The Application Of Metaphors In English Political News

In addition to the basic function of transmitting information to the general public, political news report is considered to have powerful social influence, shaping people’s views of life, emotions and even ideologies. Therefore, English political news is characterized by its social function as well as its particular language model which has long been utilized by journalists, and forms the uniqueness of language usage in English political news. Obviously, both metaphorical thinking and the application of metaphors play an indispensible role in embodying the unique language characteristics of English political news.Metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, a fascinating and perplexing means of thinking, but an inseparable part of social culture. The frequent application of metaphors in English political news has brought about many unexpected effects. On one hand, metaphors could enhance the lifelikeness and visualization of political news. A neoteric and successful use of metaphors tends to rapidly become popular in the society by attracting increasing attention from readers. On the other hand, with the usage of metaphors, the penetration of culture phenomenon, political orientation and religious ideas in English political news could be further facilitated. Actually, a few political activists have been trying to forge the truth by using metaphors in political news discourse. Therefore, metaphors is considered as a significant communication tool employed in English political news to achieve a variety of purposes.This dissertation aims to analyze the reasons and working mechanisms of the application of metaphors in English political news and summarize three major effects of metaphors in political news discourse as well as a number of metaphorical conditions. Based on the three reasons of linguistic causes, cognitive causes and ideological causes, three main effects of metaphors in political news reports could be summarized as having included, language modification, cognition construction and consciousness orientation. In addition, the conditions under which metaphors work are also explored in this thesis with an aim to better reveal the working mechanisms of metaphors in English political news.The research shows that similarity and dissimilarity are the foundation of metaphor. Imagination is the wings of metaphor while rationality is deemed as security assurance. Besides, the dependent meaning of context plays a crucial role in the understanding and interpretation of metaphor.