A Comparative Analysis Of Metaphorical Patterns In Chinese And American Financial Crisis Reports In2008

Since Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed conceptual metaphor, metaphor is not only seen as a figurative means, but also a commonly used cognitive approach and thought pattern. Lakoff further expanded Conceptual Metaphor Theory by bringing in Frame Theory (Lakoff&Johnson,1999). With the discovery that metaphors are widespread in economic reports, researches into economic metaphors based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory or Frame Theory are increasing at home and abroad. Therefore, by combining Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame Theory, this thesis studies similarities and differences in metaphorical patterns and linguistic expressions in a corpus of Chinese and American financial crisis reports in2008. The data will be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Implications will be concluded for improving metaphorical competence development.The data used in this thesis are Chinese and American financial crisis reports published in newspapers from September to December in2008. The Chinese corpus comprises26articles taken from Economic Daily(《经济日报》),Xinhua Daily(《新华日报》)and People’s Daily(《人民日报》).The total corpus size is about42,000words and yields523metaphorical patterns. The American corpus comprises26reports published by New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, with37,000words and489metaphorical patterns. The criteria employed for identifying metaphor in the two corpora is "metaphorical pattern analysis" proposed by Stefanowitsch (2004,2006). In terms of source domains, five metaphorical patterns have been found:WAR, ILLNESS, DISASTERS, PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS and UP/DOWN. By analyzing the five metaphors qualitatively and quantitatively, conclusions are made as follows:(1)All these five metaphors are found in both Chinese and American data, which fully provides the evidence that conceptual metaphors are pervasive in economic reports, and people tend to use concrete body experiences, familiar natural phenomena, or social and cultural experiences to clarify abstract economic phenomena and activities.(2)There is considerable similarity between the two languages both in terms of metaphorical patterns and expressions, which mainly lies in WAR metaphor, ILLNESS metaphor and PHYSICAL MOVEMENTS metaphor. This can be attributed to the common body experiences and the global market economic system.(3) Subtle differences in metaphorical patterns and expressions are found in DISASTERS metaphor and UP/DOWN metaphor, resulting from social and cultural differences of the two countries.Considering these results, learners who study the language of English or Chinese should pay attention to the similar linguistic expressions and metaphorical patterns in two languages and enlarge their vocabulary of economic metaphors. Meanwhile, social and cultural differences should be presented to learners so that they will better grasp the different metaphorical patterns and expressions. Only by achieving these two aims will learners improve their metaphorical competence.