A Comparative Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In English And Chinese War News Headlines

Metaphor as a common phenomenon in language has aroused many scholars’ interests since ancient times. Early in 20 th century, an important change in metaphor study occurred, which is from viewing metaphor as a rhetoric device to regarding metaphor as a way of thinking. Since then, metaphor has been studied from the cognitive linguistic perspective with fruitful achievements abroad and at home. However, studies of conceptual metaphors in war news headlines are in a small portion relatively. Therefore, this thesis makes a comparative study of English and Chinese war news headlines.This thesis sets up English and Chinese war news headlines corpuses in which data are all collected from Janenet and Ifengnet respectively, and 1500 war news headlines entries are included in each corpus. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory that proposed by Lakoff and Johnson in the book Metaphors We Live By, the metaphorical expressions in the two corpuses are identified, classified, counted and analyzed with quantitative, qualitative and comparative approaches. By this way, this thesis intends to solve two research questions which are as follows:(1) What are the conceptual metaphors applied in English and Chinese war news headlines respectively?(2) What are the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese war news headlines?This thesis extends the following conclusions:(1) Conceptual metaphors are pervasive in war news headlines; nearly 80% entries are metaphorical; among them, six types of conceptual metaphors appear most frequently in English and Chinese war news headlines corpuses, which are personifications, UP/DOWN orientational metaphors, container metaphors, animal metaphors, traffic metaphors and theatre metaphors.(2) In orientational metaphors, the most frequently appeared metaphor types are MORE IS UP and GOOD IS UP in corpuses respectively. However, English war news headlines employ orientational metaphors with a higher frequency than Chinese ones; but Chinese war news headlines contain more varied of metaphorical expressions. In ontological metaphors, animal metaphors, container metaphors and personifications are all used in two corpuses. But English war news headlines focus on container metaphors using, while Chinese war news headlines pay more attention on the use of animal metaphors and personifications. In structural metaphors, traffic metaphors and theatre metaphors are with a high frequency. However, English war news headlines prefer to employ traffic metaphors but Chinese war news headlines use theatre metaphors more frequently. In addition, based on the comparative study between English and Chinese, this thesis reinforces the idea that metaphorical systematicity, cognitive universality and cultural relativity are characterized in both English and Chinese war news headlines.This comparative study of conceptual metaphors between English and Chinese war news headlines is of great research value. On the one hand, this thesis enriches the content of conceptual metaphor study, and enhances the explanatory power to conceptual metaphor theory. On the other hand, by discussing the frequently used metaphor types, similarities and differences in English and Chinese war news headlines, this thesis deepens our understanding of war news headlines and even war genre. Further, it can give guidance to improve war news headlines writing ability.