Comparative Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And English Economic News From The Perspective Of CMA

The Conceptual Metaphor Thcory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson has opened a new era for metaphor research.Metaphor does not only exists in literary works,but also exists universally,and metaphor research should be developed at the cognitive level.Charteris-Black proposed the framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis,which is a combination of Conceptual Metaphor Theory,Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics.Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Critical Metaphor Analysis are widely used in many fields with fruitful results.However,the study of metaphor in the economic field is far from enough.Therefore,this thesis makes a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and English economic news in order to find out the similarities and differences between the use of metaphors,analyse the attitudes of Chinese and English news reports conveyed by their use of conceptual metaphors and their metaphorical functions.This thesis selects 20 financial reports in Economic Daily and The Economist respectively from September to December of 2018.The Chinese and English corpora were constructed to collect and classify conceptual metaphors.The six main metaphors in Chinese and English economic news were summarized,namely,Person metaphors,Journey metaphors,War metaphors,Liquid metaphors,Container metaphors and Machine metaphors.The projection process between the source domain and the target domain is elaborated,and the similarities and differences of metaphor use in the two corpora are explained.Through the analysis of conceptual metaphors,this thesis draws the following conclusions.There are six main metaphors in the two corpora.The functions of metaphor are summarized,i.e.Explanation function,Evaluation function and Empathy function.There are both similarities and differences in the use of the six metaphors.Person metaphors are the most resonant and most frequent between two corpora and their usage bears a lot in common;Journey metaphors are of strong resonance and larger frequently in both corpora;War metaphors in Chinese corpus are more frequently used and more resonant than that in English corpora;there are unique metaphorical expressions peculiar to Chinese data among Person metaphors,Journey metaphors,War metaphors and Liquid metaphors;Machine metaphors and Container metaphors account for a small proportion,with large similarities.In addition,Economic Daily and The Economist convey different attitudes through the use of metaphors.The Economist takes an objective attitude towards the rapid development of China's economy and the active and broad market.However,there is a negative attitude towards the improvement of China's position in international trade.The attitude of Economic Daily to China's economy mainly conveys positive significance.This thesis studies the conceptual metaphors in economic reports about China in Chinese and English newspapers from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis.It is in line with the contemporary theme,and helps readers to view China's economy from a more multi-dimensional perspective,to increase their comprehensive understanding of China's economy.It also helps to reveal the cultural differences and provide some references for English learning and cross-cultural exchanges.