A Contrastive Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And American News Discourses On Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Metaphor research has always been the hot topic for linguistic analysis. The systematic research of metaphor in the west can be traced back to Aristotle. Aristotle’s traditional theory of metaphor study is called comparison theory. Later, metaphor is viewed as a figure of speech whether it is substitution theory proposed by Quintilian or Richard and Black’s interaction theory. In the early 1980s, Lakoff and Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By opens up a new approach to analyze metaphor cognitively. Since then, the status of metaphor in cognitive field is established. Lakoff and Johnson hold that metaphors are pervasive in daily life and metaphors exist not only at language level but also in thought and actions. In essence, the normal conceptual systems that people’s thought and actions rely on are metaphorical.Lakoff is one of the pioneers who analyze conceptual metaphors in political news discourse. He analyzes political news and political speeches and reveals the values and ideologies implied in conceptual metaphors. In his book Moral Politics: How Liberal and Conservatives Think, Lakoff (1996) illustrates different ideologies and world views of American’s two parties through two types of family metaphors. Lakoff demonstrates that the Republican Party believes in strict father model, whereas the Liberal Party is nurturant parent model. Besides, Goatly (2007) analyzes power metaphor, human metaphor, organism metaphor as well as the implied ideologies in Washing the Brain:Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. He analyzes the metaphors that regard human beings and society as machine, commodity, weather and animal and discusses the relationships among different conceptual metaphors. In the 1990s, the contemporary metaphor research enters into cognitive stage in China. Lin Shuwu (1994) explains the cognitive theoretical basis of metaphors in the article "Metaphor: its Cognition and Language Structure", which attracts domestic scholars’attentions to cognitive analysis of metaphor. Shu Dingfang (2000) introduces the current situation about the analysis of metaphor in the west and analyzes the working mechanism, reasons and functions of metaphor in the book Studies of Metaphor. In the book Cognitive Linguistics, Hu Zhuanglin (2004) illustrates the hot topics of cognitive metaphor studies and summarizes the four schools of metaphor analysis in the west. Lan Chun (2003) analyzes spatial metaphor in Chinese and English languages from the cognitive perspective.As the first international financial institution led by China, the launch of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has caused extensive concern around the world. The AIIB was proposed by President Xi in 2013, aiming to promote the infrastructure construction. As an inter-governmental multi-development organization in Asian region, AIIB helps to strengthen the cooperation between China and other Asian countries and districts, to expand global investment demands and to enhance the stability of global economy. Until now,57 countries have become the founding members of AIIB. There are thirty seven regional and twenty non-regional Prospective Founding Members in total. This proposal of China has received recognition in many countries. And there is an upsurge of AIIB fever around the world. However, the United States holds the opposing attitude and does not join. There are many news discourses on AIIB in both Chinese and American websites. Besides, plenty of conceptual metaphors exist in the news discourses so as to convey ideologies to the readers and shape images efficiently. It is meaningful to conduct a contrastive analysis of metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses on AIIB with a view to understanding the ideologies of China and the United States.Therefore, this thesis takes conceptual metaphor theory as theoretical framework, and by adopting the quantitative and qualitative analyses, the thesis makes a contrastive study of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses on AIIB. It aims to analyze the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in news discourses on the same topic, to study the factors leading to the similarities and differences, to discover the functions of metaphors in constructing Chinese and American news discourses and to reveal the different ideologies of Chinese and American governments. The research questions of the thesis are as follows:(1) What are the types of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses on AIIB?(2) What are the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses on AIIB?(3) What are the similarities and differences in the functions of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses?In this thesis, the author chooses two authoritative websites in China and America-China Daily English Version and the Washington Post to sellect the data. "AIIB" is used as key words so as to find the news discourses related to the development of AIIB. The time span is from October 2014 to June 2015.30 news discourses in both China Daily and Washington Post are chosen as the data of this thesis. The author finds the conceptual metaphors in news discourses on AIIB under the guidance of Steen’s five-step procedure of metaphor identification. Based on conceptual metaphor theory, the author classifies conceptual metaphors into different types and makes a qualitative analysis. The author also makes a quantitative analysis of the concrete metaphorical keywords with the help of AntConc software. The similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses are analyzed through the combination of the two analytical methods.The major findings of the contrastive analyses are as follows:In Chinese news discourses, the metaphorical expressions occur 177 times and 10 types of conceptual metaphors are found. The dominant metaphors are construction metaphor, war metaphor, human metaphor and journey metaphor, which account for 27.1%,23.7%,15.8%and 12.4%respectively. Through construction metaphor, the development of AIIB is regarded as a building which needs the builders-Chinese people work together step by step. The employment of conceptual metaphors AIIB DEVELOPMENT IS WAR and AIIB DEVELOPMENT IS JOURNEY indicate the toughness of AIIB development and inspire people to make sacrifices. Besides, in journey metaphor, Chinese news media treat China and foreign countries as traveling partners. The countries need to understand and respect each other to promote the development of AIIB together. Through human metaphor, countries are regarded as human beings who have actions, emotions and motivations. Chinese news media use human metaphor to highlight the actions of different countries on the issue of AIIB. The author finds that the attitude of Chinese news media toward AIIB development is positive. The AIIB is launched based on mutual benefit and win-win cooperation in the eyes of Chinese news media. In addition, up/down metaphor and machine metaphor only exist in Chinese news discourse, which takes up 4.5%and 2.3%respectively.In American news discourses,228 metaphorical expressions and 12 types of conceptual metaphors are found. "The four dominant metaphors are war metaphor, human metaphor, journey metaphor and container metaphor, which account for 35.5%, 20.6%,11.8%and 12.4%respectively. War metaphor is the most common type, which occurs 81 times. American news media regard the competition among countries as war and treat AIIB as a challenge to the traditional financial order. It reveals that AIIB is the strategic offensive behavior in the eyes of American news media. The conceptual metaphor STATE IS A PERSON also exists in American news discourses to help attract eyes. It is discovered that American news media value the attitudes and emotions of different countries towards AIIB. In journey metaphor, AIIB DEVELOPMENT IS A JOURNEY is used to imply the positive effects the AIIB brings and COUNTRY DEVELOPMENT IS A TRIP is also used to indicate the concern for the rise of China. Container metaphor is used to materialize the abstract concepts of country and AIIB as a "container". The United States always alleges active policies to China, but it still regards AIIB led by China as an independent and exclusive "container". It is found that the attitude of American media towards AIIB is quite complicated and it holds an unfriendly tone. Meanwhile, both the positive and negative images of AIIB are promoted in American news discourses. Besides, plant metaphor, article metaphor and religion metaphor are unique in American news discourse, which account for 4.8%,1.8% and 0.9% respectively. It shows the uniqueness of conceptual metaphor due to specific cultural backgrounds and political stands.The news discourse uses conceptual metaphors to express the abstract terms in simple languages to help readers understand better. The adoption of metaphors can ease the burden of understanding, guide the direction of thinking, motivate and persuade the readers. There are four functions of conceptual metaphors in news discourse:persuasion function, filter function, motivation function and simplification function. The highlighted functions of metaphor are different due to different purposes. In Chinese news discourse, motivation function and simplification function are highlighted. By contrast, American news discourse values the function of persuasion, function of filter and the function of simplification.Based on the above findings, some conclusions can be reached:Firstly, conceptual metaphors are pervasive in both Chinese and American news discourses. Most metaphors focus on the aspects closely linked to the development of AIIB.Secondly, the use of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourses shares similarities. Eight similar conceptual metaphors are found in Chinese and American news discourses, such as war metaphor, game metaphor and weather metaphor. This confirms the cultural universality of conceptual metaphor.Thirdly, differences of conceptual metaphors also exist due to cultural differences and different political stands. Even in some of the same conceptual metaphors, the percentages and highlighted aspects of conceptual metaphors are not the same in the two data. Meanwhile, specific metaphors exist in both Chinese and American news discourses, for instance, machine metaphor are unique in Chinese news discourse and container metaphor and religion metaphor are unique in American news discourse.Fourthly, conceptual metaphors in news discourse help to shape negative or positive image efficiently and to convey different ideologies and stands.The thesis can broaden the analysis of conceptual metaphors in news discourse and provide a new angle for news discourses studies. The results of the thesis help to cultivate the reader’s ability of metaphorical thinking and understand the news discourse better. Meanwhile, this thesis contributes to the cross-cultural communication among different countries. People can understand different cultures and thinking patterns better and avoid misunderstanding after analyzing conceptual metaphors.