Some language and culture issues of the terms "long, ruot, bung, da" in Vietnamese

Abstract

Long, ruot, bung, da  are terms for body parts so they share some characteristics common with other body terms. They can be used to nominate human body parts, be extended to nominate different parts of things and to express human emotions.  By comparing the use of these terms in Vietnamese with their equivalents in some  other languages and through an analysis of literary work, this paper shows that there are some differences, especially when these terms are used to express emotions in Vietnamese. The results of this paper  indicates that among these ords,  long occupies the most central position in expressing emotion in Vietnamese.