A Contrastive Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And American Developmental Discourses

Politics plays an important part in social life. Meanwhile, political discourse is one of the primary manifestations of politics. It is mainly through the analysis of political discourses that people get more involved in political issues. In recent years, with the rise and development of cognitive linguistics, more and more scholars have analyzed political discourses from perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in cognitive linguistics with hope to reveal political intentions and ideologies. However, previous studies on political discourses tended to focus on education, economy and diplomacy, etc, and less on analyzing the political discourses related to development, i.e., developmental discourse.This thesis chooses the developmental discourses in Chinese Government Work Reports (CGWRs) and the State of the Union Addresses(SUAs) from 2010 to 2016 as research data. The Chinese data consist of seven transcripts of CGWRs,containing 60255 characters while American data consist of seven transcripts of SUAs,47666 words in total.This thesis adopts the metaphor identification criteria proposed by Pragglejaz Group (2007)to analyze the conceptual metaphors in both data. It aims to explore the following questions: (1) What are the dominant conceptual metaphors in CGWRs and SUAs? (2)What are the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors between CGWRs and SUAs? (3) What are the motivations behind the similarities and differences?Based on Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (1980), this thesis conducts a contrastive analysis on the conceptual metaphors in CGWRs and SUAs combining quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis. The major findings are as follows: (1) The typical conceptual metaphors in Chinese data are journey metaphor,construction metaphor, war metaphor, organism metaphor and circle metaphor. The typical conceptual metaphors in American data are journey metaphor, construction metaphor, war metaphor, organism metaphor and religion metaphor. Both data employ similar typical conceptual metaphors, namely, journey metaphor, construction metaphor, war metaphor and organism metaphor. Circle metaphor only occurs in Chinese data while religion metaphor is unique in American data. (2) There are similarities and differences between the typical conceptual metaphors in both data, which lie in the frequency and form of metaphorical expressions. In terms of the frequency of utilization, a large number of similar metaphorical expressions occur in both data, but as a whole, there are more metaphorical expressions in Chinese data than those in American data. What's more, the metaphorical expressions of construction metaphor accounting for 28.1% in Chinese data but only 9.5% in American data. In terms of the form of expression, many metaphorical expressions are similar in similar conceptual metaphors of both data,but there are a few differences between the sub-target domains of similar conceptual metaphors. The different conceptual metaphors have their own expression features. Circle metaphor shows that the CCP plays a core role in national development. Religion metaphor provides more spiritual strength to the public. (3) The similarities of these conceptual metaphors lie in people's common ICMs of similar bodily experience towards the outside world while the differences arise from people's different ICMs of history, social environment, values and religions between China and America.Through the contrastive analysis on the conceptual metaphors in the Chinese Government Work Reports and the State of the Union Address, it can be found that metaphor plays a significant role in meaning construction and propagandizing political thoughts to the public. In addition, the major findings of this thesis can make reference to cross-cultural communication, translation between Chinese and English and English language teaching and learning.