A Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In American College Graduation Speeches From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor

Critical metaphor analysis,one of the current mainstream metaphor research methods,has mainly studied political texts,lacking relevant research on educational texts.Therefore,this thesis selects 150 commencement speeches of American university presidents,creates a speech corpus of about 210,000 words,and studies the conceptual metaphors in commencement speeches of American university presidents from the perspective of critical metaphor analysis,based on conceptual metaphor theory.After studying,it was found that there are 14 commonly used types of metaphors in the presidents' commencement speeches,in which main conceptual metaphors reveal hidden emotional attitudes and values at different levels: at the life level,the speakers emphasize the establishment of a positive attitude towards life and a high sense of social responsibility,mutual understanding and respect for others,and civilization to give advice;at the educational level,the speakers emphasize the importance of higher education,call for support for higher education,egalitarian campus climate,and a focus on each student and each study;at the social level,the speakers emphasize the seriousness of social issues,call for attention and solutions to social issues,etc.In addition,it was found that the speakers achieved the persuasive function of conceptual metaphors well in terms of expressing their stance,arousing the audience's emotion,and guiding the audience's cognitive construction,then on this basis,the personal and social factors affecting the speakers' metaphorical choices were further analyzed.This thesis on conceptual metaphors in American university presidents' commencement speeches not only enriches the study of critical metaphor analysis in educational discourse,and provides a reference for the study of university commencement speech discourse,but also helps readers understand the purpose and intention of the speakers deeply,improve their metaphorical comprehension and output abilities,thus achieving a higher level of language proficiency and speech presentation.