Pain as a Force – A Study of the Conceptual Metaphors of Pain in Vietnamese

This study aimed to investigate the conceptual metaphors of pain in Vietnamese. Twenty-six Vietnamese women with cancer were involved as research participants who took part in one-to-one semi-structured interviews with the researcher to provide information about their pain experience and their cancer condition. Data obtained from the interviews was transcribed, coded and interpreted using qualitative content analysis. Talmy’s (1988) force dynamic schema was employed to identify the structure of conceptual metaphors of pain. The findings indicated that a wide variety of pain metaphors were found in Vietnamese, with PAIN AS A FORCE being the general metaphor followed by many more specific ones. While Vietnamese conceptual metaphors of pain overlap in multiple ways with those typically found in English and Greek, new findings emerged from the Vietnamese data, including PAIN AS A FRIGHTENING ENTITY, PAIN AS AN ENEMY, PAIN AS A REWARD OR A VALUABLE ASSET, and PAIN AS A NET OR A TRAP. The study contributed to validating the role of language in describing pain, enriching the international work concerning the conceptualisation of pain, and facilitating Vietnamese healthcare professionals’ understanding about their patients’ communication about pain using language.