The Study Of Conceptual Metaphor On Chinese Government Work Reports From Cognitive Perspective

In recent years,as metaphor study is attached more and more importance to,it becomes the research hotspot in many fields at home and abroad.Metaphor is regarded as a kind of rhetorical devices in the early days of the traditional study,but the modern cognitive science thinks that metaphor is a kind of thinking modes and an approach for people to understand the world.Lakoff and Johnson illustrates the concept of metaphor detailedly in their masterpiece Metaphor We live By,which consists of three categories: orientational metaphor,ontological metaphor and structural metaphor.The key point of its working mechanism is to find the similarities between source domain and target domain,then build the relationship.In addition,metaphor also has its own features and functions.Based on this theory,this paper treats Chinese Government Work Reports as research the object.Chinese Government Work Report belongs to the important official document,which not only includes the former year's work summary,but also the work arrangement of current year and the expectation of future.It points out the direction for the development of all kinds of fields and our whole nation,which is of great significance.This paper mainly focuses on Chinese Government Work Reports after the reform and opening-up,selects 8 pieces in terms of Five-Year plan and as a whole explores three questions: 1.What are the main metaphor types and working mechanism of them in the corpus? 2.How is the condition of their distributions? 3.What are the functions of metaphor in political discourses and shortening the distance between the government and the populace?According to the qualitative and quantitative analysis,this paper makes the following conclusions:1.Taken the three categories of conceptual metaphor into consideration,orientational metaphor and structural metaphor are used frequently,and ontological metaphor takes possession of very small part.In orientational metaphor,the frequency of UP-DOWN metaphor and FRONT-BACK metaphor is high,secondly the CENTER-PERIPHERAL metaphor and DEEP-SHALLOW metaphor are relatively more than the other types.As for structural metaphor,in the corpus there are more than ten types,during which Building metaphor and Journey metaphor are employed on a large scale.According to data analysis,the paper finds several Chess metaphor and Family metaphor also appear in the corpus,which is connected with Chinese traditional culture and ideas closely.2.The metaphorical modes are very widespread in modern Chinese language and source domain is closely bound up with people's daily life.Though the core social question of every Government Work Report focuses on is different,the metaphorical types do not have obvious changes,which shows the stability of metaphorical expressions.3.In general,conceptual metaphor keeps a rising tendency and its frequency is becoming higher and higher,even the formal and solemn official documents also has a wide variety of metaphor.The employment of metaphor makes Chinese Government Work Reports become easier and more understandable,which is beneficial to convey the government's thoughts and shorten the distance between the government and the populace.