A Contrastive Study Of Metaphors Used In Chinese And English Reporting On Stock Market

Metaphor is a hot topic of current linguistic study. With more and more researches having been carried out, it is widely acknowledged that metaphor is not merely a linguistic phenomenon or a rhetoric device, but more a way of thinking. Besides general researches into the nature of metaphor, metaphorical studies have extended to explore metaphors used in some particular discourses—such as economic, political and scientific discourses. Significant achievements have also been made. However, many studies of this kind focus on a single language and some Contrastive ones mainly compare English and another European language. Not many Contrastive studies are between Chinese and English. In this regard, the present study tries to make a comparison of the use of conceptual and linguistic metaphors in Chinese and English economic discourse.The theoretical framework for this study is Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual theory of metaphor. Based on a Chinese corpus which is comprised of 22 stock market reports from CS.com with a total size of 20819 characters and an English corpus comprised 21 articles from FT.com with a total size of 12170 words, this study compared the use of conceptual metaphors and linguistic metaphors in a corpus of Chinese and English news reports on stock market. It aimed to find out:1) What are typical conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese economic discourse?2) To what extent are the types of conceptual metaphors used in Chinese financial reports different from or similar to English ones?3) To what extent are the types of linguistic expressions of metaphors used in Chinese financial reports different from or similar to English ones?4) What can account for such differences or similarities?It is found the expressions used in economic discourse are highly metaphorical. Metaphors occurred as frequently as about once in every 20 words. The findings also revealed many similarities in conceptual metaphors in these two languages. Eight conceptual metaphors have appeared in both languages: Stock Market Movement Is Physical Movement, The State Of Stock Market Is A State Of Health, The Situation Of Stock Market Is Natural Phenomenon, Stock Trading Is A Combat, Stock Trading Is Gambling, Color Metaphor, Animal Metaphor and Drama Metaphor. The difference lies in Engine Metaphor, which appeared in the English corpus but not in the Chinese corpus and Container Metaphor which mainly occurred in the Chinese corpus. Both in Chinese and English, the first four conceptual metaphors together made up the largest proportion and Stock Market Movement Is Physical Movement is the dominant conceptual metaphor. It is argued that such similarity of conceptualization largely lies in the common cognition of people all over the world and their shared daily experiences. Another possible reason may be that some Chinese expressions are borrowed from English.In terms of linguistic metaphors, both similarities and differences are found. A lot of linguistic metaphors in one language could find their equivalents in another language. The statistical analysis also showed divergence in terms of saliency or preference of certain linguistic metaphors. For example, more metaphors about war are used in English than in Chinese while there are more metaphors about weather in Chinese than in English. These differences in saliency may be attributed to cultural influences.Overall, in this study, there appears much similarity in terms of conceptual metaphors but subtle differences in terms of saliency and preference of linguistic metaphors between Chinese and English. It is hoped that this study could have some implications on ESP teaching, vocabulary teaching and further Contrastive studies in economic discourse.