A Comparative Study Of The Image Construction Of Chinese Army From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor Analysis

In the international community,the image of the army as an important part of the national image has been increasingly valued by all countries in the world.With globalization,cooperation and informatization becoming the wave of social development,the image of a country's military often affects its legitimate identity and actions in the international community,and thus affects the achievement of national military strategic goals.Therefore,the game of the soft power of the military image of each country is of great military value and practical significance in the contemporary era.Since the 20 th century,the "China Military Threat Theory" has gradually prevailed in the mainstream media in the West with the development of China's military forces.At the same time,the Chinese media has begun to refute the Western society's untrue reports on the Chinese army.The image of the Chinese military is carried out in the interaction between the "selfshaping" of the Chinese media and the "others-shaping" of the Western media.As a special rhetorical device of report writing,metaphor is an effective means for the author to convey attitude,express position and shape the image of the target.From the perspective of critical metaphor analysis,metaphor is a conscious choice of discourse.By examining these metaphors,we can obtain the discourse choices,attitudes and intentions of the Chinese media and Western media when reporting on the Chinese military,understand the use of metaphors and how it constructs the Chinese military.The image deepens the understanding of the implicit ideology in relevant reports.This article will use Chinese mainstream military media "People's Daily Overseas Edition" and Western mainstream media "New York Times" in the past five years(2013-2018)Chinese military reports as a corpus,combined with Charteris Black's critical metaphor analysis theory,using the corpus analysis software Antconc 3.0 The news analysis software ROST analyzes the text.The analysis shows that the People's Daily Overseas Edition and the New York Times use the four types of metaphors such as "human metaphor","architectural metaphor","conflict metaphor" and "journey metaphor" to construct the image of the Chinese army.In the People's Daily Overseas Edition,the image of the Chinese military is “a confident national sovereign defender”,a “active world peace guardian” and a “candid security cooperation practitioner”,while in the New York Times,The image of the Chinese military is "to show off the threat of muscle builders","overseas expanders who intend to fight for hegemony" and "imperfect collaborators who are full of competition." This article also attempts to explain the reasons behind the different images of the Chinese military in the two newspapers in the "dual opposition between the East and the West" in Orientalism.Finally,it proposes to do a good job in international communication of the image of the Chinese army,eliminate misunderstandings,and seize the right to speak internationally.When the Chinese media conducts the external dissemination of the military image,it can exert its strength from three aspects: in the concept of communication,establish cross-cultural communication thinking,do a good job of the external communication of Chinese "harmony" culture;use metaphorical rhetoric in communication skills,Improve the meaning of the text of the military-related texts;actively spread the Chinese story in the content of the dissemination,and present the image of the full army in Chinese discourse.