A Corpus Based Study Of Chinese Stock Expressions

With the rapid development of the Chinese stock market, the requirement of stock market expressions for communication becomes larger and larger. Besides stock terms, abundant expressions used in stock market are borrowed from other fields to satisfy the requirement. This thesis chooses these stock expressions as the basic corpus base. Statistic and analytical methods are used in researching on the collected material; the theories of structure knowledge are exploited in analyzing the meaning and pragmatic functions. Moreover, under the guidance of the theory of conceptual metaphor, metaphors in meaning shift and transformation are described and analyzed.First of all, after reading various magazines and newspapers, watching economic and financial programs and surfing some stock websites, the writer collected293stock expressions borrowed form other fields. According to identification, categorization and calculation, stock expressions are generally borrowed from seven fields. They are military field, natural phenomena field, sports field, words about human, net words, color words and animal words. The percentages of these seven fields are quiet different. Words about human are the most, occupying30.5%, because bodily experience is the basis of cognition. Human being first recognize themselves, then learn the world through the contact with the surroundings; military field takes21.9%; natural phenomena field gets17.1%.Secondly, meaning of the expressions borrowed from other fields and used in stock market change. Meaning has a lose relationship with knowledge structure. The change of knowledge structure may results in meaning change. In this thesis, the Chinese expressions“失守"from military field and“跳水”from sports field are analyzed as typical examples. Apart from meaning change, the pragmatic functions of these expressions also change. Therefore, pragmatic functions are clarified in details.Last but not least, as a result of metaphorical thought, words and expressions can be borrowed from other fields and used in stock field. In the data, it is not difficult to find metaphors. According to detailed analysis, the basis of these metaphors can be classified into5categories. They are STOCK MARKET IS WAR; STOCK MARKET IS PERSON; STOCK SITUATION IS NATURAL PHENOMENON; STOCK TRADING IS SPORT; objective facts.