Corpus of Vietnamese Orientational Metaphors "Lên" and "Xuống"

This dataset contains 505 metaphorical tokens of the Vietnamese spatial terms <i>lên</i> ("up") and <i>xuống</i> ("down"), extracted from a private corpus hosted on VietCorpus. The dataset comprises two Excel files: one for <i>lên</i> (303 tokens) and one for <i>xuống</i> (202 tokens). Each entry includes the metaphorical expression, source context, target domain, conceptual category, mapping pattern (Patterns A–C), and connotative valence (positive, negative, neutral). This dataset supports the findings presented in the manuscript <i>When Metaphor Hierarchies Interface with Cultural Values: Asymmetric Evaluations in Vietnamese Orientational Metaphors Lên and Xuống</i>, submitted to <i>Metaphor and Symbol</i>.The data illustrates how Vietnamese orientational metaphors instantiate Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) priority architecture — whereby MORE IS UP / LESS IS DOWN takes precedence over GOOD IS UP / BAD IS DOWN in value-conflict contexts — and how Vietnamese cultural models elaborate evaluative force within these universally grounded constraints. The three-pattern analytical framework (Patterns A–C) operationalizes this architecture, distinguishing scalar-intensity mappings (Pattern A), hierarchy/stance mappings (Pattern B), and culturally valorized DOWN mappings (Pattern C). <br><br>Author ORCID: 0009-0003-4096-850X