The Application Of The Conceptual Metaphor To English Political Discourses

For the sake of objectivity, neutrality, preciseness and truthfulness, people think pressmen, journalists and politicians usually avoid the use of metaphor, especially novel metaphor. However, as a matter of fact, metaphor is pervasively deployed in political discourses. Lakoff generalized and categorized the conceptual metaphors on Gulf War into several types such as"War as Politics; War as Violent Crime; War as a competitive Game; and War as Medicine"according to their various cognitive mappings. He emphasized that metaphor could be used as an effective tool to analyze the value concepts entailed in political discourses.Metaphors in political discourses are attracting more attention from scholars, but merely more metaphorical examples of the structure"A is B"have been analyzed. The previous researches lack a sufficient exploration of why the mappings are created in this way. Incorporating the conceptual metaphor theory and further development of metaphor in subsequent researches made by Lakoff and his colleagues, this thesis generalizes the modes of mappings in political discourses in order to find out how the political purposes are achieved during this process.This thesis also explores the functions of metaphor in political discourses. Metaphor is a natural vehicle of ideology, rather than solely a tool for easier comprehension of complex political issues and formation of new concepts. By creating similarity and association, language users map people's experience of the source domain onto the target domain in order to promote the ideological orientation and willingness of themselves or that of the group he represents, and to influence value concepts of the masses. Metaphor in political discourses is not an objective reflection of political reality but a representation of political bias, which manipulates political standpoints and ideological inclinations of readers or listeners. Since this influence is latent and not easily perceptible, it is useful for enhancing our political sensitivity by learning the working modes and the manipulating function of metaphor in political discourses.Lastly, this thesis makes a contrastive study of the features and functions of metaphor in political discourses and in scientific discourses. Metaphors in scientific discourses are used for an easier understanding of complicated and unintelligible scientific concepts or theories, in which no political and ideological inclination is involved. But the function of reflecting and manipulating ideology is the characteristic feature of metaphor in political discourses.