?
Or:
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B chic ghe sau chèo mau anh i
K&o khúc sông này b b'i t"i tm.
Or:
ng xa thì tht là xa,
Mn mình làm m"i cho ta mt ngi.
Mt ngi mi tám, ôi mi,
Mt ngi v#a p v#a ti nh mình.
However, this phenomenon is not universally recognized in English folklores, many
of love declaration in English folklores seem to concentrate on the importance of love for
the establishment and maintenance of marriage and general attitudes. For example:
I love you more than anything else in the world. Come with me to my father’s
castle. You shall become my wife.
Little Snow-White
Or:
Many thanks for redeering me. You were the wife of an enchanted prince. Now
we can celebrate our wedding properly, for now I am the King of this land.
The Bear Prince
In a word, from the description of love declaration above, it is suitable to consider
love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores as the claims to feel an emotion, and
it is also a study of cultural life of English and Vietnamese people.
1.5 SUMMARY
We have gone through chapter one, in this chapter, we have been concerned with
the establishing theoretical background for the study. What have been presented in this
chapter are the concepts of language and culture, language and nature that are given by C.
Kramsch. Moreover, we have taken the concepts of tropes such as simile, metaphor. The
notion of love declaration as a genre has also been considered. Then we have attempted to
study the general meaning of love declaration in English and Vietnamese folklores. The
following chapter will be concerned with love declarations in English folklore with their
linguistic features based on the theoretical background we have presented in this chapter.
CHAPTER TWO: LOVE DECLARATIONS IN ENGLISH

FOLKLORE

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2.1 INTRODUCTION
Love declarations are frequently found in relationships of lovers, married couples
and respondents of different ages. In this chapter, we will study some linguistic features of
love declarations of lovers in English folklore. We also try to discover cultural meaning of
love declarations through cultural images used in love declarations. In our study, as
mentioned in the methodology section, one hundred love declarations are taken into the
investigation.
2.2 NATURE, CULTURE, AND LANGUAGE USED IN LOVE
DECLARATIONS
The study of cultural images used in love declarations can help to show the cultural
meanings. In studying love declaration in folklore, it is necessary to have a small
investigation into natural and cultural images used by people in composing the love
declarations. Within one hundred love declarations investigated, the common cultural and
natural images can be found as follow:
When expressing love English people tend to associate love with the strongest power
of nature. For example:
Love moves the Sun and the other stars
(Dante)
Or:
Love conquers all
(Virgile)
Or:
It’s love that makes the world go round. Without it human race will go to doomsday.
()
Or:
Love joined the two in sweet conjunction, death was powerless to sever such a bond.

(Thomas Mann)
However, love can be seen as a big illusion. For example:
Love’s a blind, and those that follow him too often lose their way.
(Colley Cibber)
Or:
If love be blind
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It best agrees with night
(Shakespeare)
Or:
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit
(Shakespeare)
Or:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind
(Shakespeare)
The author has found out that when expressing love, English people often think of
life, absence, happiness, relationship between man and woman, beauty, youth, the heart,
the kiss, marriage, family, jealousy, hatred and fidelity.
When talking about love, people often think of their life beautified with love:
For example:
Love, in my bosom, like a bee,
Doth suck his sweet
(Thomas Lodge)
Or:
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence and its only end.
(Disraeli)
Or:

Familiar acts are beautiful through love
(P.B. Shelley)
Or:
Oh, love will make a dog howl in rhyme.
(Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher)
Or:
The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
(P.J. Bailey)
Or:
Oh, when I was in love with you,
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Then I was clean and brave.
(A.E. Houseman)
Or:
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather.
(Swinburne)
Or:
There are no ugly loves, nor handsome prisons
(Pierre Gringore)
Beside that, when talking about love, English people often associate love with
absence. Within one hundred love declarations investigated, we can find many love
declarations with the image of absence. They use the image of absence to talk about the
fully-hearted passions, to test love of those who have to apart.
For example:
In every parting there is an image of death.
(George Eliot)

Or:
Absent in body, but present in spirit
(St. Paul)
Or:
I do not love thee!- no! I do not love thee!
And yet when you art absent I am sad.
(Caroline Norton)
Or:
Absence from whom we love is worse than death
(William Cowper)
Or:
Absence lessens half-hearted passions, and increases great ones, as the wind puts
out the candle and yet stirs up the fire.
(La Rochefoucauld)
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Or:
Absence and time are nothing when one is in love.
(Alfred de Musset)
Love often goes along with happiness. Obviously, when giving love declarations
people often have a built in need to make the person they are with really secure in their
love. Again, they know how their partner feels, what their partner longs for. And happiness
is what people desire. That is the reason why people are aware of affirming that they can
bring happiness to their partner. Within one hundred investigated love declarations by
English people, the author has found out that there are many of them talking about the
relationship between love and happiness. For example:
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved
(George Sand)
Or:
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your

own.
(Robert Heinlein)
When expressing happiness, life, absence of lovers in love declarations, English
people often use a lot of cultural images in showing the attitudes of man and woman about
love. The common attitude of woman is quite different from that of man. Within a hundred
love declarations, we can find the common attitudes such as:
“Woman can’t love man as much as man loves woman, for the love of a woman is in
her eyes, and in the nipple of her breast, and in the toe of her foot, but the love of man is
planted in the heart where it can’t escape”
(Anonymous)
Or:
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
Tis woman’s whole existence.
(Byron)
Or:
For man at most differ as Heaven and Earth,
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
(Tennyson)
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Or:
Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
(James Stephens)
Or:
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph
of mind over morals.
(Oscar Wilde)
Or:
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,

A man will never quite understand
The customs, politics, and tongue.
(Coventry Patmore)
Happily, women are born to win men’s heart and conquer men’s land. A lot of love
declarations represent the ideas that women seem to be superior to men such as:
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and
stomach of a king, and a king of England too.”
(Queen Elizabeth I)
Or:
Many a man has been a wonder to the world, whose wife and valet have seen nothing
in him that was even remarkable. Few men have been admired by their servants.
(Michel de Montaigne)
One of the most important cultural images that English people often use to talk about
love is a kiss. The author has found out many love declarations of English people with the
image of a kiss in love declarations. A kiss becomes a desire of both sexes, male and
female. For example:
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.
(Catullus)
Or:
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,
For thy love is better than wine.
(The Bible)
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Or:
Leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
(Ben Johnson)
Or:
I dare not ask a kiss

I dare not beg a smile;
Lest having that, or this,
I might grow proud the while.
(Robert Herrick)
Or:
The moth’s kiss first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up.
The bee’s kiss now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday
(Robert Browning)
Generally, through the cultural images, English people try to express their attitude
toward love. In our study, we have found out that there is a close relationship between love
expression and cultural images.
Beside that, when expressing love, English people tend to speak explicitly, that is the
reason why they use a lot of the word “love” in their expressions.
For example:
Escape me?
Never
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both
Me the loving and you the loth,