Conceptual Metaphors In News About Chinese Navy's Escorting Operation In Gulf Of Aden In Chinese And American Mainstream News Websites: A Comparative Study

Recent years witnessed a remarkable increase of the analysis of conceptual metaphors in the military reports. Such reports are often influenced by political stance and ideology. In particular, the conceptual metaphor plays a major role in achieving the effect. In light of this, this research intends to discover how conceptual metaphors are used in both Chinese and American mainstream news websites'news about Chinese Navy's escorting operation in Aden Gulf, thus exposing whether conceptual metaphors are effectively used, what kind of differences there may be and how they differ in the communication of the political stance and ideology.The study chose two Chinese and two American news websites, namely Xinhuanet and Pheonixnet in Chinese, and CNN and Newyorktimes. All the metaphors found were gathered and classified into the relevant categories in terms of the semantic domain, and a critical analysis and a comparison of the conceptual metaphors were made.It is found that conceptual metaphors are effectively used in the news reports about the issue under discussion, for they are widely used and are mostly focusing on the aspects closely linked to Chinese Navy's escorting operation. Furthermore, there are drastic differences of conceptual metaphors between the American and Chinese data. It is discovered that the American websites'news reports are more interested in the metaphorizing of"pirates/piracy"and"Somali sea area", the"negative opinion of the Chinese Navy's escorting operation", and the"positive image of the American and the NATO's military operation in the Aden Gulf"while Chinese counterparts are more oriented to the metaphorization of the"positive aspects of Chinese Navy's escorting operation", along with the"countering the negative opinion from the outside world". More importantly, the research also found that the conceptual metaphors occurring in Chinese and American websites display different political stance and ideology in terms of attitude and understanding of Chinese Navy's escorting operation. That is, American websites are unfavorable or they hold a cold and unfriendly tone to the escorting operation while Chinese websites are very supportive and favorable to the escorting operation itself. Last but not least, it can be concluded that the conceptual metaphors are a great and useful means in the establishment of positive and negative image of an entity which is under propaganda. It is hoped that the current research will throw some new light on the reporting of similar military operations.