| Since the period of Aristotle,metaphor has been an academic topic.From Aristotle's traditional metaphor theory to Black&Richards' interaction theory,metaphor was interpreted as a rhetorical device.In 1980,American cognitive linguists,Lakoff&Johnson,put forward the concept of conceptual metaphor,who co-worked Metaphors We Live By,which redefined metaphor as a way of thinking.Since then,metaphor research has got to a new stage in cognitive linguistics.This paper discusses the conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese economic news reports themed on the Belt and Road Initiative supported by conceptual metaphor theory by means of comparative analysis and exemplification,exploring the dominant categories of conceptual metaphor as well as their similarities and differences in English and Chinese news reports;meanwhile,factors that contribute to the similarities and differences would be introduced.The research questions are presented as follows:(1)What major kinds of conceptual metaphors are respectively used in Chinese and English Economic News themed on the Belt and Road Initiative?(2)What are the differences and similarities between English and Chinese Economic News Reports themed on the Belt and Road Initiative in using conceptual metaphor?(3)What are the possible factors that lead to the similarities and differences on using different conceptual metaphors in both Chinese and English Economic News themed on the Belt and Road Initiative?The examples are from the representative and authoritative economic news reports.Articles from Wall Street Journal,Washington Post and The Economist are collected as English research materials.Articles from Economic Daily,The Economic Observer,China Business News are collected as Chinese materials.Among these materials in both language,the author respectively choose 30 economic news reports themed on the Belt and Road Initiative from November,2013 to June,2017 by random.According to the analysis on the materials,the sentences included with conceptual metaphor would be categorized through the source domain.And conceptual metaphors appeared with high frequency would be analyzed in detail.The major results are as following:(1)The human metaphor,up/down metaphor,war metaphor,plant metaphor,animal metaphor and complex metaphor are the top 6 conceptual metaphors used in Chinese research materials,while the top conceptual metaphors in English research materials are human metaphor,up/down metaphor,war metaphor an,journey metaphor plant metaphor and stage metaphor.(2)There are similarities and differences between English and Chinese Economic News Reports themed on the Belt and Road Initiative.In terms of similarities,there are 4 kinds of conceptual metaphors used both in Chinese and English research materials,namely,human metaphor,up/down metaphor,war metaphor and plant metaphor.The differences are indicated by the special metaphor respectively in English and Chinese economic news reports in the common theme.(3)Factors to the similarities lie in the common human beings' physical experience.The differences lie in the fact that cultural,religious differences and economic pattern contribute to frequency and expressive way of various conceptual metaphors.The research in the field can help to broaden the analysis of conceptual metaphors in economic news discourse and provide new evidence to studies on conceptual metaphor of English and Chinese economic news reports themed on the Belt and Road Initiative.The results of the thesis help to understand the economic news discourse better and promote metaphorical thinking and try to explore the cross-cultural communication in different countries. |
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