A Contrastive Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphors And Frames In Chinese And American Educational Speeches

The analysis of political discourses is one of the most important issues in the field of discourse analysis. With the development of cognitive linguistics, political discourse analysis integrates theory-driven approaches that draw on cognitive insights. The emphasis on the centrality of metaphor in both language and thought by cognitive linguists has led to more comprehensive accounts of the role of metaphor in politics, which include both its uses in political discourse and its functions in the cognitive processes and representations that are involved in the production and reception of political texts. Cognitive linguists argue that conceptual metaphor is an important tool of conceptualizing political problems and building world views. Although scholars both at home and abroad have already conducted some researches on conceptual metaphors in Chinese and English political discourses, much emphasis has been on the issues of political campaign, war and foreign policy, with little attention paid to political speeches on educational issues, i.e. educational speeches.This thesis will be a preliminary analysis of conceptual metaphors and frames used in Chinese and American educational speeches combining qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis based on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame Theory proposed by Lakoff (1996,2002,2004,2008). The data used in this thesis are the original texts of the Chinese and American political leaders’speeches addressed to university students, middle school students and education practitioners. Both the Chinese and American corpora are mainly divided into three categories, i.e. report on the work of the government or state of the union on educational issues, commencement or anniversary address to students and speeches on the issue of education development. Among them, the speeches delivered by three Chinese leaders consist of46,631Chinese characters and the speeches delivered by two American leaders contain22,629words. The thesis will adopt the metaphor identification criteria proposed by Pragglejaz Group (2007) and Charteris-Black (2004) and the Charteris-Black’s concept of resonance.Through an extensive study into conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American political speeches on educational issues, the current research reaches a conclusion that conceptual metaphors abound in both the Chinese corpus and American corpus, which validates the universality of conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson. According to the analysis, he four dominant conceptual metaphors used in the Chinese corpus are:journey metaphors, plant metaphors, building metaphors and balance metaphors, while the four dominant conceptual metaphors used in the American corpus are: journey metaphors, war metaphors, commodity metaphors and plant metaphors. Both similarities and differences exist in the conceptual metaphors used in the two languages. Journey and Plant metaphors are common to both the Chinese corpus and the American corpus, while Building and Balance metaphors are unique to the Chinese corpus and War and Commodity metaphors are unique to the American corpus. The analysis reveals that the choice of conceptual metaphors is not just a matter of choice of linguistic expression, instead, it is grounded in the body and in everyday experience and knowledge and tightly related to society and culture. Moreover, the analysis also reveals that the differences in the use of conceptual metaphors are mainly caused by different social and cultural background of the two countries, particularly differences in history, tradition and custom and ideology. Accordingly, the four dominant frames used in the Chinese corpus are:journey frame, nurturance frame, building frame and balance frame, while the four dominant conceptual metaphors used in the American corpus are:journey frame, war frame, commodity frame and nurturance frame. Judging from contrastive analysis of frames, both similarities and differences exist in the framing of educational issues in the two languages. Journey frame and nurturance frame are common to both the Chinese corpus and the American corpus, while building frame and balance frame are unique to the Chinese corpus and war and commodity frames are unique to the American corpus. It is also revealed that framing provides us with framework for logical thinking and reasoning. Different conceptual metaphors and frames reflect and reinforce their underlying values and ideologies.