Metaphor In The English Economics Discourse-A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective

In the past decades, metaphor study has gone through radical changes. The publication of Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980 marks the real beginning of cognitive linguistics, in which conceptual metaphor was put forward and the importance of metaphor in human cognition began to be recognized. From their point of view, metaphor is not merely a matter of language. On the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical. Metaphor, a fundamental cognitive tool, is used to conceptualize the abstract categories in terms of concrete ones. It plays a basic role in defining the way we perceive the world and the way we react to the perceived world.Metaphor is pervasive in people's everyday language, literature works, and in other disciplines and fields as well. However, due to the influence of traditional view on metaphor, it is long been overlooked in the scientific and technical field. Economics, as a burgeoning branch of social science, a great number of metaphors are employed to understand the abstract and complicated economic concepts and phenomena. The thesis, therefore, aims to apply the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson to explore the use of metaphor in the English economics discourse.Adopting a qualitative approach, the author selects 255 metaphorical expressions from 20 texts of authoritative economics magazines and newspapers, and classifies them into 7 categories of conceptual metaphors in accordance with different source domains they belong to, namely, the living organism metaphor, the physical movement metaphor, the activity metaphor, the machine metaphor, the building metaphor, the liquid metaphor, and others. Each category is supported by a range of examples and provided with explicit explanations of how the conceptual metaphors work in comprehension of the abstract economic concepts and phenomena.The study shows that metaphor is pervasive in the economics discourse. Each conceptual metaphor entails inexhaustive metaphorical expressions in the economic field. And also, the analysis reveals the embodied nature of metaphor in the economics discourse. The abstract economic concepts are understood and talked about in concrete terms derived from our experience in the physical world. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of metaphor in the economics discourse and reinforce the views claimed by the conceptual metaphor theory.