A Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Climate Change Discourse In News Media

Climate change poses great impact on the lives of human beings. During the past decades, scientists illustrate climate change such as global warming, greenhouse effect, extreme weather from scientific facets with alarming data. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the researchers in scientific fields, public media also play an essential role in the discussion and explanation of climate change to the public. Since climate change is hard to be made sense of, metaphor has become an important device frequently used when this complex and abstract issue is described.This thesis investigates the metaphors embedded in the climate change discourse under the guidance of the theory of Critical Metaphor Analysis(CMA). The data of the thesis are extracted from a self-constructed corpus, the materials of which are collected from an English newspapers database, Factiva. This thesis aims to achieve three goals: firstly, to discover the conceptual metaphors embedded in media coverage to shape the image of climate change; secondly, to investigate similarities and differences among media of various countries in choosing conceptual metaphors for climate change discourse and thirdly, to discover the ideological and cultural differences underlying the metaphor preference.This research finds out four frequently occurring conceptual metaphors in our corpus and further analyzes metaphorical preference among The New York Times, The Times and China Daily. CLIMATE CHANGE IS A STATE OF MENTAL HEALTH constructs climate change as uncertainty which poses great threat on human beings. ENVIRONMENT IS A STATE OF PHYSICAL HEALTH maps the harm of climate change to physical problem. The selected three newspapers in our corpus share similarities in applying the above two metaphors. CONTROLING CLIMATE CHANGE IS A STATE OF PHYSICAL CONFLICT is the most important conceptual metaphor in our study. The New York Times and China Daily use more metaphors in the PRE-WAR scenario and the ATTACK and DEFENSE scenario while The Times prefers the STRATEGY and MANNER scenario. The New York Times and China Daily prefer to describe serious consequences triggered by climate change when The Times concentrates on problem solving. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IS A JOURNEY highlights the lengthy process in dealing with climate change. The New York Times uses more metaphors in PATH scenario to highlight its ambitious goal while China Daily applies more metaphors in ENHANCING FORCE scenario to stress its determination in climate change mitigation.This thesis points out that media coverage tends to apply conceptual metaphor to forge different images of climate change. Metaphorical preference among countries is deeply influenced by their cultural and ideological differences. Therefore, analyzing metaphor of climate change discourse in the media can fully uncover the underlying ideological and cultural differences among countries.