A Contrastive Analysis On Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And English Public Speeches

The communication ways between people become more diverse as the Internet develops rapidly.A viewpoint can influence the society through the transmission of various network media.Accordingly,all kinds of speech programs come into being.The original purpose of these programs is to convey positive information to society by the experience sharing from inspirational or successful people.The language in public speeches has also attracted the attention of scholars,and the language uses in the speeches on politics,economy and education are especially popular.However,there are few contrastive studies on the language uses in general public speaking.Therefore,it is very necessary to study the language in this kind of public speeches.This paper aims to find out the distributions of metaphors,analyze the similarities and differences between Chinese and English public speeches and explain the reasons for them by making a contrastive study on TED Talks and Kai Jiangla--the first public class program for the young in China.There are three questions to be answered in the study,which are listed as follows:1.What are the distributions of conceptual metaphors in TED Talks and Kai Jiangla(KJL)respectively?2.What are the differences and similarities in metaphorical expressions between the two public speeches?3.What are the reasons for the similarities and differences in metaphorical expressions in those Chinese and English speeches?In order to answer the above-mentioned questions,the author selected 15 entertainment speeches in TED Talks and 15 general speeches of KJL as the research object and analyzed them on the basis of Conceptual Metaphor Theory by using the quantitative and qualitative methods.Powerconcordance 1.0 and SPSS 21.0 were used in the process of data collection.The former was used for calculating the word frequency of metaphor keywords in the texts and the latter for checking whether there were significant differences in resonances of shared metaphors between Chinese and English speeches.It is found that there are eight kinds of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and English speeches respectively.TRAVEL,WAR,SPACE,ORGANISM,BUILDING and WATER metaphors are distributed both in two languages with large proportions.CIRCLE and FAMILY metaphors are unique in 15 Chinese speeches.The MACHINE and RELIGIOUS metaphors are distinctive in 15 English texts.The similarities of metaphors in the Chinese and English speeches are embodied in two aspects.The first one is that there are abundant metaphors in Chinese and English because of the universality of metaphor in language.On the other hand,six kinds of shared metaphors are presented in the two speeches because of similar physical experiences of human beings.The two points of similarities are the embodiment of the consistency and universality of metaphorical concepts in different languages.The differences in metaphors of Chinese and English speeches are shown as follows:firstly,the overall ratio of six kinds of shared metaphors in English is higher than in Chinese.Secondly,the each metaphorical expression of six kinds of shared metaphors in Chinese speeches is used more frequently than in English.Thirdly,there are two special metaphors in both Chinese and English texts.The first difference can be explained by the proportion of the CIRCLE metaphor in Chinese speeches,which occupies the second highest in use frequency.The second difference results from the fact that Chinese speakers tend to express their opinions to the audience with various metaphorical expressions and that the metaphorical expression used in Chinese are richer than in English.The reason for the last difference is that collectivism in Chinese culture is highlighted in language.The CIRCLE and FAMILY metaphors deal with the close relationship between individuals and countries,which is the embodiment of the core values of socialism at the citizen level,namely,the speakers.The industrial and religious culture as well as individualism in western countries are responsible for the MACHINE and RELIGIOUS metaphors in English speeches.By comparing the features of metaphors in Chinese and English speeches,this study is beneficial for readers to know the speakers’ thinking mode and speaking style and have a better understanding of speech texts.