A Critical And Contrastive Analysis Of Metonymy In News

Both cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis originated in 1970 s,which have developed into influential research paradigm nowadays.Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)and cognitive linguistics are consistent in revealing how people’s emotions,attitudes and opinions are expressed in real world surroundings.Within the framework of CDA,language is not objective and transparent.That is to say,discourse serves certain purpose,which can be achieved by certain strategies in CDA.And strategies employed in the research can be accomplished through the use of metonymy,which has been always neglected in the mainstream CDA.As a consequence,this thesis studies on the interface of conceptual metonymy and critical discourse analysis.This thesis studies metonymies from the perspective of CDA under the theoretical frame of conceptual metonymy theory and construal operation theory.The present study tries to answer three questions: What kinds of metonymy did the reports adopt to realize the strategies in CDA? What are the main ideologies hidden in both Chinese and American AIIB reports respectively? What are the functions of critical metonymy analysis?In order to answer the questions,this thesis collects news reports on AIIB from both Chinese and American mainstream news media and analyses metonymies identified critically.The analysis of the typical examples proves that certain ideologies are embedded in both Chinese and American news reports.Chinese media holds that AIIB is China-proposed,and AIIB is mainly for cooperation.While American media holds that AIIB is China-lead,and treats AIIB as economic rival to challenge America’s position in global finance.This study is of significance in both theory and practice.Theoretically,this study attempts to study on the interface between metonymy and CDA.Practically,the analyzing mode in this study helps readers to understand news critically,and get the hidden ideologies behind.