The Contrastive Analysis Of Political Discourse From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor Analysis

Metaphor has been the focus of study for more than two thousand years.Traditionally,metaphor is viewed as a linguistic phenomenon and rhetorical device.Cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson(1980)hold that metaphor is an important way of thinking and propose the Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT).But the limitation of CMT is context independent.Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)solved this problem successfully because CDA has always been trying to understand and explain the relations among language,power and ideology from the social and cognitive perspectives.In 2004,Charteris-Black put forward the Critical Metaphor Analysis(CMA)which is the integration of CMT,CDA,pragmatics and corpus linguistics.In 2014,he further complemented the theory of Critical Metaphor Analysis.Metaphors are thus seen as an important means of conceptualizing political issues and constructing world views.Political events are usually expressed in concrete words which cannot be comprehended well by people's common senses,so metaphor is needed to help us understand the political affairs.This thesis has conducted a contrastive analysis of political discourse from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis.The data are Government Work Reports of China(2009-2016)delivered by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao(2009-2013)and Premier Li Keqiang(2014-2016),and the State of the Union Addresses of America(2009-2016)presented by American President Obama(2009-2016).Based on Charteris-Black's CMA theory,the author attempts to identify the types of metaphors used and the subcategories of conceptual metaphors employed in the two corpora,to find out the similarities and differences,and discuss the purposes of metaphors and their underlying ideologies,religious and cultural differences among the metaphors.The results are as follows: there are eleven types of metaphors in the two corpora.They are journey metaphor,building metaphor,conflict metaphor,human metaphor,plant metaphor,nature metaphor,family metaphor,game metaphor,machine metaphor,circle metaphor and religion metaphor.The first nine metaphors are contained in both of the two corpora.Circle metaphor is unique to the Chinesecorpora,while religion metaphor is mainly shown in the American corpora.The conceptual metaphors are used differently because of the cultural and religious differences in the two countries.There are seven purposes of metaphor used in these corpora.They are general rhetorical purpose,heuristic purpose,predicative purpose and so on.This thesis is helpful to deepen the readers' understanding of different political ideas and the underlying ideologies in both China and America.It is also beneficial for the Chinese people to build China's say and intensify the propaganda of China's policy to the world.Practically it is also helpful to both EFL learners and teachers,and translators of political discourse.