A Conceptual Blending Approach To Metaphors In Chinese And English Economic News Headlines

Since ancient time, metaphor as a prevalent linguistic phenomenon has attracted scholars’attention either abroad or at home. With the advance of globalization and the fast economic development, metaphors have not only been used and updated frequently, but also attracted the attention of linguists and even of economists. The traditional researches on metaphors from the rhetorical perspective mainly cover the problems like semantics and grammar, but could not uncover the process of meaning construction as the temporary cognitive study has done. Therefore, this thesis studies the metaphors in Chinese and English economic discourses within the theoretical framework of Fauconnier’s Conceptual Blending theory.Conceptual Blending theory is on the basis of Mental Spaces. The standard model of Conceptual Blending proposed by Fauconnier includes four Mental Spaces:Input Space I1and Input Space I2, the Generic Space and the Blended Space. The counterparts in the two Input Spaces are established by cross-space mapping. Then through partial projection, these counterparts would be projected into the Generic Space and the Blended Space. The Generic Space accepts partial structures shared by the two Input Spaces. And the Blended Space not only accepts these counterparts but also integrates certain background information, and then generates the Emergent Structure as a result of Composition, Completion and Elaboration of such structures and information. The Emergent Structure is generative and the underlying process of meaning construction.The data of this thesis are collected from economic news headlines in the famous The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the Financial Times (FT), and the21st Century Business Herald (21CBH) from May to August in2011. And the data are mainly investigated through a qualitative approach, and analyzed in order to disclose the process of meaning construction in metaphorical expressions in Chinese and English economic discourses.Through case study of three clusters of metaphors which are most frequently used in economic discourses, namely "ECONOMY IS WAR","ECONOMY IS HUMAN BEING" and "ECONOMY IS ENTERTAINMENT", the author finds that metaphor is a significant method for understanding economic phenomenon, and the Conceptual Blending theory can clarify the process of metaphor cognition better than traditional theories. Metaphors are able to add the vividness and attractiveness to the abstract and obscure economic phenomenon, and also to reflect certain social ideology and tendency. Thus, the cognitive study on metaphors can not only enhance people’s awareness of metaphor and cultivate their metaphorical thinking, but also guide their composing and understanding of economic discourses.