A Comparative Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In American And Chinese Political Discourses

Metaphor, a pervasive linguistic device has been receiving academic attentions from Plato, Aristotle etc. Owing to the influences of the transition in contemporary philosophy and the new developments in cognitive linguistics, metaphor has been promoted from a rhetoric device to a human's fundamental cognitive model.However, the different metaphors between varied discourse communities, especially between other western cultures and the Chinese have been inadequately addressed despite the fact that Lakoff has been laying emphasis on this dimension from the beginning of the cognitive turn in metaphor studies.The close relationship between metaphors and politics can date back to political rhetoric in ancient Greece, whereas, the study on the conceptual metaphors in American and Chinese political discourses have been largely neglected and therefore undertaking scare exploration.Metaphor, as a means of analogical argument is very necessary in political discourse and show distinctively power of persuasion, with an attempt to offer an close examination of different metaphoric models underlying American and Chinese political discourses and how metaphors in the concerned discourses are argumentatively employed, this paper conducted a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in two influential and persuasive political discourses, an American political discourse named'Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address' delivered by Obama in2011and a Chinese political discourse named'Report on the Work of the Government'delivered by Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao in2011.Firstly, it reviews the related studies both at home and abroad. Second, it conducts a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in American and Chinese political discourses, pointing out the similarities and differences between them. Thirdly, it makes further study on whether the differences between them outweigh their similarities or the other way around. Fourthly, it looks into the reasons for their being some similarities and differences between the two selected discourses. It also summarizes the functions of metaphors. At last, conclusion is drawn.The results of the research are just below:there are some similar metaphors in both discourses:these metaphors include JOURNEY METAPHORS, CONSTRUCTION METAPHORS, WAR METAPHORS, FAMILY METAPHORS as well as ORGANISM METAPHORS. And there are some conceptual metaphors which exist in Chinese discourse only. They are MACHINE METAPHORS, CIRCLE METAPHORS and CHESS METAPHORS, while BUSINESS METAPHORS and RELIGION METAPHORS only exist in American discourse. The main reasons for the similarities between them have much to do with the perception of the world and the common physical experience. Those for the differences should be attributed to different society, culture and politics. In addition, the research result also includes the powerful role metaphorical language plays in the construction of ideologies. Both Wen Jiabao, Chinese Premier and Obama, American President prefer to using metaphor to show their political thoughts and standpoints to make people persuaded, influenced and motivated by means of using concrete and familiar concepts to help comprehend abstract political concepts.