A Study On National Images In Front Covers Of Beijing Review From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory For Multimodal Metaphor

With the deepening of globalization,China is no longer an isolated country.Instead,it has increasingly close connection with the international community.Therefore,the issue of telling Chinese stories and shaping China’s image has been attached with great attention.As a public opinion tool,the international media occupies an irreplaceable position in shaping and spreading national image.Beijing Review,as the only official English news journal issued internationally,serves the mission to demonstrate the national images of China to the world.The front cover of a journal is often a multimodal text,which combines images and written symbols with rich metaphorical meanings to attract readers.It is one of the significant genres of multimodal metaphor research to construct meaning through the strategy of multimodal metaphor and to achieve a good communication effect implicitly and innovatively.With regard to the theoretical perspective of cognitive linguistics,based on Fauconnier and Turner’s Conceptual Blending Theory and Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor,with the help of qualitative research software Nvivo12,this thesis focusing upon 125 front covers of Beijing Review from 2015 to 2019 attempted to explore the types of multimodal metaphors and the tendency of emotional attitude from the front covers,presenting an analysis of the integration between image and text elements and the construction of metaphorical meaning and revealing the national image being portrayed for China.Through qualitative and quantitative research,this article tentatively drew conclusions as below: Firstly,the front covers of Beijing Review mainly contain thirteen kinds of multimodal metaphors.Ontological metaphors are composed by entity and substance metaphor,organic metaphor and container metaphor;structural metaphors highlight journey metaphor,machine metaphor,race metaphor,stage metaphor,game metaphor,money metaphor,photography metaphor and park metaphor;orientational metaphors include up metaphor and right metaphor.Secondly,the metaphorical meanings are presented under four integrated networks,namely simplex network,mirror network,single-scope network and double-scope network,among which the double-scope network shares the most significant proportion.Within the single-scope network and double-scope network,the pragmatic relevance elements are of great importance for the interpretationof multimodal metaphor.Thirdly,after a thorough analysis of the front covers of Beijing Review,we conclude that a positive and neutral national image of China is shaped and spread from the emic perspective in the following three aspects.The image of political situations is a progressive,independent and peaceful political power,fighting internally for the prosperity of China and promoting the development of ethnic minorities.The image of “hard power” is due to the economic development and also its positive impact on the world economy;military defense sovereignty and the just force to maintain world peace.It vigorously develops the trade circulation of business.Meanwhile,it establishes an image in the science and technology field that it has the ability to break through innovation and facilitate the development of people.It also builds up an image in terms of its soft power that people are having a progressive and humanistic life.It has achieved significant cultural innovation,eclectic and diverse development.Moreover,it also establishes an image of being the warrior guarding green development of ecology.It achieved gradual improvement of the legal system;open communication and diversified development of sport and art.This thesis investigated the cognitive construction and the national image of China.Theoretically,it is significant given that it can enrich the genre of multimodal metaphor research,providing effective methods and new perspectives for the interpretation of multimodal metaphor.Furthermore,it also enhances the social dimension and practical significance of multimodal discourse research by paying attention to contemporary social life and issues through language research and taking on social responsibilities.