A Study On War Metaphors In News Reporting Of Ball Games

As an essential part of social life, sports play an important role in our society and it is being regarded as symbol of human civilization. With the development of economy and the enhancement of international communication, sports have been attracting more and more attention and many scholars have stepped into the study of sports news reporting from different perspectives and with different focuses. In this paper, the author intends to carry out a comprehensive study on war metaphors in sports news reporting from the perspective of cognitive linguistics within the theoretical framework of Conceptual Integration Theory.The study is conducted through data analysis and all the data come totally from the website---www.sports.cn, which is an exclusive platform on various sports information. The data collected include 300 pieces of sports news reporting, namely, news reporting of football games, basketball games and volleyball games. The frequency of war metaphors in news headlines and the occurrence numbers of some war metaphors in news leads and bodies are being counted out and analyzed in details. In the analysis of war metaphors in sports news reporting, three major mapping processes are involved in the conceptual metaphor SPORT IS WAR, namely, mapping the participants, the process and the features from the space of war onto the space of sports. Rationales and functions of war metaphors are being examined as well.By conducting data analysis, the present thesis aims to reveal that war metaphors enjoy a high frequency in sports news reporting and the conceptual system of sports is metaphorically constructed on the basis of the conceptual system of war. It also aims to point out the underlying cognitive mechanism of the metaphor SPORT IS WAR. Besides, the thesis can help further demonstrate CIT's explanatory power on the analysis of metaphor and open up a wider perspective on the application of CIT in Chinese discourses as well. In addition, the author also wishes to give an insight to those who are interested in cognitive linguistics, especially in the study of metaphor in languages.