A Cognitive Study On Metaphors In English And Chinese Economic Terms

As an interesting linguistics phenomenon, metaphor has been studiedby many scholars both aboard and at home for more than 2000 years.There are a number of theories of metaphor, from Comparison theory toSubstitution theory, from Interaction theory to Conceptual metaphors.The traditional metaphors view holds that metaphor is merely a literarymatter and a rhetorical device employed primarily in poetry. In 1980, thelandmark publication of Metaphors We Live BY symbolized metaphorstudy turn in a cognitive period. Cognitive metaphor view holds thatmetaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a tool ofcognation and a way of thinking pervading language, culture, thought,and social life. It allows us to comprehend a relatively complicated andabstracted target domain in terms of a more familiar and concrete sourcedomain through the process of metaphorical mapping. It plays animportant role in defining the way we recognize world and react to theworld.Under the development of current economic, a great number of neweconomic metaphors are flooding in economic terms. The English andChinese samples are selected from the Economist, The Business Week ,Financial Times，China Daily , money.163.com and finance.ifeng.com inyear 2000 to 2012. Based on the theory of conceptual metaphor, theauthor adopted the method of combination of sample description andexplanation to analyze how various and abstract economic activates areconceptualized and presented to the public in terms of using familiar andconcreted concepts in English and Chinese economic terms.The result indicated that economic issues and activities areconceptualized in terms of seven typical metaphors; they are space metaphor, liquid metaphor, container metaphor, human being metaphor,war metaphor and machine metaphor.The findings of study reveal that metaphor in English and Chineseterms is one of the main mechanisms used to reason about abstracteconomic phenomena and concepts, indicating that the embodied natureof conceptual metaphor derived from human experiences in physicalworld and verifying the pervasiveness of metaphor and systematicity ofmetaphor in languages and our lives. The results of this study maydeepen our understanding of presentations of economics, from whichapplications for teaching and even business negotiation, can be uncovered.