A Cognitive Study Of Metaphors In The Economic Discourse

The traditional metaphorical theory considers that metaphor is a figure of speech whichcan make language more vivid. Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson,1980) opened upa new way to the study of metaphors from a cognitive perspective and it really established thestatus of the metaphor from the cognitive aspect. Metaphors reveal people’s ways of thinkingand they are also the ways by which we recognize, understand and express the world.Metaphors appear everywhere in our daily life. They not only affect the expression of ourlanguage but also construct our thoughts. They are deeply rooted in every aspect of our livesand can be found in almost every area such as economy, politics, military, education, sportsand so on. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed the theory of the conceptual metaphor whichcan be classified into three types, namely the orientational metaphor, the ontological metaphorand the structural metaphor. In other words, these three types of metaphors are preciselycalled “metaphors we live by”.The present research is intended to conduct the study of metaphor in economicdiscourses within the theoretical framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. It is acognitive study of metaphor. For the economic issue is the central issue which is paiduniversal attention to from the country’s leaders to the general public. Data for theresearch are selected from the well-known domestic economic publication "China EconomicWeekly". The author selected a larger number of news reports which are closely related toeconomy and connected the Conceptual Metaphor Theory with the economic discourse, sothat we can broaden the study area of metaphor research. Though metaphor study has beendone from various perspectives, cognitive study of metaphors in economic discourses is notdone sufficiently. The research makes semantic analyses and cognitive analyses of selecteddata, trying to find out the cognition mechanism of metaphors in economic discourses.Data analyses reveal the following four points:1. In the analyses of conceptualmetaphors,31%of conceptual metaphors are orientational metaphors;13%of them are orientational metaphors and56%of them are structural metaphors, which shows the structuralmetaphors are widely used by people and they are the major ways for people to understandeconomic concepts.2. In the analyses of orientational metaphors, there is28%of metaphorsrelated to ‘up’,25%of metaphors related to ‘down’,31%of metaphors related to ‘high’ and16%of metaphors related to ‘low’, which shows people have the trend to look upward and tolook to the high.3. The research selects ontological metaphors related to gold, water and thehouse to show us a fact that these metaphors do not occur arbitrarily; they are closely linkedwith our daily experiences and based on some social culture.4. In the analyses of thestructural metaphors, there are metaphors related to the war, weather, transportation, medicine,food and drink, sports and education. Among all these metaphors, there is a high percentageof metaphors related to the war which provides a cognitive basis for many entrepreneurs tostudy some strategies in order to manage businesses very well.