An Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphor In English Economic Discourse

Metaphor has always been a focus of study for western philosophers and thinkers. Traditional metaphor theory holds that metaphor is merely a rhetorical device. In 1970s, a breakthrough of metaphor study was made and promoted by the development of cognitive science. The conceptual metaphor theory initiated by Lakoff and Johnson points out that metaphor is rooted in language, thinking and culture, and that in essence it is a kind of conceptual tool used by humans to understand the physical world. In metaphor, a cross-domain mapping is realized by applying a concrete source domain to construct and comprehend the abstract target domain.The rapid development of economy spawns many new and abstract concepts in the economic discourse. When people come across with unfamiliar things, they will customarily turn to the familiar concept structure to understand the new ones. Hence, metaphor becomes an important tool to structure and comprehend the new concepts related to the economic phenomenon. Starting from the metaphorical nature of language, this thesis attempts to apply the conceptual metaphor theory to investigate the formation mechanism of metaphor in the English economic discourse to help people better comprehend the complicated economic phenomena and foster metaphorical awareness.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is a brief introduction to the basic issues concerning the study, covering the research background, the significance of the study, research methodology and the organization of this thesis. Chapter Two is literature review, which involves the development of metaphor theory and previous studies of metaphor in economic discourses both at home and abroad. This chapter gives a systematic account of the development process of metaphor study, ranging from the history of being a subordinate status of rhetoric to an independent discipline of cognitive tool.Chapter Three serves as the theoretical framework, which presents a detailed introduction to the conceptual metaphor theory. The definition, the philosophical basis, the classification as well as the characteristics of conceptual metaphor are explored in this part. Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory uncovers the cognitive nature of metaphor. This cognition is established upon the similar experiential basis of concepts in the physical world and works by creating an image schema to realize a cross-domain mapping from the concrete source domains to the abstract target domains. The conceptual metaphor is also characterized by its pervasiveness, systematicity and cultural coherence. In Lakoff and Johnson'point of view, the conceptual metaphors can be mainly divided into three types:structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor. Their categorization of conceptual metaphor lays down a theoretical basis for the cognitive linguistic study of metaphor and for the classification of conceptual metaphor in chapter Four.Chapter Four classifies and exemplifies successfully the metaphors in the English economic discourse with the application of conceptual metaphor theory. Based on the former quantitative and comparative study, this thesis classifies the samples collected in the English economic newspapers and magazines into building metaphor, journey metaphor, organism metaphor, war metaphor, space metaphor, liquid metaphor, container metaphor as well as machine metaphor. Concrete forms of realization are listed in each category with an analysis of its working mechanism in the process of decoding abstract economic concepts and phenomena. The analysis of this chapter proves that metaphors are pervasive in economic discourse and that the essence of conceptual metaphor lies in the understanding and decoding of abstract economic concepts by virtue of concrete experiences emerging from the physical world.Chapter Five is the conclusion, mainly summarizing the whole thesis and pointing out the implications for language learning, limitations and suggestions for the future study.In a word, this research investigates metaphors in economic discourse by means of combining the current views of metaphors in cognitive theory with the practice of economic discourse interpretation. The author hopes that this thesis may offer some help in the development of systematic study of metaphor in economic discourse and in the further understanding of metaphorical thinking. However, this thesis is just an initial effort in the study on metaphors in economic discourse, there are also some drawbacks. The author hopes that further researches can be conducted in the near future.