A Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts

Metaphor is a hot issue in linguistics study. The comparison theory, the substitution theory the interaction theory and the conceptual metaphor theory all propose corresponding principles to explain the nature and mechanism of metaphors. They all pay attention to the function of metaphors. Conceptual metaphor theory is one of the most popular, scientific and reliable theories. Proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, conceptual metaphor theory has affected metaphor research so widely and profoundly that it caused a “metaphorical revolution”.In the thesis, metaphors that applied in the Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts are explored from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory. The corpus is composed of sixty two speeches of the Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts, downloaded from the authoritative official royal website: http://www.royal.gov.uk. This study seeks to answer the following two research questions:(1) What categories of metaphors are there in the Queen’s Christmas Broadcast selected?(2) What functions do these metaphors fulfill?The methodology of the thesis combines both corpus linguistic research and qualitative research. The UAM Corpus Tool Version 2.8.14 is applied to carry out a quantitative analysis to figure out what categories of metaphors present in the Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts and what are their proportions. And then qualitative analysis is also conducted to reveal and explain the results of the quantitative research. By adopting this methodology, the study will be carried out along the following procedures. Firstly, conceptual metaphors employed in the Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts are identified. Secondly, the conceptual metaphors identified in the first step are classified, based on their source domains from Lakoff and Johnson’s perspective. Thirdly, the author attempts to interpret the figurative, social, cognitive and cultural functions of the typical conceptual metaphorsThe author gets the following results. First ontological, orientational and structural metaphors are pervasive in the Queen’s Christmas Broadcasts, and ontological metaphor takes the largest proportion of the application of conceptual metaphors. Second these conceptual metaphors function not only as a rhetorical device used to polish the language, but an embodiment of abstract concepts as well. They reflect different cultural, social and religious features.