A Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese And American News Reports On Covid-19 Pandemic From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Metaphor

Grammatical metaphor is a very important concept in systemic functional linguistics.Grammatical metaphor is identified in terms of the metafunctions: ideational,interpersonal,and textual metaphor.As an important part of this framework,the study of interpersonal meaning plays a significant role in discourse analysis.The phenomenon of interpersonal metaphor is an indispensable part of human language.The research on interpersonal metaphor has covered many areas,but the study on Covid-19 from the perspective of interpersonal metaphor has not yet been conducted.Since December 2019,the Covid-19 outbreak has become a global pandemic,posing a serious threat to people’s lives and health.Mainstream news media at home and abroad have set up Covid-19 special columns,which have become essential channels for people to obtain relevant information.Consequently,through quantitative and qualitative analysis,this thesis mainly has three objectives:(1)To investigate the distribution of different types of interpersonal metaphor in Chinese and American news reports;(2)To analyze the differences and similarities in the frequency of interpersonal metaphor used in Chinese and American news reports;(3)To figure out the functions played by different types of interpersonal metaphor in Chinese and American news reports.Specifically,some conclusions are able to be drawn from this thesis:(1)Both metaphor of Mood and metaphor of Modality exist in Chinese and American news.Metaphor of Modality appears more frequently than metaphor of Mood in both Chinese and American news.(2)There is a substantial difference in metaphor of Mood between Chinese and American news.Metaphor of Mood appears almost twice as frequently in American news as in Chinese news.On the whole,the phenomenon of interpersonal metaphor appears more regularly in American news than in Chinese news.The thesis explains the reasons for the differences in the frequency of interpersonal metaphor in Chinese and American news from three aspects: thinking patterns,moral principles,and language organization.(3)Interpersonal metaphor does play an important role in both Chinese and American news.Based on data analysis,metaphor of Mood performs the functions of giving suggestions in a euphemistic way and expressing an uncertain tone in Chinese and American news.Metaphor of Modality works to emphasize the objective or subjective judgement.As a whole,interpersonal metaphor has two major contributions in news,to stimulate reader’s curiosity and to act as an evaluation device.This thesis possesses certain theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically speaking,this research illustrates the universality and inclusiveness of systemic functional linguistics theory,and the great potential of interpersonal metaphor theory for analyzing various genres of discourse.Practically speaking,the study of interpersonal metaphor in news reports,especially the detailed analysis of the functions played by interpersonal metaphor in news coverage,will help people involved in journalism to learn more about the news written skills.Finally,the in-depth analysis of Covid-19 reports from two authoritative news media in China and America is able to compare and analyze the public health emergency from a new perspective,so as to enable people to better understand the Covid-19 outbreak.