Conceptual Metaphor In Real Estate News Threads And The Cultural Roots

Traditionally,metaphor is regarded as a special rhetoric device,which is employed in poetry.However,apart from the perspective of a linguistic phenomenon or a rhetoric means,metaphor is studied in terms of human cognitive process.American linguists Lakoff and Johnson illustrate that metaphor is a matter of human thought and action,while different figures of speech serve as the surface manifestation of the metaphorical thought.It is stated that experience tends to conceptualize metaphors,and experience is more likely to be conveyed through diverse cultural backgrounds.The terms of ‘metaphorical expression' and ‘conceptual metaphor' are coined to illustrate the connection between people's thinking patterns and cultural backgrounds.The former relates closely to the surface manifestation of diverse conceptual metaphors while the latter means the metaphorical system which is rooted in individuals' conceptual system.Metaphor study has aroused much attention from researchers,and the term of Conceptual Metaphor Theory has been proposed by George Lakoff.In recent decades,lots of researches and studies have been conducted to enrich or to prove this conceptual metaphor theory.The areas such as literary analysis,law,psychology,politics and social issues are studied by many researchers.However,rare attention has been paid to the study of diverse conceptual metaphors in news threads.News threads start in the famous website of Sina,and develop rapidly in Netease.News threads are regarded as a vital channel through which Internet users demonstrate their views in modern society.Under China' s current institutional and political arrangements,Internet becomes a vital channel for the expression of public opinions.Blog,forum,news thread,instant messaging...the diverse discourse platforms for expressions are expanding,which also become necessary tools for the public to acquire information as well as to express themselves.This interaction trend is becoming popular nowadays.This thesis takes the news threads as the studyobject,and the content analysis is specified.Based on the corpus,the current thesis aims to apply critical discourse analysis and conceptual metaphor theory to the news threads analysis.The metaphorical expressions of the corpus are identified and categorized into different types of conceptual metaphors,and the cognition as well as the cultural roots are specified.Language reflects and affects individuals' mental process,thus the metaphorical expressions as well as the categorized metaphorical concepts may mirror the public's attitudes towards their physical world.The theme of the news threads is house.The news reports about real estate usually arouse much attention from the public,and there is a large number of people taking part in the discussion about the housing purchase phenomenon.People express their opinions about the house purchase,and the reasons for crazy behaviors about house purchase can be collected from the news threads about the news reports.The author tends to identify conceptual metaphors demonstrated through the metaphorical expressions in the news threads discourse.The roles which conceptual metaphors play will be discussed,and those underlying ideologies as well as cultural roots shall be analyzed in detail.The results are as follows: there are different types of conceptual metaphors in the data.The conceptual metaphors are classified according to conceptual metaphor theory and critical metaphor analysis.The conceptual metaphors are: Houses are symbols of financial returns;Houses are necessary for education possibilities;Houses are necessary for marriage possibilities;Houses are precious emotions;Houses meet people's psychological needs;Houses meet people's spiritual needs.The frequency of each type of conceptual metaphor is specified and demonstrated in the form of tables.The cultural roots and ideologies behind the conceptual metaphors indicate that the main reason for people's house purchase behaviors is the cultural influence.For Chinese people,house is the symbol of family.The importance of family to Chinese people is identified in this thesis.The tendency tobuy houses reflects Chinese people's cultural thoughts.It is illustrated that metaphorical language plays an essential role in ideology construction.For some house sales,they take advantage of people's attitude toward the concept of family as well as their cognitive awareness of family,and they apply these factors to house advertising.People are attracted by the warm feeling of family created by the businesses,and they tend to make purchase choices.The reasons as well as ideologies behind people's purchase behaviors are detailed in this thesis.