Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Chinese Government’s Work Report (2013)

The paper presents a study on metaphors in the Chinese Government Work Report in2013from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis. The research on metaphor ismade from rhetoric in Aristotle to cognitive linguistics nowadays, which involves inareas, such as news coverage, advertisement, lyrics, etc. This paper intends to studymetaphors in political discourse, which is serious and formal in language, neutral andobjective in mood, and devoid of emotional expression. It is believed that metaphors inthis type of writing are not only modifications in function, but to deliver information tothe populace, manifest power relations and construct ideology. The paper attempts towork out what types of metaphors exist in political discourse represented by CGWR. Ittries to reveal the process of metaphorical meaning construction in ideology. And theideological functions of metaphor are to be analyzed. In the meantime, the present paperattempts to identify multiple motivations hidden in the choice of certain metaphors, suchas cognitive factors, pragmatic factors, cultural and historical factors, etc. CriticalMetaphor Analysis is a new approach for metaphor explication proposed byCharteris-Black in2004. Not just enumerating metaphors, this approach aims to analyzemetaphors colligating knowledge of Critical Discourse Analysis, Corpus Analysis,Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics in order to illustrate the functions of metaphor inthe construction of ideology and power relation. As a newly emerging approach, CMA isinvestigating the relationship among language, thought and social culture. In addition,the theory is widely applied to various genres, for instance, political discourse, newsreport and religious genre. Such advantages have been attracting more and more scholarsand researchers both at home and abroad.The paper attempts to conduct a Critical Metaphor Analysis approach to the analysisof Chinese Government Work Report. Based on the theory of conceptual metaphor,pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis, the research adopts CMA approach,beginning with collecting the data of Chinese Government Work Report in2013from official website. The Government Work Report is a document form of the government ofthe People’s Republic of China and the English version has10973words. Firstly, thepaper classifies the data according to the needs of the thesis and then makes qualitativeanalysis, trying to explicate the process of metaphorical meaning construction inideology; ideological functions of metaphors in political discourse; motivations hidden inthe choice of certain metaphors.The paper has proved that there are mainly seven types of metaphors existing inCGWP, which are journey metaphor, building metaphor, war metaphor, game metaphor,family metaphor, plant metaphor and circle metaphor. Based on the categories ofmetaphor keywords in each type of metaphor, the author explicates with examples fromperspective of conceptual metaphor, pragmatics and critical analysis and finds that eachcategory of metaphor reflects the policies and principles of government in a certaindegree; guides and strengthens populace’s ideology. Metaphors perform ideologicalfunctions of information selection, emotion arousing and function of cohesion. Thepossible underlying cognitive, pragmatic and cultural and historical motivations hiddenin the choice of certain metaphors have been identifiedIt is hoped that the findings of the research will make contribution to a betterunderstanding and comprehension of metaphor in political discourse and the hiddenideology. Meanwhile, the present paper is supposed to be able to provide a newperspective and lend support to the theoretical research in the area of CMA. In addition,it is also helpful to understand political discourse. Besides, it is expected that the researchwill help government promote its political opinions and help the populace understand thepolicies of our government better.