A Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Western News Reports On The Occupy Central Event

Mass media discourse has been one of the most focused subject matters in critical discourse analysis. Within the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics, this study seeks to understand the American mainstream media's reports and comments on the Occupy Central event by using Chateris-black critical metaphor analysis method and MIPVU, metaphor recognition tool developed by Steen. The news reports and comments analyzed in this study were selected from The New York Times and The Washington Post portal news, and were reorganized and built into a small corpus. The objective of the study is to disclose the western media's ideological stances and value orientation through the description of the metaphorical types and discourse strategies represented in these types. Specifically, three research questions are addressed:1) What are the possible types and frequency of use of metaphors in the American media coverage on the Occupy Central event? 2) Are there any discourse strategies inherent in the metaphors identified in the media reports on the Occupy Central event? 3) Are these discourse strategies loaded with any ideological stance or value orientation? If yes, what are they?The metaphor recognition and critical discourse analysis yields the following major findings:(1) The metaphor recognition indicates that a variety of conceptual metaphors are used in the American news reports on the Occupy Central event, including war metaphor, journey metaphor, building metaphor and rage metaphor, among which war metaphor and journey metaphor are most frequently used.(2) Critical metaphor analysis suggests that the use of metaphors may represent some discourse strategies in the American media reports such as referential strategy, predication strategy, argumentation strategy and perspectivization strategy.With war metaphor, the Occupy Central event were frequently referred to in the American media as such expressions as those related to conflict, confrontation. dictatorship and the Occupy Central was framed as a war and thereby a war scene was envisioned by the audience. Likewise, by the linguistic means of metaphor, the Occupy Central was predicated and was dubbed as an "umbrella revolution". The untold goal of the movement was deliberately intended to affect audience'belief, emotion and behavior, and the event was metaphorically justified as a fight for American-style freedom and democracy.Journey metaphor is another linguistic means to conceptualize the process and experience of the event as a journey advancing to the destination along the road, namely, promoting and disseminating American freedom and democracy. "Othering" strategy was also represented in the use of metaphors in the American media to generalize "us and enemies" as good or bad and emphasize the speakers'passive and negative attitude and positions.(3) From a macro perspective, American cultural, regional and political views as well as other factors may influence the value orientation of American media. The use of metaphorical expressions helps the media to build the specific situations familiar to the reader and passed their information and ideas of conflict, dictatorship or inequality to the reader deliberately, to promote the so-called American universal values of democracy and equality. Therefore, the western news coverage on the Occupy Central event is obviously ideologically and politically orientated.