| This paper makes a research on the cognitive mechanism of conceptual metaphors in English stock news, aiming to answer two questions.(1) What is the cognitive mechanism of the conceptual metaphors in English stock news?(2) What characteristics of stock markets are reflected by their cognitive mechanism?Thirty pieces of stock news in stock column in The Wall Street Journal are collected as data. Under the metaphor identification standard by Praggiejaz Group that "if contextual and basic meanings are in contrast to each other but still related by similarity, the lexical unit will be classified as a metaphorical expression", we found978stock-relative metaphors in total. Under the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Conceptual Integration Theory, we investigated the cognitive mechanism of these stock-relative conceptual metaphors from source domain, target domain and the interactive mapping between source domain and target domain. The characteristics of stock markets are revealed, based on the source domains of different stock-relative conceptual metaphors.The study finds that the cognitive mechanism of conceptual metaphors in stock news is single-scope mapping network between source domain and target domain. Under the influence of the target domain (the stock market, the stock, the stock price and the stock index) and according to the Target Domain Overrides and the Invariance Principle, people understand the abstract stock-relative notions through the cross-domain mapping from the familiar and concrete source domain (physical movement, war, human being and container). The mapping goes first from entity to entity, then from relationship to relationship, and lastly from feature to feature. The study also finds that the cognitive mechanism of conceptual metaphors, especially the characteristics of source domains, reveal different characteristics of stock markets. Physical Movement Metaphors reflect the fluctuation of stock markets; War Metaphors reflect the fierce competition of stock markets; Human Being Metaphors reflect the diversity of stock markets and Container Metaphors reflect the holding capacity and fluidity of stock markets. |
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