Metaphor In Economic Report Headlines: A Cognitive Study

Metaphor is a pervasive language phenomenon. According to Johnson, metaphor almost exists in every aspect of human thought. The theoretical research of metaphor originates in Aristotle. The traditional linguists represented by Aristotle see metaphor as a language phenomenon, the ornament of language. It is Lakoff and Johnson (1980) who begin to study metaphor from the cognitive perspective. They believe that metaphor is not only a language phenomenon but a way of thinking and a cognitive tool. It facilitates our understanding of those abstract concepts with some concrete concepts. Therefore, metaphor plays a very important role in our cognition of the world. This thesis aims at analyzing the metaphor phenomenon in economic report headlines based on the conceptual metaphor theory and its working mechanism put forward by Lakoff & Johnson.With the rapid development of society and economy, metaphors have been enjoying increasing popularity in economic texts, and have caught more and more attention from linguists. However, many of their studies focus only on the language of metaphor from the perspective of figure of speech, failing to reveal the working mechanism of metaphor. Enlightened by the previous studies on metaphor, this thesis conducts a cognitive study on the conceptual metaphors in economic report headlines. This thesis is based on the cognitive linguists' theory represented by Lakoff. It collects data from a variety of economic newspapers, magazines and webs, discussing the working mechanism of metaphor in economic report headlines deeply.Adopting chiefly the qualitative approach in the process of data analysis, this thesis tries to explore the universality and working mechanism of conceptual metaphor in economic report headlines on the basis of modern cognitive theory.The result of the study shows that metaphor phenomenon is pervasive in economic report headlines. Through the comparison and analysis of some language data, the author finds that journey metaphors, human being metaphors, war metaphors, up-down schema metaphors, container metaphors and human body metaphors appear most frequently in economic report headlines. And also, the analysis reveals the embodied nature of conceptual metaphor. The abstract economic concepts are comprehended and talked about in concrete terms derived from our experience in the physical world.This thesis analyzes metaphors in economic report headlines generally and explicitly. Finally the implications, applications and limitations of the study are displayed and some suggestions for future research are provided.