A Study On Persuasive Strategies In News Reports On BRI In China Daily From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor Analysis

The “Belt and Road” initiative is proposed by China in 2013.Aimed at borrowing the historical symbols of the Silk Road in ancient China,it holds high the banner of peaceful development,actively develops economic partnerships with countries along the route,and jointly builds a community of interests,destiny,and responsibility with political mutual trust,economic integration and cultural inclusiveness.As China’s national English newspaper,China Daily is an important window for China to understand the world and the world to understand China.As one of the important initiatives put forward by our country,the “Belt and Road” initiative is an important topic reported by China Daily.Therefore,in this thesis,the author collected 40 reports on BRI on the official English website of China Daily,and analyzes the persuasive strategies behind them from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis.Aristotle argued that people can achieve their own persuasion purposes by pathos,ethos and logos.Therefore,based on the Critical Metaphor Analysis proposed by Charteris-Black,the author analyzes the collected corpus and finds that the metaphors identified in the corpus can realize the persuasion strategies proposed by Aristotle from different levels.The specific research results are as follows:1.There are nine conceptual metaphors in the corpus constructed in this article,including journey metaphors,construction metaphor,war metaphors,human metaphor,plant metaphor,machine metaphor,film metaphor,family metaphor and book metaphor.Among them,the first three ones are the most often used conceptual metaphors.2.Take the previous three most often used conceptual metaphors as examples.The most persuasive strategy achieved by reporters through journey metaphor is pathos,followed by logos,and finally ethos;the first persuasive strategy achieved through construction metaphor and war metaphor is pathos,followed by ethos,and finally logos.3.Some political and cultural factors lie behind the reporters’ metaphor choices.The political factors include the political stand of China as for BRI,China’s independent and peaceful foreign policy and so on.In addition,the cultural factors can be concluded as follows:China’s advocating of collectivism thoughts as well as spirit of virtue,benevolence and harmony and others.In general,this study is of a certain importance in terms of theoretical and practical value.On one hand,in terms of theoretical significance,a few scholars study relevant data in terms of Critical Metaphor Analysis.Additionally,studies on persuasive strategies mainly focus on business advertisements,and few scholars have ever analyzed economic and political discourse like news about B & R.Therefore,this study can enrich not only research objects of persuasive strategies,but also research methods of news like BRI.On the other hand,in terms of practical significance,this essay can help relevant practitioners better use conceptual metaphors to realize the goal of persuading others countries to join the BRI,which in the end can be conductive to both countries along the B & R and China.