A Contrastive Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Media Discourse On Sino-U.S.Trade Friction

Metaphor has cognitive functions.Researchers can learn the differences in the framing of the same event by identifying metaphors in the discourse.Metaphor also embodies certain rhetorical functions for enhancing the expressiveness of the language.Based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory,this thesis has conducted a contrastive analysis of conceptual metaphors and their cognitive and rhetorical functions in the Sino-U.S.trade friction media discourse.The corpora are selected from the Chinese and American mainstream media reports.The Chinese corpus consists of 31 news reports from People’s Daily,containing about 22,000 characters.The American corpus consists of 19 news reports from New York Times,containing about 22,000 words.The contrastive analysis between these two corpora mainly discusses these three questions:(1)What are the conceptual metaphors in the Sino-US trade friction media discourse?(2)What are the differences and major similarities in the use of conceptual metaphors in the two corpora?(3)What are the distinctions in the cognitive and rhetorical functions of conceptual metaphors between the two corpora?The thesis has adopted MIPVU to identify metaphors in the discourse.Through qualitative and quantitative methods,the thesis has made a contrastive analysis of conceptual metaphors from the aspects of trade activity,trade participant,trade measure,trade market,etc.The conclusions are as below:(1)There are many conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American media discourse concerning the relevant aspects of “Sino-U.S.trade friction”.Among them,topic-irrelated metaphors include Up/ Down Metaphor,Big/ Small Metaphor,and Front/ Back Metaphor.In the Chinese corpus,the most topic-related metaphors are Journey Metaphor,War Metaphor,Building Metaphor,Machine Metaphor,Container Metaphor,etc.In the American corpus,they are War Metaphor,Movement Metaphor,Journey Metaphor,Bully Metaphor,and Competition Metaphor.(2)The number of metaphors in the English corpus is higher than that of the Chinese one.There are only a few differences in the topic-irrelated conceptual metaphors in the two corpora.For the topic-related ones,the two corpora have significant differences in the use of conceptual metaphors in terms of trade measure,trade participant,and trade market.The similarities and differences in the nine aspects are mainly reflected in the different conceptual metaphors on the same topic,which the cognitive distinctions are also various to certain degrees;in the most distinct but occasionally similar metaphors on different topics in Chinese and American corpora;in the different ways that the Chinese and American corpora emphasize the same conceptual metaphors;in some different conceptual metaphors which are associated by logic.(3)Topic-irrelated conceptual metaphors share a same cognitive function but without any rhetorical one.The contrasts in the cognitive functions of topic-related conceptual metaphors in the two corpora are as follows: there are more Chinese conceptual metaphors functioning as “the basis of organizing human conceptual system” or “a new perspective for human to learn new things” than American ones;there are more American conceptual metaphors functioning as “the tools of organizing people’s experience” or “reasoning for a certain argument” than Chinese ones.In general,the abundance of cognitive functions of Chinese and American conceptual metaphors are the same.The significant contrast in the rhetorical functions of topic-related conceptual metaphors is that there are more Chinese conceptual metaphors functioning as “enhancing the vividness and imagination of the expression”,“highlighting the information and enhancing the attractiveness of the expression” or “increasing the accuracy of the description” than those American ones.To sum up,the rhetorical functions of Chinese conceptual metaphors are more abundant than those in the American corpus.In addition,many of the rhetorical expressions in the Chinese corpus are more vivid,precise,and imaginative.This study has analyzed the conceptual metaphors in the Sino-U.S.trade friction news reports from different perspectives and discussed the viewpoints conveyed by metaphors,the mode of thinking behind metaphor,and the characteristics of the metaphorical words in discourse.It uses conceptual metaphor theory,which is of great universality,as the theoretical framework,providing an operational research approach for economic and trade media discourse analysis.