| Ever since its birth,Artificial Intelligence has remained a trending topic and yet poorly understood.In the media,AI is often portrayed as a threat to human existence while the scientific community focuses more pragmatically on its potentials to replicate human intelligence.Both adopt conceptual metaphor as a channel to conceptualize AI.Scholars prior to this study have discussed such AI metaphors as COMPUTER IS BRAIN and COMPUTER IS RORSCHACH mainly from a sociological angle.By analyzing the self-built data sets,this thesis aims to identify the metaphor patterns of Al in scientific discourse and news text respectively,specify their similarities and differences,and give possible explanation as to why certain metaphor patterns are adopted in hope of contributing to a more in-depth understanding of AI and the influence that different stances taken by the scientific community and the media can exert on their metaphorical representation of AI.Following the three steps of critical metaphor analysis,namely,metaphor identification,metaphor interpretation,and metaphor explanation,this thesis identified 11 AI metaphor patterns in the scientific discourse data set,composed of three AI research articles;and nine in the news text data set,composed of 12 news articles.Six metaphor patterns are shared by both data sets:HUMAN,BUILDING,JOURNEY,FOREIGN COUNTRY,VEHICLE,and PLANT.Metaphor patterns unique to the scientific discourse data set include ANIMAL,MERCHANDISE,MIRROR,MEAL,and SPORTS GAME,while MYSTERIOUS CREATURE,SUBTANCE IN A CONTAINER,and A KIND OF WEAPON are found exclusively in the news text data set.Overall,metaphor patterns in the scientific discourse data set arc more evenly distributed and detail the process of developing AI,while those in the news text data set is more concentrated on one single metaphor AI IS A HUMAN,result-oriented as they lay more emphasis on what could result from AI's development and the latent impact,with several incidences of negative metaphors portraying AI as menace,say,AI will turf humans out of the job market as potent competitor.Such tendency may be accounted for from both the writer-driven and reader-driven perspectives.Metaphorical representation of AI in scientific discourse is more diverse and in-detail because the writers in question are directly involved in the process and more familiar with the subject;such diversity and details also help impress their fellow researchers with AI's potential and its progress.AI in news texts is often linguistically characterized as humans because AI is an esoteric topic for the readers and writers alike and the HUMAN metaphor provides cognitive ease.Meanwhile,that the media tend to value the results rather than the process is likely due to their concern with AI's amenability and social impact rather than the technical details.The case study of Sophia the robot revealed the ideological conflict between U.S.media and Saudi Arabian regime over the incident of Saudi Arabia leveraging AI technology to seize greater political clout hidden behind negative metaphorical expressions in typical U.S.media discourse. |
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