A Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In News Reports Of The Belt And Road In The New York Times

Since its introduction,the Belt and Road Initiative,a new strategy for China's all-round reform and opening up,has received positive response and recognition from many countries.Western countries have mixed opinions on the Belt and Road Initiative and there are also those who maintain a wait-and-see attitude.As the world's top power,the US has given great attention to the Belt and Road Initiative.Its attitude has undergone a series of changes: from the initial indifference,the accumulation of discontent,the strong resistance,the warming of attitude,to the question.That has led to a strong discussion in the world,and various media have kept reporting on it.Therefore,it is especially important to understand the true evaluation of the Belt and Road Initiative in the US.Politics is far from people's daily life,so conceptual metaphors are deepened into a cognitive tool to guide the formation of abstract concepts.By using conceptual metaphors,news reports have become an important medium for governments to reflect national ideology,to express political intentions,and to guide public opinion.The same is true of the related news reports of the Belt and Road Initiative.Based on Lakoff's conceptual metaphor theory and Charteris-Black's critical metaphor analysis method,this thesis selects 62 news reports of major events in The New York Times as data and conducts a diachronic study of conceptual metaphors in them.Firstly,by carefully reading the data,the author identifies such words as metaphor keywords that literally conflict with the context and then produce new meanings.These keywords should be classified by source domain.Secondly,by analyzing the relationship among metaphor,cognition and pragmatic factors,the author supplements the corresponding target domains,abstracts the complete conceptual metaphors,and interprets the ideology,the national image of China as well as the concept of the Belt and Road constructed by them.Finally,the author also explains the persuasion purpose of The New York Times.Referring to Charteris-Black's description of the ideology reflected by conceptual metaphors,this study also classifies the conceptual metaphors used in the data into 3 categories according to their emotional colors,namely neutral conceptual metaphor,negative conceptual metaphor and positive conceptual metaphor.By calculating the resonances of the source domains,the frequencies of the above 3 categories of conceptual metaphor are quantitatively analyzed.Among them,neutral conceptual metaphor is used most frequently,accounting for 69%;negative conceptual metaphor is the second,accounting for 17.6%;and positive conceptual metaphor is the least,accounting for only 13.4%.Under these 3 categories of conceptual metaphor,The New York Times uses 16 neutral source domains,11 negative source domains and 6 positive source domains to map the abstract target domain of the Belt and Road.Among them,the 3 most used types of neutral conceptual metaphor are anthropomorphous metaphor,journey metaphor and finance metaphor;the 2 most used negative types are war metaphor and deconstruction metaphor;and the 2 most used positive types are creation and construction metaphor as well as up metaphor.This study finds that even neutral conceptual metaphor and positive conceptual metaphor pass through the negative evaluation of the Belt and Road Initiative in The New York Times.Through these 3 categories of conceptual metaphor,The New York Times portrays China as an aggressive and covetous man who disregards of his peers,and constructs The Belt and Road Initiative into an unsmooth-sailing journey,an unfair trade,a China-built empire of interest,as well as a war where the US must be defeated.It does admit that with the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative,China's economic strength and comprehensive national strength have greatly increased.However,it believes that “upward” China not only harms the vested interests of other countries,but also disrupts the global economic and political order,and even breaks the balance of the global economy and politics system.In this way,The New York Times persuades readers to examine the potential risks of the Belt and Road Initiative and reject its temporary benefits,thereby recognizing the importance of the US and joining the US camp.Through the diachronic study of conceptual metaphors in news reports of the Belt and Road in The New York Times,this thesis effectively reveals the hidden national ideology,the true evaluation of the Belt and Road Initiative and the persuasion purpose of The New York Times.Thus,it provides a reference for China to correctly interpret the evaluation of Western countries represented by the US,and to better respond to the queries of foreign mainstream media.However,this study is far from sufficient in breadth and depth.It is hoped to inspire more scholars to conduct the diachronic study on conceptual metaphor in news reports.