A Research On Metaphors In Financial Reporting

As an interesting linguistic phenomenon, metaphor has long been studied by scholars both at home and aboard. With the rapid economic development, metaphors have been enjoying increasing popularity in economic discourses, and catch more and more attention from linguists. The research on metaphor from the perspective of rhetoric merely covers surface problems, while the study on metaphor from cognitive approach truly reveals the underlying working mechanism. Lakoff's Conceptual Metaphor Theory is really powerful on explaining the working mechanism of conventional metaphors, but weak in explaining novel metaphors. Fauconnier's Blending Theory well make up for such limitation. By adopting the Blending Theory, this paper conducts a comprehensive research on metaphors in economic discourses.Blending Theory originated from Mental Spaces Theory. It contains four mental spaces: two input spaces, a generic space and a blended space. There are partial projections of counterparts between these two input spaces. The generic space reflects abstract structures shared by the two input spaces. Both the input spaces and the generic space are partially projected onto the blended space, which contains an emergent structure that can not be found in the input spaces. This emergent structure is the underlying mechanism of metaphor construction and generation.The data of this paper are mainly collected from the Finance & Economics part of three issues from The Economist in 2007, and are mainly examined through a qualitative method.Under the framework of Blending Theory, this paper classifies metaphors in financial reporting into three generic conceptual keys: (1) THE ECONOMY IS HUMAN; (2) ECONOMIC PROBLEMS ARE NATURAL DISASTERS; (3) MARKET CHANGES ARE PHYSICAL MOVEMENT. By the analysis on the working mechanism of these three conceptual keys, we come to the following conclusions: metaphors are pervasive in financial reporting, adding vividness and attractiveness to the abstract and dull economic discourses. Not only can metaphors structure our perceptions and understanding of economic phenomenon, but also the choice of metaphors reflects the ideology and people's beliefs. Therefore, a cognitive study on metaphors facilitates people's awareness on metaphor and cultivates people's metaphorical thinking, thus guide people's understanding and communication on economic discourses.