| Metaphor has always been the focus of discussion for linguists. The traditional metaphor research confined itself in stylistics and rhetorical studies. Since 1970s, metaphor study has turned into a cognitive perspective. This paper aims at finding out how economists interpret economic phenomena with everyday life through analyzing the conceptual metaphorization mechanism in the Economist.In 1980, two American scholars, G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, published their epoch-making works"The Metaphors We Live by", opening a new chapter for the modern metaphor study. They came up with a brand new metaphor concept--- Metaphorical Concept System, which takes metaphor not only as a stylistic device but also a cognitive process. Metaphor, an important tool of thinking and the basic way of living, participates directly in human cognitive process. Human cognitive process works closely with their day-to-day experience. Metaphor facilitates our understanding of those abstract concepts with concrete subjects.As a cognitive schema to understand economic phenomena, conceptual metaphor enjoys wide popularity in the economic texts. In fact, conceptual metaphors are omnipresent in the economic and business texts, with the Economist in particular. Detailed analysis of it has revealed the conceptual metaphorization mechanism: Economy is a living organism; Economy is a dynamical or mechanical process; Economy is a path or journey; Economy is a war/competition/game; Economy is a container; Economy is a building. The complexity of economic world leads to the diversity of conceptual metaphorization mechanism. Study of conceptual metaphors in the economic & business texts will reinforce people's understanding of economic world as some economic theories are too hard to learn for the majority. It's also conducive to the improvement of thinking and the promotion of second language acquisition by stimulating students'interest in language learning and their comprehension of economic texts.
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