Cognitive Studies Of Political Metaphors In Xi Jinping’s The Governance Of China

Since the new government leadership took office,they have adjusted the language speaking style to meet the demands of the new times.Here the thesis takes the addresses of Xi Jinping as an example.Being different from the previous government leaders,Xi Jinping avoids the empty talks,makes political language plain and easy to understand,and focuses on solving the practical problems concerning people’s daily life.Such kind of practice has aroused tremendous attention both at home and abroad.Many researches have been made on Xi’s political discourses form different perspectives.But given the fact that there is still a vacancy in the systematic study on political metaphors of Xi’s addresses,the thesis takes the whole book of Xi,《习近平谈治国理政》(The Governance of China),as a corpus and make a systematic and comprehensive analysis of political metaphors in this book.The whole thesis are intended to make a little contribution to the systematic metaphor study in political discourses of Xi Jinping new times.With the theoretic framework of Embodied Philosophy,Image Schema and Conceptual Metaphor Theory,the thesis attempts to make a qualitative and quantitative analysis on political metaphors based on corpus of 79 passages in Xi’s《习近平谈治国理政》(Xi Jin ping tan zhi guo li zheng)(The Governance of China).Data collection shows that,there are6523 metaphorical words and 39 metaphorical concepts.39 conceptual metaphors and its proportions are:PERSON METAPHOR(29.82%),JOURNEY METAPHOR(16.11%),BUILDING METAPHOR(14.44%),WAR METAPHOR(6.78%),PLANT METAPHOR(5.99%),ORIENTATION METAPHOR(5.04%),GAME METAPHOR(4.51%),CONTAINER METAPHOR(2.93%),MECHINE METAPHOR(2.65%),RIVER METAPHOR(2.36%),FAMILY METAPHOR(1.73%),DISEASE METAPHOR(1.03%),DOT-LINE METAPHOR(0.87%),STUDY METAPHOR(0.72%),METAL METAPHOR(0.64%),STAGE METAPHOR(0.61%),ANIMAL METAPHOR(0.55%),WEATHER METAPHOR(0.49%),FLAG METAPHOR(0.49%),ARTICLE METAPHOR(0.48%),PAINTING METAPHOR(0.48%),BUSINESS METAPHOR(0.34%),MUSIC METAPHOR(0.21%),MOUNTAIN METAPHOR(0.17%),CLOCK METAPHOR(0.12%),LEVER METAPHOR(0.09%),SHOES METAPHOR(0.08%),KEYS METAPHOR(0.06%),CAKE METAPHOR(0.03%),CAGE METAPHOR(0.03%),BUTTON METAPHOR(0.02%),COOKING METAPHOR(0.02%),LIGHT METAPHOR(0.02%),PEARL METAPHOR(0.02%),SUN METAPHOR(0.02%),SCHOOL METAPHOR(0.02%),SWITCH METAPHOR(0.02%),SMELTER METAPHOR(0.02%),and NAIL METAPHOR(0.02%).Confined with the length of thesis,six systematic metaphors(PERSON METAPHOR,JOURNEY METAPHOR,BUILDING METAPHOR,DISEASE METAPHOR,FAMILY METAPHOR and GAME METAPHOR)and ten less systematic metaphors(STAGE METAPHOR,CAKE METAPHOR,ANIMAL METAPHOR,MUSIC METAPHOR,ARTICLE METAPHOR,BUTTON METAPHOR,CAGE METAPHOR,SHOES METAPHOR,NAIL METAPHOR,and METAL METAPHOR)are analyzed in detail.Through the systematic metaphorical analysis,conclusions are made as the following:(1)The construction and use of PERSON METAPHOR takes body parts and human activities as source domain and makes systematic mappings onto the target domain of country,Chinese nation,CPC,ecosystem and market economy separately.The most frequently-used source of body part is foot & leg(18.64%),with life & soul(17.42%)and body itself(13.76%)followed;and the most frequently-used activity is daily physical activities(47.05%),with spiritual activities(20.64%)and creative activities(15.54%)followed.All of these show Xi’s people-oriented governance concept and the guide of masses line of new times.(2)The construction and use of JOURNEY METAPHOR takes the concept of journey as source domain and makes systematic mappings onto the target domain,country’s development.Path is used most frequently in journey metaphor,occupying 34.73%,which reflects the political conviction of the adherence of China’s development mode,socialism with Chinese characteristics.(3)The construction and use of BUILDING METAPHOR takes the concept of building as source domain and makes systematic mappings onto the target domains,country,society and political party separately.Building process is used most frequently,accounting for 64.97%,which shows that socialist construction of China,well-off society and party construction cannot be built overnight and they all takes a long time.(4)The construction and use of DISEASE METAPHOR takes the concept of disease as source domain and makes systematic mappings onto the target domain,political problems of party members.The curing method(53.73%)and disease(43.28%)are stressed,which is intended to make party members solve their own political problems and show the strong will of anti-corruption of CPC.(5)The construction and use of FAMILY METAPHOR takes the concept of family as source domain and makes systematic mappings onto the target domain of country and world separately.Proportions of home is 38.94%,while neighbors are 34.51% and family members are 26.55%.Chairman Xi wants to use HOME and FAMILY MEMBERS to enhance the national identity of Chinese nation and use NEIGHBORS to close the relations between the adjacent countries and China.(6)The construction and use of GAME METAPHOR takes the concept of relay race as source domain and makes systematic mappings onto target domain of reform and opening-up and science innovation separately.Relations of game participants are stressed with proportion of 58.84%,among which cooperation makes up 78.61%.Chairman Xi wants to stress the cooperative relations between countries both on international affairs and science and technology.This study makes readers have a good knowledge of the thinking model,governance concept and cognitive mechanism behind Xi’s political discourses by systematically analyzing the political metaphors from the perspective of conceptual metaphor.At the same time,the mappings between the source concepts and target concepts of political metaphors are established on the basis of politician’s cultural background,life experience and concept recognition.To some extent,the thesis provides an implication for the cross-cultural communication on politics of Xi Jinping new times.