The Coherent Function Of Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And English Economic Discourse

This thesis is in an attempt to investigate the similarities and differences between metaphor occurrence in Chinese and English economic discourses, as well as to examine the coherent function of orientational, ontological and structural metaphors both from the functional and cognitive perspectives. The conclusions are as follows:For the first purpose, the selected data aims to cover all metaphors that occurred in Chinese and English discourses. The number of metaphor in discourse is calculated, divided by the word number, then we get the percentage, that is the metaphor occurrence. It has found out that between Chinese and English economic discourses, there is a great similarity in the percentage of metaphor occurrence, and source domains share a lot of similarities as well, such as the domain of human beings, war and container. The commonly human bodily experience helps to explain the similarity. However, the differences in the two discourses have also been discovered, a case in point is the absence of source domain in temperature in the English economic discourse. The different living environment leads to the different physical feelings. Most Chinese persons experience clear-cut seasons in the year round, thus this stark change in temperature enables them to conceptualize the rise and fall in economic market in a metaphorical way.As for the second research objective, the coherent function of orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor and structural metaphor in Chinese and English discourses has been compared and contrasted. The sample discourses have been provided, with the metaphorical expressions italicized. The thesis implies that conceptual metaphors function the same in organizing the whole discourse in a consistent and coherent way. Metaphor is not a literal ornament only, rather it structures our mental schema from which we human beings conceptualize our experience and better comprehend the outside world around us. The use of metaphor contributes to the cohesiveness of the text, thus leading to text coherence.