| Metaphor has always been a hot topic in linguistic research,with a history of nearly two thousand years.In western countries,the study of metaphor can be traced back to the Aristotle’s age.However,Aristotle’s comparison theory,Quintilian’s substitution theory,and Richard’s and Black’s interaction theory,they just paid attention to the r-hetorical function of metaphors.Until 1980,Lakoff and Johnson published the Metaphors We Live By which studied metaphors in a cognitive way.Lakoff and Johnson deemed that metaphor was not only a phenomenon of language,but also a way of thinking in people’s conceptual system,from then on metaphor research has entered a new era.After the launch of "Belt and Road Initiative" by President Xi Jinping in 2013,the "Belt and Road Initiative" has attracted extensive attention at home and abroad,and considerable academic research has been done.However,few scholars did a corpus-based research to conduct a comparative study of Chinese and American news from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis(CMA).Therefore,this paper selects People’s Daily and The Washington Post as the source of news discourse,and 45 Chinese and 45 American news are chosen randomly from 2015 to 2017 by searching keywords from the official websites.With the help of Antconc 3.5.5,two small corpora of news about the "Belt and Road Initiative" are self-built,and they are named as Chinese News Corpus(CNC)and American News Corpus(ANC).Based on Lakoff’s and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and Charteris-Black’s CMA,the study identifies,interprets and explains metaphors in the two corpora,and unveils the reasons behind similarities and differences of metaphors,as well as the function of those metaphors in news discourse.The study has the following results.First,a large number of conceptual metaphors exist in both Chinese and American news.There are eight kinds of conceptual metaphors in CNC,among which the major metaphors are war metaphor,construction metaphor,and journey metaphor.There are six conceptual metaphors in ANC,in which the dominant metaphors are war metaphor,journey metaphor and human metaphor.Second,both differences and similarities of conceptual metaphors exist in American and Chinese news.Four types of conceptual metaphors are common in CNC and ANC,namely war metaphor,construction metaphor,journey metaphor,and family metaphor.It shows that China is not hegemonic,but tries its best to protect the economic environment.While plant metaphor,circle metaphor,machine metaphor,and physical environment metaphor exist only in the CNC;religion metaphor and human metaphor exist only in ANC.Finally,the similar expression of the two languages is attributed to the similar external environment causing similar human cognition,and the difference is attributed to the differences in ideology,cultures and economic factors between China and the United States.At the same time,the main function of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news discourse is simplification and motivation.With the help of corpus,this thesis makes a comparative analysis of the conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American news reports on "Belt and Road Initiative",meanwhile,it confirms the theory of conceptual metaphor and helps to improve readers’ critical reading awareness.Besides,it provides guidance for English learners to understand conceptual metaphors,and also gives some reference for the metaphor translation of news related to the "Belt and Road Initiative". |
PDF Full Text Request