A Contrastive Study Of "Self-shaping" And "Others-shaping" Of China’s Image From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor Analysis

The national image is an important soft power resource for the country,and it is also a significant thrust to enhance international competitiveness.During the COVID-19 epidemic,the western media use the epidemic to smear China,which causes a great negative impact on China‘s national image.According to constructivism and Critical Discourse Analysis,the national image is constructed.As a key indicator of ideology and an important means of legitimizing social behavior,metaphor plays an intermediary role in the construction of the relationship between discourse and national image.The media often uses this discourse strategy in the shaping of national image.The previous researches on China‘s image mainly concentrate on the fields of literature and communication,and most of them adopt the method of content analysis,ignoring the process of generation and dissemination.The image of China is limited to three types of evaluations: positive,negative,and neutral.Moreover,there are few comparative studies on ―self-shaping‖ and ―others-shaping‖of China‘s image under the COVID-19 pandemic from metaphor,lacking the analysis of the underlying motives.Based on the Critical Metaphor Analysis theory,combined with corpus analysis software Ant Conc3.5.8 and metaphor recognition program,MIPVU,this paper collects 120 news reports on Covid-19 epidemic from China Daily,and a total of 63 news reports on the epidemic from New York Times and CNN as corpus,analyzing and comparing the specific results and deep motivations of the Chinese image constructed by mainstream media of Chinese and the United States through metaphors,so as to present dynamic construction process of the China‘s image.This paper aims to answer three research questions:1.What are the conceptual metaphors that appear frequently in the news reports of the COVID-19 epidemic in Chinese and the American media? 2.What are the specific results of ―self-shaping‖ and ―others-shaping‖ on China‘s image by mainstream media of China and the that of the United States? 3.Why are there great differences in Chinese image constructed by Chinese and American mainstream media?The research results show: 1.Four different kinds of metaphors are used more frequently in the news reports about the COVID-19 pandemic in mainstream media of Chinese and American.They are War metaphor,Human metaphor,Journey metaphor and Crime metaphor.The proportion of various metaphors used in the Chinese news corpus is: War metaphor(47%),Human metaphor(36%)and Journey metaphor(9%).The proportion of various metaphors used in the American news corpus is: War metaphor(35%),Human metaphor(35%)and Crime metaphor(25%).2.The China‘s image constructed by Chinese and American mainstream media is quite different.The―self-shaping‖ in Chinese media is ―an unyielding and brave solider anti-epidemic‖,―a selfless and friendly helper‖ and ―a wise and powerful leader‖.However,in the―others-shaping‖ of American media,China is constructed as ―an autocratic dictator‖,―a competitor of the US‖ and ―a criminal leading to global pandemic‖.3.Differences between the East and the West,conflicts of state‘s interest and opposite ideology are the main reasons for the two sides to construct different images of China.The former is essentially an anti-epidemic practice that contributes China‘s fight against the epidemic,highlighting China‘s positive image.However,the latter generally shows a tendency to ―weaponization of virus,politicization of epidemic and stigmatization of China‖,which reflects the political practice of the US government to use the epidemic to smear China in order to deepen its strategic competition with China.Based on the approach of Critical Metaphor Analysis,this paper compares the―self-shaping‖ and ―other-shaping‖ of China‘s image under the special background of the Covid-19,it does not only pay attention to the image of China constructed by discourse,but also focus on discourse strategies of how discourse constructs the image of China.In addition,this paper puts forward suggestions that Chinese media should effectively use discourse strategies such as metaphors,which will contribute to build a positive image of China to the outside world and provide useful directions for the shaping of China‘s image in the post-epidemic era.