Metaphorical Competence Of Chinese Journalists Investigated On The Basis Of Front-Page News In China Daily

Nowadays, with enormous circulation of newspaper, more and more attention has been paid to the linguistic studies of journalistic English. As a media product, newspaper undoubtedly provides unexhaustive and invaluable source of data for linguistic research. Regarding the practical situation in China, little work has been done previously on Chinese journalists'metaphorical competence via their writings in English newspaper. Research on Chinese journalists will help us have a better understanding of second language learners'metaphorical ability so as to find alternative ways to improve their second language learning. Accompanied with the development of linguistics, metaphor study is no longer confined to the rhetoric level; it has become a multidisciplinary subject. Scholars study metaphor from different perspectives, such as semantic perspective, pragmatic perspective, and cognitive perspective.This thesis is in an attempt to make an investigation into the metaphorical competence of Chinese journalists on the basis of front-page news in China Daily. Results about the frequency of metaphorical use between Chinese journalists and foreign journalists will be explained from different perspectives. In the process of data collection, my first concern will be concentrated on describing the total ratio of metaphorical use in Chinese journalists'writings, explaining the reasons that caused less frequency of using metaphor in China Daily. And I will put forward four hypotheses in the process of data analysis as well as elaborate them in detail. Secondly, I will explain why metaphor is used so outstanding in English headlines, compared with the ratio in news lead. In this study, metaphor is treated as not only a sort of rhetoric device and non-verbal communicative competence, but also a way of thinking and act. The universality of metaphors indicates that metaphor is a kind of common language expression. It is inevitable for people to use it in the course of second language learning.As for the organization of the whole thesis, it is divided into six chapters, which play different but all essential roles. Chapter One introduces the importance of metaphor in speech communication, the importance of front-page news, and representativeness of advanced writing by journalists for China Daily, with an aim to explain why I choose this topic. Chapter Two gives a brief retrospect on researches on metaphor and touches on its definition, identification and classification of metaphor in order to pave the way for doing later statistics. Three distinctive views on metaphor, made by Aristotle, Davidson, and Lakoff & Johnson respectively, are discussed in this part. Chapter Three focuses on beauty, universality and necessity of metaphor in order to acknowledge the fact that to apply metaphors in daily life is necessary, which will bring about the unexpected effects due to its magic power and ubiquity of metaphor. Chapter Four gives an account of the variety of front-page news in order to have a clear picture of the data collection. And it also makes an analysis of the data on the frequency of metaphorical expressions both in China Daily and in London Times by using the theoretical framework. Chapter Five makes a summary of the study and points out the findings and implications. Due to data collection, limitations of the present research are also presented.This thesis is of both the theoretical and practical significance. It may further develop the studies on metaphors and enrich journalists'news writings so as to increase the readability. Practically speaking, journalists and readers can benefit from this study, either in the general sense of communication or in the specific discourse of newspaper. The notion of the role of metaphor in newspaper helps journalists fulfill their purpose in writings and gains a better understanding of the language used in analyzing current issues so as to improve the quality of newspaper. As for readers,this study will provide a platform to get to know other two basic news language features: freshness and human interest apart from timeliness and truthfulness. People are supposed to use the known objects to elaborate those unknown or abstract objects. Metaphor in fact can set up the bridge between the known and the unknown so as to find out the similarity in different domains, thus creating new language expressions to enhance its freshness. Readers will find it more acceptable in that way of writing. By the application of metaphorical expressions, readers are able to know the truth by reading between the lines.