Cognitive Study Of Metaphors In Business Column Of TIME

Metaphor has long aroused interests from various disciplines such as literature, linguistics, philosophy and psychology. There are a number of theories on metaphor, from"Comparison Theory"to"Substitution Theory", from"Interaction Theory"to Conceptual Metaphors. The traditional view, including the semantic approaches and the pragmatic ones, considers metaphor as merely a literary matter, a rhetorical device, a compressed simile, and therefore an ornament of language. However, more and more study shows that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon or a decoration of language. It is also related to human cognition and an increasing number of scholars began to examine metaphor from a cognitive view, such as I.A. Richard, Lakoff and Johnson. After reviewing various theories on metaphor and comparing the advantages and disadvantages of them, this paper adopts a cognitive approach towards metaphor and conducted an empirical study in the discourse of business news. The authentic examples are all taken from the latest issues of TIME magazine, which cover a wide range of areas all the way from high-tech, computer industry, consumer-products, and entertainment etc. After the manual identification, eight key conceptual metaphors are classified according to the different source domains of metaphors. They are the metaphors of human, metaphors of nature, metaphors of daily things, metaphors of war, metaphors of space, metaphors of building/container, metaphors of game, and metaphors of religion. It shows that there is an abundance of metaphors in business news discourse. The metaphorical bases are analyzed in the fashion of cognitive linguistics. It is found that metaphor is central to the business news and has a role in making readers fully comprehend the discourse. Metaphors provide insights into our ways of thinking. Familiarity with metaphors through with abstract processes and concepts are conceptualized will also help readers, learners and teachers develop stylistic awareness of business news. However, this research is just a qualitative one, and it would be of more validity if it goes hand in hand with a quantitative study.