A Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Economic News Reports On China In The New York Times

In 1980, Johnson and Lakoff put forward the Conceptual Metaphor Theory in their collaborated book Metaphors We Live By, since then the focus of the metaphor study has shifted from its rhetorical function to cognitive function. Afterwards, Charteris-Black (2004), in his monograph the Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis, proposed Critical Metaphor Analysis, a new metaphor analysis method with an integration of Corpus Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics.Among the plentiful domestic studies on Critical Metaphor Analysis, most are concentrated on political discourse, which is characterized by obvious ideological tendency, while the seemingly relatively objective economic discourse is not so popular. In order to provide a different and more extensive research material than that of previous Critical Metaphor Analysis, this study will focus on the analysis of the. reports on Chinese economy in the New York Times, the mainstream media in the United States.This article has selected 90 pieces of reports on the topic of "Chinese economy" from the official website of the New York Times with a time span from September 2013 to March 2016 and established a small self-built corpus. According to the three steps proposed by Charteris Black (2004) in his Critical Metaphor Analysis theory, namely, metaphor identification, interpretation and explanation, and with a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study carried out a statistical analysis of the use of conceptual metaphors in reports on Chinese economy in the American mainstream media the New York limes. This study attempts to explore the media attitude, values and ideology hidden behind the metaphor.This thesis has proved that there are five major types of metaphors existing in the economic reports on Chinese economy in the New York Times, which are up/down metaphor, organism metaphor, journey metaphor, war metaphor and liquid metaphor. It also reveals the meaning construction in the conceptual metaphors and expound the ideological functions of the conceptual metaphors in economic reports, that is, evaluative function, information selection function and function of arousing emotion. The study has concluded that the U.S. media seem less optimistic towards Chinese economic development due to the recent economic slowdown in China, and accuse China of being responsible for the depressing global economy and thus shapes a negative image of China. This thesis is expected to improve readers’ critical reading awareness, and appeals for more economic exchanges between China and the United States thus to maintain a favorable international image of China worldwide.