A Cognitive Analysis On The Mapping Models Of Conceptual Metaphors In English Economic News Headlines

The study of metaphor has a long history of thousands of years. In the traditional theory, metaphor is regarded only as a figure of speech or an ornamental device, which is always related to poetry and rhetoric. There are three major theories on the nature of metaphor: the comparison theory, the substitution theory and the interaction theory. In the 1980s, Lakoff and Johnson proposed the conceptual metaphor theory in their masterpiece Metaphors We Live By. It marks a new cognitive era of the metaphor study. Metaphor is defined as cross-domain mapping from the source domain to the target domain in human conceptual system. Metaphorical expressions are the surface realization of such a cross-domain mapping. In the conceptual metaphor theory, metaphor is regarded as a matter of thought and a way of cognition. It plays a fundamental role in organizing human beings'conceptual system. The cognitive theory of metaphor lays a solid foundation for further studies and offers a more promising approach to the study of metaphors.With the development of the economy, a great number of metaphorical expressions are flooding in economic news and they arouse many scholars'interests. These scholars have made great contribution to the metaphor study from different perspectives in the economic field. Based on the fruitful achievements on this topic, the present thesis sets out to analyze and study the conceptual metaphors in English economic news headlines. The first-hand data consist of 1478 economic news headlines which are taken from the on-line version of China Daily in the period from June to October of the year 2010. In this study, a large number of metaphorical expressions are collected and classified in accordance with their source domains. By means of qualitative and quantitative analyses, this thesis aims to find out some typical conceptual metaphors in the English economic news headlines and explain how various unfamiliar and abstract economic terms are conceptualized and presented to the public by means of familiar and concrete things.The results show that metaphors are pervasive in the English economic news headlines. This further proves the ubiquity of metaphors. Economic phenomena and activities are conceptualized by means of ten frequently used conceptual metaphors. They are the LIVING ORGANISM metaphor, the CONTAINER metaphor, the WATER metaphor, the BUILDING metaphor, the MACHINE metaphor, the WEATHER metaphor, the UP-DOWN metaphor, the JOURNEY metaphor, the WAR metaphor and the GAME metaphor. The quantitative analysis of these metaphors shows that there are distinct differences in the frequency of these conceptual metaphors. The differences suggest different cognitive effects on English economic news headlines. The study also indicates that metaphors in English economic news headlines are based on our body experience. And the exploration of the ideologies behind these conceptual metaphors can help us understand the metaphorical way of thinking in English economic news headlines. To some extent, the findings in the study can be applied to the learning and teaching of economics and business writing.