| Economic news refers to succinctly and cohesively organized discourse which reports the latest economic activities and phenomena.It often involves changes in economic situation,economic system,economic policies,etc.,which are closely related to human social life.In virtue of the special genre features of news and the essentiality of economy on people's everyday life,economic news has been studied from various linguistic perspectives.Since the proposal of Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson(1980),studies have been done to explore types of conceptual metaphors in economic news as well as their rhetorical function,cognitive function and so forth.However,currently there is still a deficiency of studies on the discourse functions of conceptual metaphor in economic news.Therefore,this study,as a complement study in this field,aims to explore the coherent function of conceptual metaphor in English economic news discourses by combining the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and discourse analysis method.With this objective,this study mainly answers the following two research questions:(1)What types of conceptual metaphors are used in English economic news discourses?(2)How do conceptual metaphors realize the coherent function in these news discourses?Conceptual metaphor,considered as a way of thinking and a cognitive phenomenon,can effectively construct the complex economic phenomena.The pervasiveness of conceptual metaphors in economic news makes it possible to analyze the coherent function of them at the discourse level.In order to answer the above research questions,this study chooses the weekly English-language magazine The Economist as the corpora for analysis,and thirty pieces of economic news which span from January,2018 to June,2018 are collected.Metaphorical expressions in the collected data are identified,classified and counted,and ways of conceptual metaphors realizing the coherent function are labeled and analyzed.After the analysis,the study arrives at the following major findings: Firstly,altogether 1313 economy-related metaphors are identified in the economic news discourses.According to the different source domains and different mapping modes,these conceptual metaphors are categorized into three types: ontological metaphor,orientational metaphor and structural metaphor.Ontological metaphor includes living organism metaphor,liquid metaphor,container metaphor and weather metaphor;orientational metaphor includes up/down metaphor and central/peripheral metaphor;and structural metaphor journey metaphor,war metaphor,game metaphor,building metaphor,and machine metaphor.By mapping different aspects from various source domains to economic domain,these conceptual metaphors make the complicated economic phenomena easier to comprehend.Secondly,conceptual metaphors realize the coherent function both by cohesive devices,at the language level,and by metaphorical entailments,at the concept level.At the language level,conceptual metaphors function as cohesive devices,and contribute to discourse coherence mainly by ways of metaphorical substitution,ellipsis,repetition,synonymy,antonymy and collocation.At the concept level,it is metaphorical entailments of conceptual metaphors,mainly the intra-metaphorical entailments and inter-metaphorical entailments,that work to realize discourse coherence.The coherent function of conceptual metaphor is realized by metaphorical cohesive devices and certain metaphorical entailments respectively or jointly.This study not only provides a new perspective for studies of economic news,but also enriches research on discourse functions of conceptual metaphor.By elaborating the mechanism of discourse organization,this study can further enrich the content of and expand the scope of discourse research. |
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