Corpus-based Contrastive Critical Metaphor Analysis

In recent years,the integration of conceptual metaphor study and critical discourse analysis has been a hot topic in cognitive linguistics because it contributes to the realization of inter-disciplinary research of language.Scholars have had a critical analysis of conceptual metaphor in the political discourse and economic discourse,but little attention has been paid to the conceptual metaphors in news report discourse of health or disease.Therefore,based on conceptual metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson(2003)and guided by critical metaphor analysis of Charteris-Black(2004),this study focuses on the Ebola virus reports to explore conceptual metaphors in the discourse of health.According to systematic sampling and selection criteria,90 Ebola virus reports in China Daily(hereafter CD)and 94 reports in The New York Times(hereafter NYT)from 01/07/2014 to 31/12/2017 are collected and analyzed for the present study.In pursuit of research objectivity,Wmatrix,a web-based analytic tool,is employed for conceptual metaphor identification and analysis.With a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods,the present study tries to give answers to the following questions:What conceptual metaphors are used in the Ebola virus reports from the CD and NYT corpora respectively?What are the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphor choice and use in the Ebola virus reports from the CD and NYT corpora? And what are the two newspapers' attitudes toward Ebola?What are the discourse functions of conceptual metaphors used in the Ebola virus reports and the underlying influential factors accounting for the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphor choice and use in the CD and NYT corpora?The major findings of the research are the following:Firstly,it is found that metaphors are pervasive in both corpora,which corresponds to the universality of conceptual metaphors.The dominant conceptual metaphors for Ebola in the CD corpus are: war metaphors,journey metaphors,animate metaphors,and race metaphors,while the dominant conceptual metaphors for Ebola in the NYT corpus are: war metaphors,journey metaphors,animate metaphors,and natural catastrophe metaphors.Secondly,the contrastive analysis of metaphors in the CD and NYT corpora reveals that both newspapers employ war metaphors,journey metaphors and animate metaphors to describe Ebola control,Ebola spread and Ebola destruction respectively.However,the race metaphors can only be found in the CD corpus and employed to describe the intense atmosphere of Ebola control,while natural catastrophe metaphors can only be found in the NYT corpus and used to portray the destructive aspect of Ebola.Thirdly,the similarities of metaphor choice indicate that both newspapers regard the Ebola outbreak as a universal problem.However,different metaphor choice and emphasis on different aspects of war metaphor show that NYT takes the Ebola virus as an aggressive enemy and rampant catastrophe and counterattack is essential.CD considers the Ebola virus as a potential threat and resorts to taking a precaution strategy against Ebola.Fourthly,conceptual metaphors in the Ebola virus reports have functions of explanation and motivation.It also demonstrates that the common use of war metaphor,journey metaphor and animate metaphor results from similar cognitive system and common physical experience,whereas the emphasis on different aspects on war metaphors in the two newspapers and the specific use of race metaphor in the CD corpus are mainly due to differences between China's collectivism-oriented cultural values and America's individualism-oriented cultural values.And the specific use of natural catastrophe metaphor in the NYT corpus mainly results from America's historical background of frequent outbreaks of natural disasters.By corpus-based critical metaphor analysis approach,the present study proves that it is feasible and efficient to utilize the Wmatrix for metaphor analysis.Furthermore,it expands critical metaphor analysis into the discourse of health,exploring the discourse functions of metaphors in the Ebola virus reports and uncovering the influence of thought,culture and history on conceptual metaphor choice and use.However,the research is just an attempt to acorpus-based metaphor study from a critical perspective and there are many limitations and drawbacks.The author hopes that a further research about metaphor and discourse can be carried out in the near future.