A Comparative Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And American Government Reports Based On Critical Metaphor Analysis

Since the age of Aristotle, metaphor has been the focus studied by countless scholars, and in the past over two thousand years, metaphor was primarily regarded as a rhetorical device by traditional theories. It was not until the publication of Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980 that metaphor was developed into a thinking mode existing in humans' concept systems, hence called conceptual metaphors, which has exerted a great impact on contemporary metaphor researches.In modern world where peace and development have been the two principal themes, politicians of each country prefer to obtain people's support through languages. As political concepts are essentially monotonous, obscure and abstract, politicians usually turn to metaphors to transform them into vivid expressions so that people can understand and accept their speaking more easily. Metaphors in political languages are endowed with strong political tendencies and inflammatory qualities,so they can help achieve political objectives like propaganda, instigation,control, etc. Metaphor studies in political languages can help people learn more about the underlying political thoughts and have attracted many scholars' attention much more than before.This thesis has chosen the Government Work Report (GWR) of China and the State of the Union Address (SUA) of America from 2011 to 2016, six pieces respectively, and established the Chinese and American corpora as research data. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory of Lakoff and the approach of Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) proposed by Charteris-Black, this thesis makes a comparative study of the conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American government reports,which involves both qualitative and quantitative studies as well as longitudinal analysis.The study shows that conceptual metaphors universally and largely exist in Chinese and American political languages. There are primarily ten types of conceptual metaphors in GWR and the major ones include journey metaphors, building metaphors, plant metaphors, war metaphors,etc.; and there are basically twelve types of conceptual metaphors in SUA and the major types are journey metaphors, war metaphors, building metaphors, religion metaphors, etc. Nine kinds of conceptual metaphors are shared by both, but some of them are of the same source domains but different target domains; circle metaphors and chess metaphors subordinated to game metaphors are unique to GWR, and religion metaphors and theater metaphors are unique to SUA; though vehicle metaphors are listed independently in SUA, they also exist in GWR, but owing to the very small number they are classified into the journey metaphors that they are subordinate to. In addition, the annual metaphor use also differs a lot. The study finds that the proportions of each type of conceptual metaphors in GWR change slightly year by year, but in SUA they present a distinct fluctuation. Through analysis, it is shown that the differences are caused by different ideologies, history and national conditions, cultures and traditions, etc. between China and America.Besides, the study explores the functions of conceptual metaphors in political languages and proves that their primary functions are persuasion and motivation, and they also have rhetoric and linguistics functions as well as contribute to national image construction.This thesis has employed the approach of CMA and made a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American government reports, reveals the differences between China and America in social cultures, and will contribute to further studies in metaphor and political languages. And this thesis can help students understand better about American cultures, thus promoting Sino-American cross-cultural communications, provide some reference for political discourse translations and facilitate English learning and second language teaching to some extent.