| Metaphors We Live By opens up a new era of studying metaphor from a cognitive perspective. The significance of studying metaphor via metaphorical expressions is to reveal the relationship between language and thought. Since then, Lakoff and others continuously improve Conceptual Metaphor Theory. In 1993, he proposed Event Structure Metaphor (ESM). He believes that there is no concept more central to philosophy than events, called event structure concepts. Different aspects of event structure, including notions like states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes and means, are comprehended via a small set of physical concepts: location, force, and movement.With the rapid development of economy, the study of conceptual metaphors in financial reports is rising. However, the study on ESM in stock market is still blank. In order to develop and enrich the study of ESM, the author takes stock market analysis in English and Chinese as corpora that reflect event structure concepts to investigate the situation of ESM in stock market analysis. This thesis aims to answer the following three questions: (i) How is ESM reflected in English and Chinese stock market? (ii) What is the variation of ESM as an inference pattern between ESC and CSC? (iii) How does ESM reveal the relationship between language and thought?The thesis consists of five parts. Apart from the first chapter introduction and the last chapter conclusion, it includes another three parts. Chapter two is a review of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, ESM, and previous studies on ESM and metaphorical studies in stock market. Chapter three is methodology, which introduces corpus building, data collection and data analysis. Chapter four is results and discussion, which analyzes ESM at the level of concept and of linguistic expressions, trying to figure out similarities and differences of ESM between ESC and CSC. In addition, the relationship between language and thought has been summarized.This study is based on complete and closed corpora. All data were collected from two websites which are expert at stock market analysis, that is, www.briefing.com and www.cnfol.com. These corpora include 5 sessions from Sept. 14 to Sept. 18, in 2009. On the one hand, through quantitative and qualitative analysis, it finds out that English and Chinese share high degree of similarity at the conceptual level, that is, all aspects of events are conceptualized in terms of location, force and movement. It proves that ESM exists in Chinese as a universal cognitive device. The similarity of ESM is based on the same experience shared by both English and Chinese speakers in the process of interacting with physical environment. On the other hand, they differ quite a lot at the linguistic level, mainly reflected in these aspects such as states, changes and difficulties. It suggests that there are differences on reasoning between English and Chinese, caused by different cultural experience. In addition, this study tries to reveal the relationship between language and thought from the relationship between metaphorical expressions of ESM and ESM. Language is the carrier of thought, and determines the depth and breadth of thinking. The conception of language at this point is macro and abstract. However, as to the hierarchical system of metaphor, ESM determines the metaphorical expressions for ESM, such as the selection of a word, phrase or sentence. In this sense, metaphorical thought determines language. Here the conception of language is micro and concrete. In addition, all event structure concepts in stock market analysis are conceptulized in terms of ESM. This study hopes to provide evidence for English teaching, especially, English for Special Purpose (ESP) teaching. |
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