Key concepts

Literal meaning. The interpretation based on the entire meaning of all the components of a
phrase or a sentence is called the literal meaning. For example, the sentence “the dog is sleeping”
is definitely understood as the dog is not awake, he is asleep. Literal meaning of idioms is more
noticeable than idiomatic meaning, which means that people have a tendency to notice literal
meaning first when they read a new idiom (Kweon, 2011). She concluded that literal meaning
has the priority over idiomatic meaning both in the context of literal-interpreting and figurative-
interpreting idioms. Moreover, after identifying figurative meaning, literal meaning still
penetrates the whole idiom (Cacciari, 2014). Nguyen (2005) stated that In Vietnamese, there are
some idioms contains only literal meaning about nature, agriculture and history. According to
Nguyen, the conclusion that all idioms entail literal meaning and idiomatic meaning is not
persuasive. For instance, the idiom “mưa tháng bảy gãy cành trám” literally indicates the heavy
rainfall in July and there is no figurative meaning that follows. However, in both Vietnamese and
English, idioms with the word “dog” involve both literal meaning and figurative meaning, but
the figurative meaning is more dominant and consequential although the literal meaning is
initially noticeable. For example, the idiom “it’s a dog’s life” reminds of the old days when dogs
lived miserable lives. Therefore, people use this idiom to indicate a life that is hard and
unpleasant. Another example is an idiom with dog in Vietnamese – “chó cái cắn con”, which
targets at people’s inhumane from the paradox of a dog violently bites her puppies.

Idiomatic meaning. In linguistic, beside literal meaning, there is also idiomatic meaning
that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves. According to the study of
Seidl and McMordie (1988), the formation of idioms might not follow the grammar rules and
that we rearrange the elements of the idiom leads to the modification of the meaning. For
instance, “bite the hand that feeds you” and “the hands that feeds you is bitten” is different in
meaning. Nevertheless, some idioms do not follow this pattern such as “turn the tables” and “the
tables are turned”, which can be used to convey the same meaning. These noteworthy
expressions are the reason for the regular arguments among many linguistics. Besides, according
to Palmer (1990), idioms are consequences of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from
the meaning of the words themselves. He also printed out some restriction in syntactic features
and noted that the problem of idioms was involved with the much wider issue of word formation,
by which what would appear to be new and more complex lexemes can be formed from single
ones. On the other hand, Asher and Simpson (1994) pointed out that idioms have the connotation
that goes beyond the entire meaning of their constituents. For example, “dog eat dog world”
means the world can be competitive and cruel; “rain cats and dogs” means rain heavily; or “his
bark is worse than his bite” means he just talks and takes no action. Another example is the
idiom “hold your tongue”, which does not mean that the fingers should be sticked in the mouth
and grab a hold of tongue. It means that someone should not talk. People “hold their tongues”
when they are in situations where they have an intention to talk, but it would be better if they did
not. Therefore, while their tongue is ready to do some talking, they “hold” it and do not say
anything. Besides, the meaning of the idiom cannot be the same if we change the form of the
words. We cannot say “table” in “turn the tables”. The singular form is not allowed to use or the
connotation does not remain the same.

In this study, we only prefer Asher and Simpson’s definition of idiom to analyze the idiomatic
expressions containing the word ‘dog’.

Previous works on idioms containing the “dog” image in English and Vietnamese
Throughout the history of research papers, works examining the English idioms containing the
imaged of “animal” in comparison with its equivalents in Vietnamese have increased more and
more. However, there have been fewer works on the topic of “dog” image in English -
Vietnamese idioms contrast and comparison. Vietnamese and English idioms related to the word
“dog”: A contrastive analysis (Nguyen, 2011), Idiomatic expressions containing the word “dog”
in English and Vietnamese (Dao, 2007), Vài nét về việc sử dụng hình ảnh con chó trong thành
ngữ, tục ngữ tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt (Le, 2014). Dao (2007), Nguyen (2011) and Le (2014)
emphasized the relationship between language and culture as well as the negative and possitive
points in the “dog” image. In the main parts, the authors illustrate the differences in how two
completely seperate cultures consider dog as a specific kind of animals, in which Vietnam has
considered and treated it morelike just a normal pet, or animal. Meanwhile, dogs in another
culture are definitely carrying absolutelty opposite concept. They are friends or family members,
more friendly and accompanied. As a result, most of Vietnamese “dog” idioms bring pessimistic,
atrocious meaning whilst good personal characteristics or high status of people as well as the
convenient conditions and good luck are implicated in English idioms when saying about “dog”.
Dao (2007) also made a deep analysis about the image of dog in the lunar zodiac cycle and
people born in the year of dog. She stated that dog is the favorite sign the zodiac of Eastern
culture. On the other hand, she focused on the differences in word choice and structures of
idioms related to the word “dog”. For example, “top dog” is different from “big dog” in
meaning. One indicates the most important or powerful person or country, while the other is used
to mention an important person.

Conclusion

The world of idioms containing the word “dog” is partly covered in some of the works
that mentioned above. The study will examine the similarities and differences between the
idioms that have the word “dog” in English and Vietnamese, viewing from many angles. The
contrastive analysis that follows will investigate more into this kind of idiom.

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