Abstract

This study examines the interaction between metaphor and metonymy in Vietnamese idioms containing “bụng, dạ, lòng, ruột” and English idioms containing “stomach, gut, belly”. All idioms containing these terms in the two source dictionaries are classified into four categories: literal, metaphor only, metonymy only, and combined metaphor–metonymy, enabling the proportion involving metaphtonymy to be determined. The findings indicate that 61% of the English idioms and 63% of the Vietnamese idioms involve metaphtonymy, with metonymy within metaphor predominating in both languages. Although metaphor within metonymy appears to be absent from narrowly scoped analyses, it is identified through a supplementary examination of items excluded by the scope criteria. The cross-linguistic comparison remains descriptive, suggesting that Vietnamese idioms containing these body-part terms serve a broader range of conceptual functions than their English counterparts.

Keywords: Body-part terms, cognitive linguistics, english–Vietnamese contrastive study, idioms, metaphtonymy.