| With the increase of media influence,metaphor plays an increasingly prominent role in the media.It is an important tool for the media to express opinions and attitudes,which in turn affects the public’s perceptions and behaviors towards cancer.Currently,a large number of studies on cancer metaphors compare and analyze the function and influence of metaphors in conversations,interviews,blogs,and forums.However,few studies have analyzed how the media frames cancer through metaphors and the potential implications of metaphor use in large-scale corpora.This study selected the news reports from the mainstream U.S.media The Washington Post in 2019 to build a corpus.A cancer reports corpus with a total capacity of 140,000 words was obtained after filtering.This study adopted the combination of quantitative corpus-based method and manual qualitative analysis and took Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Framing Theory as theoretical frameworks.Firstly,the conceptual metaphors in the sample corpus were manually identified.Metaphors in the entire cancer reports corpus were then identified semi-automatically by the corpus software Wmatrix.Finally,metaphors were classified,counted,and analyzed to answer the research questions:(1)What are the main types of conceptual metaphors for cancer used by The Washington Post?(2)Which aspects are emphasized and de-emphasized by these conceptual metaphors?The main findings of this study are as follows:(1)The Washington Post mainly used seven conceptual metaphors to report cancer,with the frequency from high to low: War metaphor,Journey metaphor,Plant metaphor,Human being metaphor,Possession metaphor,Machine metaphor,and Animal metaphor,reflecting the richness of cancer metaphors in the media discourse and the dominance of the War metaphor and Journey metaphor;(2)The media used the War metaphor to emphasize the fighting spirit of patients and medical workers,as well as the progress of cancer treatment and research,minimizing the lethality of the disease;The media adopted the Journey metaphor to highlight that cancer is a journey and encourage patients to deal with cancer in a positive attitude;With the use of the Plant metaphor,the media highlighted the framing of cancer and its treatment plans as plants to help readers understand cancer vividly;With the use of the Human being metaphor,the media highlighted that the framing of cancer as a human being could help readers to better understand cancer and reduce fear of the disease;The use of the Possession metaphor by the media highlighted that health workers can control cancer,enhancing the public’s self-confidence;By using the Machine metaphor,the media emphasized the effectiveness of cancer treatment plans and de-emphasized their limitations;Through the use of the Animal metaphor,the media highlighted the description of cancer as an animal that can be caught,helping boost the public’s confidence in cancer treatment.Overall,through the use of various metaphors to frame cancer,the media achieved its informative and commercial purposes.This study analyzes the use of conceptual metaphors to report cancer in The Washington Post and proves that the application of corpus software Wmatrix can realize metaphor identification in large-scale corpora,enriches the study of conceptual metaphors in cancer news reports,helps metaphor researchers to understand conceptual metaphors in news reports,and also has implications for journalists to better use metaphors. |
