An Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphors In Political Discourse Based On The Conceptual Blending Theory~+ Model

Metaphor is ubiquitous in our daily life,not just in language but in thought and action.Political discourse is also inseparable from metaphor for achieving political appeals,so the researches on political metaphor have become a focus of scholars.Many scholars at home and abroad have studied political metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,but most of them focus on the analysis of foreign political discourse.The metaphorical studies on Chinese political discourse,especially the Chinese Government Work Report(CGWR for short),are still insufficient.The CGWR is a form of official document released by the government of the People’s Republic of China,there are mainly two parts in it.The first part is a review and summary of the government work over the last year,the other is about the deployments and objectives of the current year’s work.It is a vital way for people to have a clear understanding of the national development.Hence,this thesis tries to put forward a new theoretical modelling:the Conceptual Blending Theory~+model(CBT~+model for short),which is an integration of the Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT for short)and the procedures of Critical Metaphor Analysis(CMA for short).Based on the CBT~+model,the author provides an interpretation of the metaphors in the CGWR from social,cultural,political aspects,and the explanation of the functions of metaphors reveal the governing ideas and ideologies of the Chinese government.On the one hand,this study makes up for the inadequacy of the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT for short),and on the other hand it helps people to have a better comprehension of the CGWR.Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed in this thesis.The source corpus of this thesis is the five pieces of the CGWR from 2014 to 2018 extracted from the authoritative website:http://www.gov.cn/guowuyuan/baogao.htm,which includes93631 Chinese characters in total.After identifying and analyzing the corpus on the basis of the CBT~+model,we find that there are mainly six types of conceptual metaphors in the CGWR,namely,BUILDING METAPHOR,MACHINE METAPHOR,WAR METAPHOR,ORGANISM METAPHOR,JOURNEY METAPHOR and FAMILY METAPHOR.BUILDING METAPHOR and MACHINE METAPHOR,which account for 50.4%of all of the conceptual metaphors,are the dominant metaphors in these five pieces of the CGWR.The functions of the metaphors in the CGWR,such as,persuasion,dissemination and emotion arousing are helpful for the delivering of the governing ideas and ideologies of the government.And the metaphors in the CGWR reveal that China is full of energy and vitality,though there may be difficulties in the progress of national development,the Chinese people will definitely conquer them under the leadership of the Communist Party of China(CPC for short).Based on the CBT~+model,the study of conceptual metaphors in the CGWR can not only make up for the deficiency of the application of CMT,but also help people better understand the political ideas conveyed by the Chinese government.In addition,the study is conducive for foreign people to have a better understanding of our country,which will play an important role in the cooperation and communication between China and the world.