A Research Of Conceptual Metaphor Based On Crisis Communication Corpus

Decades have passed since the western countries began to make a specialty of crisis management in the wake of Cuba Missile Event. As the core and essence of the realm, crisis communication has gradually segregated from it and developed into an independent field. Domestic crisis management has just sprung up since the SARS event in 2003. How to cope with the ever-increasing crises, explore the surviving and improving opportunities and finally bring reconciliation to crises is a task for the whole body of mankind, with the mass linguistic researchers being no exception. After all, it is mainly through the instrumentality of language that crisis management is carried out. To conduct a linguistic research of crisis communication presents a new subject, a challenge and a great chance as well for the linguists in the new era. On one hand the steady flow of crisis communication texts provide the firsthand and all-round materials with social practical significance for linguistic research; on the other, the rich fruits of both domestic and overseas linguistic research can serve as the guidance, basis and guarantee to ensure crisis communication objectively and scientifically.The combination of discourse analysis and public communication is by no means a rarity. However, according to the outcome of my literature review, nobody has ever probed into crisis communication from the angle of metaphor and nobody has carried out metaphor research on corpus of crisis communication, either. The commonplace between both of the domains is that they serve the same macro—purpose, that is,to stimulate and enhance understanding. We can draw a safe conclusion that metaphor plays a very important role in crisis communication.This dissertation consists of the following chapters.Chapter one serves as an introductory part which includes six sections. In section one, the value and significance of this research is emphasized. Section two is devoted to a global theoretical review on crisis communication. Brief comments are also made. In section three, we make an explanation about the corpus while the main contents and focus, including four questions are put forward in section four. In the last two sections we focus on the techniques and features of our research and the layout and structure of the whole dissertation.Chapter two, the literature review part, is divided into three sections. Section one is a brief introduction of the history of metaphor research which consists of three phases, namely, rhetorical, semantic and cognitive research stages. The second section is a summarization of Conceptual Metaphor (CM) which covers both Lakoff’s theories on the essence and types of metaphor, his penetration into the cognitive functions and goals of using metaphors, but also the relevant outcomes of Schon’s research, including the definition of Generative Metaphor and the construction of Problem-framing Model. Section three witnesses the construction and innovation of this research to the field of cognitive study of metaphor.The three sections of Chapter Three provide a multi-layered theoretic foundation for the ressearch. Section one introduces the framework of the dissertation, with stages of crisis communication and Problem-framing Model theories as the theoretical foundation. Section two offers a classification of metaphors and an analysis of their structures on the theoretic ground of CM, Great Chain of Being and Event Structure Metaphor. And the last section provides an integrated analysis of the goals and functions of CM, on the ground of cognitive functional perspective of Lakoff and Schon,theories of metaphor function of Su Dingfang and Goatly.Last but not the least, social functions of crisis communication and the Principle of Goal of Liao Meizhen are combined together to form a comprehensive theoretical basis of the research. Since the research objects include forms, functions and goals of conceptual metaphor, the theoretic framework of the dissertation is combined from three different levels and dimensions rather than supported by a specific theory.Chapter four to six are the main part of the dissertation probing into the cognitive functions and goals of CM in constructing social reality and handling social problems in the three stages of crisis communication on the ground of a self-constructed corpus and a statistic of metaphoric expressions, and a sound analysis is given on the problem-solving function by illustration and experimentation. There are three sections in each chapter. The first sections introduce the classified statistics of metaphoric expressions in different stages of crisis communication on the theoretic ground of CM, Great Chain of Being and Event Structure Metaphor respectively, illustrating their situations, patterns and characteristics, etc. The second sections present an analysis of the cognitive functions and goals of metaphoric expressions at corresponding stages by exemplification and deduction. And the last sections of each chapter are summaries with tables and remarks.The last chapter makes a summary of the whole dissertation with four sections. Section one is a review of the research. Section two summarizes the analysis of the structures of CM in crisis communication, shedding light on the general situation of CM, the convergence and stability of people’s cognitive psychology with various classified statistics of CM. The result is significant in that it is rooted in Chinese language and provides a systematic and convincing demonstration and statistic support to Lakoff’s theory, probing into the university and cultural diversity of CM. The third section is a summary of the functions and goals of CM, analyzing the interactive relationship between CM and crisis communication. First, the use of CM is driven by the goals of crisis communication. There is a corresponding interactive relationship between various variants and CM at various stages of crisis communication. Secondly, metaphor serves as an experience convergence crossing different texts and concepts to construct an integrated system of crisis conception, to be linked with other conceptual systems. Hence, the analysis of the past experience may serve as guidance for future behaviors and manners. And the last section gives a brief explanation of the deficiencies to provide direction for future efforts.