A Study On The Application Of Conceptual Metaphor In The Report Of COVID-19 In People’s Daily

The People’s Daily is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,a representative of authoritative mainstream media,and a news text with national ideological attributes.Conceptual metaphor,as a unique rhetorical and cognitive tool,has been widely used in the People’s Daily,becoming an important way for its implicit mainstream ideology and core values.However,in the relevant reports on the COVID-19,a major public health event that has attracted much social attention in recent years,the People’s Daily has shown different application rules in the types,characteristics,functions,etc.of conceptual metaphors,which has produced important social impacts.It is necessary to conduct in-depth analysis on them.Based on the COVID-19 report of the People’s Daily from January 1,2020 to June 1,2022,this study established a conceptual metaphor research corpus.Under the framework of three conceptual metaphor types,spatial location metaphor,entity metaphor,and structural metaphor,the specific metaphors in the corpus were subdivided and classified,and then the dual domain mapping process,metaphor characteristics,and application functions of each type of metaphor were analyzed and discussed respectively.On this basis,it reflects on the possible problems in the application of conceptual metaphor in the COVID-19 report of the People’s Daily,and puts forward targeted optimization suggestions.The study found that spatial location metaphors in the COVID-19 report of the People’s Daily can be specifically divided into up and down location metaphors,front and back location metaphors,and other location metaphors.It has the characteristics of embodied cognition based on body and social experience,and the use of up and front location metaphors is more frequent.It plays a role in enhancing the linguistic economy of news discourse and strengthening the psychological regulation of progressivism narrative in the report.The entity metaphor in the COVID-19 Report of the People’s Daily takes human organ metaphor,kinship metaphor,road metaphor,machine metaphor,myth metaphor as the application representatives,which shows the characteristics of rich and unique types,strong emotional rhetoric,and plays an important role in improving the appeal of news reports and constructing emotional and ideological identity.The structural metaphors in the COVID-19 report of the People’s Daily are represented by war metaphors,competition metaphors,examination metaphors,navigation metaphors,and article/poem metaphors,which have the characteristics of multiple refraction of narrative meaning and collectivism discourse structure,and have a key role in strengthening the explanatory power of news discourse and exerting strong anti epidemic mobilization power.However,the application of conceptual metaphor in the COVID-19 report of the People’s Daily still has obvious political tendencies,meaning uncertainty and discourse opposition,which makes the report have negative effects such as covering personal trauma,leading to misinterpretation of meaning,and strengthening risk perception.Therefore,the application of conceptual metaphor needs to balance the sensibility and rationality of metaphorical narration,the balance and daily nature of metaphorical types,and the group and individual nature of metaphorical discourse,in order to comprehensively optimize and enhance the application effect of conceptual metaphor in news reporting,and provide empirical reference and thinking for the industry.