Research On Conceptual Metaphor Based On Corpus Of English Sports News Headlines

Metaphor is not only a linguistic element,but also a social cultural element.It is a cognitive activity in which humans use the experience of source domain to understand and interpret the experience target domain.Research on metaphor has been common in recent years,but metaphorical research on sports news headlines is still very limited.As an important branch of news,sports news is an important way for the public to understand the current affairs of sports.As the title is the eye of the news,in the era of information explosion and information fragmentation,the importance of news headlines is self-evident.The number of sports enthusiasts has increased year by year.In order to attract readers,the massive use of metaphors enhances the readability and entertainment of news reports.Based on Lakoff's conceptual metaphor as the theoretical framework,this paper selects 1796 news headlines from June 2018 to February 2019 from ESPN English network as research objects,using qualitative and quantitative research methods,through the Corpus search tool AntConc,searching Keyword and counting the use of metaphors in news headlines,it is found that metaphors have the following rules in the use of news headlines: First of all,from the overall point of view,structural metaphor account for the majority,reaching 78.12%.The metaphor types under structural metaphor are the most,and there are seven kinds: metaphor of war result,metaphor of war situation,metaphor of war strategy,metaphor of war fighters,gambling metaphor,season metaphor,journey metaphor,in which the number of metaphor of war result is the highest,accounting for 64.93%.The number of orientational metaphor accounts for 15.62% of the total,and there are three types:high-low metaphor,up-down metaphor,and deep-shallow metaphor,in which the up-down metaphor has the highest proportion,reaching 11.92% of the total.There are two kinds of ontological metaphor: body metaphor and container metaphor,and the proportion is the lowest in the overall metaphor,only 7.68%.Secondly,through the comparison of the same metaphors in different sports,it can be found that the most common type of metaphors in basketball,football,rugby,and baseball news headlines is structural metaphor.In the case of the same total number of sports news headlines,the number of structural metaphors contained is almost the same,the proportion of ontological metaphor in the headlines of sports news was the lowest,at 11.54%,9.13%,8.17%,and 4.33%.Through the presentation of regularity and the discussionof mapping modes,revealing the characteristics of ESPN news headlines reflected by conceptual metaphors and their mapping modes,reflecting the common sports cognition.This helps deepen the cognition of metaphors in English sports news headlines and promotes the understanding of English sports news headlines.