Conceptual Metaphor “THE MARKET IS A BUILDING” in Vietnamese and English Commercial Discourse: A Contrastive Study with Pedagogical Implications

Abstract

This article investigates news reports and headlines in Vietnamese and English online newspapers in order to identify and analyze the conceptual metaphor THE MARKET IS A BUILDING in commercial discourse . The study compares the metaphors across the two languages in terms of the number of metaphorical statements, metaphorical expressions, frequency of occurences, and cultural characteristics. The findings reveal that this metaphor is realized through 111 metaphorical statements and manifested in three sub-metaphors. The comparative analysis shows that the Vietnamese corpus exhibits a higher number and frequency of metaphorical statements and expressions than the English one. Although the two languages share similarities in conceptual mapping patterns, they differ in the selection of metaphorical expressions and in the extent to which source-domain attributes are exploited. These differences  reflect the cognitive characteristics and discourse contexts of each linguistic community. Based on these findings, the article proposes several pedagogical implications for English language teaching at the tertiary level, including enhancing learners’ ability to identify and interpret conceptual metaphors, integrating metaphor instruction into foreign language teaching, and applying a cognitive approach in courses such as Semantics, Contrastive Linguistics, Translation, and Interpreting.