| Traditionally,the metaphor was not only regarded as a specific kind of language phenomenon,but also the rhetorical device adopted in the field of literature.However,Lakoff and Johnson point out in their masterpiece Metaphors We Live By that metaphor is in essence a thinking pattern,it exists in people’s everyday life,not just in language but also in our thought and action.They also hold the viewpoint that the metaphorical concepts stem from our physical and cultural experiences,and shape our basic daily activities in a very profound way.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory and its cultural coherence principle,this thesis adopts both the quantitative and qualitative research method to conduct a comparative study of the conceptual metaphors between the authentic American English economic news and the English economic news written by the Chinese writers,aiming at revealing the cognitive nature of the conceptual metaphor and figuring out how cultural elements function in variations of these conceptual metaphors.The author chooses 120 pieces of economic news reports from the authoritative American and Chinese newspapers,such as The New York Times,Wall Street Journal published in America,and the English edition of China Daily,Global Times in China.Among these economic news reports,half of them are selected from the American newspapers,another 60 pieces of economic news are extracted from the English newspapers published in China.The publishing date of all these articles ranges from the year of 2015 to 2016.After the procedure of identification and categorization,eight major types of conceptual metaphor are summarized as follows: the UP/DOWN metaphor,the WAR metaphor,the HUMAN BEING metaphor,the JOURNEY metaphor,the SPORTS metaphor,the LIQUID metaphor,the SAILING metaphor and the CLIMATE metaphor.The mapping process and specific metaphorical expressions of each conceptual metaphor are demonstrated in detail,the final results verify that the metaphorical concepts in the economic domain are systematic and cognitive in nature.Meanwhile,through the comparative study on the variations of metaphors from the intercultural perspective,the cultural relativity of conceptual metaphor is also manifested.After a thorough analysis,when it comes to the cultural discrepancies between China and the US,three major intercultural factors are summarized: the ocean culture,the agriculture culture and the discrepancy on the individual value orientation.These intercultural elements exert huge influences on the variations as well as the imbalanced distribution of several conceptual metaphors.The final results manifest that people’s cognition on most abstract concepts is completed by the shared physical experience.At the same time,the conceptual metaphor and the socio-cultural contexts are coherent with each other,the variations of conceptual metaphor are mainly caused by the cultural differences.As a result,in order to achieve a more effective communication,people should be alert to the cultural discrepancies on metaphor in the course of cross-cultural activities.What is more,through the English-English comparative study between the economic news written by native speakers and those written by Chinese writers,it is expected that the distinctive differences on the use of conceptual metaphor and writing styles could bring some enlightenment on the ESP(English for Specific Purpose)teaching and learning activities. |
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