A Contrastive Study Of Conceptual Metaphor In Chinese And American Courtroom Discourse

In the 1980 s, Lakoff George and Johnson Mark put forth the conceptual metaphor which pulled metaphor research out of the traditional rhetorical study and claimed that metaphors are in fact a matter of thought and action. The corpora used in this thesis are 20 Chinese cases from Court Insession and 20 American cases from Famous Trials. Based on the corpora, the author tries to apply Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis to identify the conceptual metaphors in the two countries' corpora. Then the author attempts to carry out a contrastive analysis of the main conceptual metaphors between the two countries' corpora. Finally the author reveals their similarities and dissimilarities, and explores the reasons for selecting the same and different conceptual metaphors in the two courtroom discourses.By analyzing the two countries' corpora, I find that life experience and the way of thinking are the main reasons for similarities of the conceptual metaphors between Chinese and American courtroom discourses, while Cultural connotation and social environment account for the dissimilarities of the conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American courtroom discourses.This thesis is designed to broaden the application scope of the theory of conceptual metaphor, for applying the theory of metaphor in judicial practice helps to highlight the importance of its role in thinking and legal reasoning, and the theory of conceptual metaphor has special cognitive and construction effect in legal discourse. Thus, this thesis has theoretical and practical significance.