A Comparative Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And American English News Reports On The Belt And Road Initiative

Conceptual metaphor theory was proposed in the last century by Lakoff and Johnson,who conclude that metaphor not only refers to a mapping from source domain to target domain,but also expresses people’s experience,perception,imagination,as well as psychology,language and cultural manners on talking about such kind of things.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory,this article selects two representative English media from the People’s Republic of China and the United States,China Daily and the Washington Post.News reports containing keywords like the Belt and Road Initiative,BRI and other words related to the “One Belt and Road” are searched in the official website.After maintaining the same number of articles,results from China Daily have 23562 words in all while the Washington Post 41542 words.We next analyze metaphors in these reports in the following steps: identify the metaphors with the help of MIPVU and Wmatrix in the given context;interpret the metaphors first by determining their source domains,then making a classification of them and finally analyzing the similarities and differences between and among them from a diachronic point of view;providing a tentative explanation of the similarities and differences in utilizing these metaphors between the two newspapers from a number of perspectives including the socio-cultural,political and economic.This research has several findings.Firstly,major source domains used by Chinese and American media are orientation,plant,building,contest,business,animate,science,and body.Secondly,main types of metaphors used by the two newspapers are orientation metaphor,building metaphor,plant metaphor,business metaphor and contest metaphor.Last but not least,although the types of metaphors employed by the two newspapers overlap a great deal,like orientation metaphor,building metaphor,plant metaphor,business metaphor and contest metaphor,there are also differences in the meanings and functions of these metaphors based on the socio-cultural,political and economic facts of each country,revealing each part’s attitude.People’s Republic of China is a country,whose President is considered as the mainstay,calling on friendly and cooperative relationship with other countries.Besides,Chinese culture tends to talk about positive things more often,so metaphors in China Daily is mainly in a positive attitude.While the United States cares about its status and influence in the world and consequently,it is anxious about the increasing power of China.Thus,most metaphors in the Washington Post are in a negative attitude.