The Study Of Cultural Metaphors In New York Times And The Guardian

For the existing cross-cultural research into a country or a nation, the most influential one is the three-dimensional approach developed by Kluckholn, Strodtbeck, Hall and Hosftede. Their dimensions of culture, such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity, time orientation constitute a base upon which a majority of more recent studies have been built. Their works have been invaluable in the area of cross-cultural studies. However, their works are somewhat incomplete. Along these lines, Gannon has argued that the dimensional approach should be supplemented by a more content-rich or grounded approach, that of cultural metaphors. According to Gannon, cultural metaphors are defined as "In essence the cultural metaphor involves identifying some phenomenon, activity, or institution of a nation's culture that all or most of its members consider to be very important and with which they identify closely." In this thesis, a tentative exploration of the cultural metaphors of English newspapers (the New York Times, and the Guardian) is made so as to analyze cultural values of the United States and the United Kingdom. And the author of the thesis hopes that this tentative study under the guidance of cultural metaphors will reflect the social reality of America and Britain vividly, and bring readers a great convenience to read English newspapers, as well as to get a better understanding of American and British cultural values.