A Corpus-based Cognitive Study Of Conceptual Metaphor In Chinese Economic Report Headlines

Metaphor is a pervasive language phenomenon and the study of metaphor can go back to thousands of years ago. Traditionally, metaphor is considered only as a figure of speech or a decorative device that has to do poetry and rhetoric. The traditional approaches to metaphor consist of three major theories: the Comparison Theory, the Substitution Theory and the Interaction Theory. Lakoff and Johnson in the 1980s put forward the Conceptual Metaphor Theory in Metaphors We Live By, which initiates the cognitive era of metaphor study. In the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, metaphor is regarded as a thinking phenomenon and a cognitive tool, which has significant influence on human beings' conceptual system. Metaphor is defined as cross-domain from the relatively concrete domain to the relatively abstract domain. Since then, the conceptual metaphor has been attracting much attention from linguistic scholars.Metaphor is pervasive in every field of human life and the economy is no exception. A great number of metaphorical expressions are permeating in economic reports, encouraging linguistic scholars to study the conceptual metaphor in economic area from different perspectives. Based on the fruitful achievements in this field, this thesis aims to analyze the conceptual metaphors in Chinese economic report headlines that are selected from the 21 Century Business Herald, China Business and China Economic Times from 2013 to 2015,which consists of 3884 metaphorical expressions. By means of quantitative and qualitative analysis, this thesis intends to find out some typical conceptual metaphors classified in accordance with their source domains in Chinese economic report headlines and reveal how various abstract economic terms are conceptualized through concrete entities.On the theoretical basis of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this thesis aims to study the conceptual metaphors in Chinese economic report headlines. The results show that Chinese economic report headlines are permeated with metaphorical expressions. Economic entities and activities are understood and comprehended by virtue of some typical conceptual metaphors. They are UP-DOWN schema metaphors, HIGH-LOW schema metaphors, WATER metaphors, GOLD metaphors, HOUSE metaphors, HEAD metaphors, HAND metaphors,LOWER LIMBS MOVEMENT metaphors, WAR metaphors, EDUCATION metaphors,WEATHER metaphors and GAME metaphors. The quantitative analysis of these metaphors shows that there are distinct differences in the frequency of these conceptual metaphors. For instance,WAR metaphors are the most frequently used conceptual metaphors in this corpus of Chinese economic report headlines. The study also indicates that the conceptual metaphors in Chinese economic report headlines are based on our physical experience as well as social and cultural basis. And the exploration of the cognitive disciplines behind these conceptual metaphors can help us understand the metaphorical way of thinking in Chinese economic report headlines.