A Contrastive Study On Conceptual Metaphors In English And Chinese Economic News Headlines

The study of metaphor has been a heated topic of linguistics. Many scholars have studied metaphors from different points of view. Lakoff and Johnson propose Conceptual Metaphor Theory and think that conceptual metaphors are pervasive in every field, and economic field is no exception. In recent years, many scholars have studied the conceptual metaphors in economic discourse in the framework of cognitive metaphor and made great achievements. However, study on conceptual metaphors in economic news headlines is rare.This thesis, on the basis of previous research results, is a contrastive study of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and English economic news headlines within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The author aims to prove the pervasiveness of metaphor in economic news headlines and find out the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors between English and Chinese.The author selects the online editions of newspapers of Financial Times, Reuters, Economic Daily and China Economic Times as data sources and collects800English news headlines and800Chinese news headlines with a date range from October1st to November31st in2012. Then the author classifies the conceptual metaphors according to different source domains and makes a detailed analysis of the frequently used metaphors appeared both in English and Chinese. After analysis, the author has the following findings.Firstly, it has found that there are13kinds of conceptual metaphors both in Chinese economic news headlines and English ones. This proves that conceptual metaphors are pervasive in both English and Chinese economic news headlines.Secondly, The top five categories of the conceptual metaphors used in English economic news headlines are ECONOMY AS HUMAN BEING, ECONOMY AS UP-DOWN MOVEMENT, ECONOMY AS JOURNEY, ECONOMY AS WAR and ECONOMY AS CONTAINER, and ECONOMY AS HUMAN BEING, ECONOMY AS UP-DOWN MOVEMENT, ECONOMY AS WAR, ECONOMY AS JOURNEY and ECONOMY AS MACHINE in Chinese economic news headlines.Thirdly, there arc similarities and differences between conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese economic news headlines. The similarities lie in the fact that the most frequently used metaphors are HUMAN BEING metaphors and UP-DWON MOVEMENT metaphors in both languages and many metaphorical expressions and mapping processes are similar in the two languages. At the same time, there exist differences in the frequencies of metaphorical expressions within each type of conceptual metaphors and there are some special conceptual metaphors that belong to specific languages. The similarities are mainly rooted in the similar cognition and bodily experience of human beings, while the differences are grounded on the diversity of Western and Eastern cultures. Therefore, culture exerts great influence on metaphors.The present study on conceptual metaphors in economic news headlines will facilitate and enhance people’s understanding of metaphorical expressions in the headlines. It may deepen the researches in conceptual metaphors applied in different fields and offer a theoretical insight into the teaching and learning of economic discourse.