A Study On Metaphor Interpretation In Premier Li's Press Conference(2013-2019) Through Relevance Theory

At present,metaphor is frequently used in government communication activities such as Premier's press conference.On the one hand,it is vivid,concise and rich in connotation,which may help the audience understand abstract political views with familiar images.On the other hand.however.due to the cultural differences,it is challenging for interpreters to accurately convey the communicative intention of metaphor.Based on the corpus of Premier Li's press conferences from 2013 to 2019,this paper summarized the quantity and types of metaphors through MIP(Metaphor Identification Procedure)and a statistical tool called AntConc.The metaphors are grouped into eight types,including human metaphor,architecture metaphor,war metaphor,travel metaphor,family metaphor,tool metaphor.nature metaphor and others.After discussing the characteristics of each kind,this paper analyzes strategies of metaphor interpretation based on Relevance Theory and case studies,including direct source information ostension,relevance enhancement through additional information,image substitution for better inference and conveyance of communicative intention.Finally,according to the quantitative statistics as well as the characteristics of interpretation,the author suggests that literal translation and free translation should be the preferred strategies in political metaphor interpretation.