A Corpus-based Contrastive Study Of The Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And English Economic News Headlines

The metaphor study can be traced back to thousands of years ago. In the traditional theory, metaphor is regarded as an ornamental device which is usually associated with poetry or rhetoric. Since1980s, the conceptual metaphor theory has been put forward in the masterpiece Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson, which marks that the metaphor study has ever since entered a new cognitive era. Metaphor is seen as a cross-domain mapping process, and metaphorical expressions are the surface realization forms, which are achieved through the source domain to the target domain in such a process. Metaphorical expressions are considered not only as a linguistic phenomenon, but also a cognitive way in human beings’conceptual system. This thesis is based on the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson.With the pervasiveness and development of metaphor study, it has evolved into an interdisciplinary subject, and many linguists have been concerned about the metaphorical use in economic discourses. Economy is closely related to our life, and economic articles are often flooded with metaphors. Among the previous studies on metaphor, a great number of metaphorical studies in different kinds of corpora have been conducted, including some contrastive studies of metaphor in different cultures. However, few scholars have ever extended their research to the comparative study on the headlines of Chinese and English economic news. So this thesis aims to conduct a corpus-based systematic, comprehensive and comparative study of conceptual metaphors in the Chinese and English economic news headlines, which is attracting more and more attention.In this study, qualitative and quantitative analyses are adopted with the aid of a comparison approach. Firstly, the corpus data made up of5868economic news headlines which are collected from the on-line version of The Economist and21st Century Business Herald(《21世纪经济报道》)in the period from June to October in the year of2012. Next the collected samples are specifically classified and described. After an overall study of the collected data, three most frequently used and representative metaphors, living organism,"up/down" and war metaphors are identified as the research subjects; then it comes to the data treatment part, the types, numbers and percentages of the identified metaphors in Chinese and English economic news headlines are calculated. Secondly, detailed analysis of the mapping process is illustrated by using graphs. It explains how the mapping process is realized from the source domain to the target domain. At last, a comparative research is taken to find out the similarities and differences between them, and an in depth disscussion is made to probe into the underlying causes of the similarities and differences.The results of the study are shown as follows:1) ten same kinds of typical conceptual metaphors are found in Chinese and English economic news headlines, which are respectively ECONOMY AS LIVING ORGANISM, ECONOMY AS CONTAINER, ECONOMY AS WATER, ECONOMY AS BUILDING, ECONOMY AS MACHINE, ECONOMY AS WEATHER, ECONOMY AS UP/DOWN SPACE, ECONOMY AS JOURNEY, ECONOMY AS WAR and ECONOMY AS GAME. Among which, the most typical three are UP/DOWN SPACE, LIVING ORGANISM and WAR metaphor.2) the three case studies reveal that both Chinese and English metaphors follow the same mapping process, which includes four steps:the entity, relationship, feature and the inference patterns.3) conceptual metaphors in economic news headlines are also characterized by diversity, systematic and cultural relativity.4) the qualitative and quantitative study also indicates that there are both similarities and differences in the frequency and percentage of these conceptual metaphors. The similarities stem from our common experience in life, while the differences suggest different cognitive and cultural effects on economic news headlines.Innovative points in this thesis are as following:firstly, the study is based on a comprehensive and authorative corpus, which can make sure the conclusion is both theoretically and practically supported. It supports the conceptual metaphor theory with empirical statistical data. Secondly, the news headlines are chosen as our language material because of their feasibility and value in the news report. Thirdly, by qualitative and quantitative analyses, similarities and differences are identified in two languages. Lastly, the results in the study can be used to help the teaching and learning of economics or economic writing.The corpus-based contrastive study of the conceptual metaphors in Chinese and English economic news headlines can facilitate people’s awareness on metaphor and cultivate their metaphorical thinking, thus guide people’s understanding and communication on economic discourses. To some extent, it could provide some valuable insights for the economists, business English teachers and learners, as well as translators. Besides, it also serves for the writing of economic news headlines.However, there are also limitations and implications. For instance, the corpus size may be not large enough to make a perfect contrastive study of the conceptual metaphors in the economic field. And also, the quantitative analysis is taken as the main method of analyzing the corpus. In the future studies of metaphor, larger scaled corpus and more objective analyzing tools of metaphor study would be of more validity. Future studies should be more comphrehensive to include more types of metaphor.