| Political discourse is the medium of political ideas.Language plays an indispensable role in political discourses.Politicians use metaphors to publicize political purposes and achieve persuasion.The Belt and Road Initiative involves in many fields as politics,economy,and ecology etc.Once proposed by the Chinese government,the initiative is positively responded by relevant countries and international organizations.Metaphor research has gone through a long historical process.The study of traditional metaphor originated from the Aristotle period when linguistic research regarded metaphor as a rhetorical device.In the 1980 s,Lakoff and Johnson elaborated the Conceptual Metaphor Theory(hereafter CMT).They advocated considering metaphor as a way of thinking instead of just a linguistic phenomenon.The theory marks the metaphor research developing into the cognitive stage.Charteris-Black(2004)put forward Critical Metaphor Analysis(hereafter CMA),which combines corpus linguistics,cognitive linguistics,pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the covert ideologies behind conceptual metaphors.The data used in this study is from the 8 official documents issued by the Chinese government during the Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing in May 2017.The research questions are as follows:(1)What types of conceptual metaphors exist in the political discourses of the Belt and Road Initiative?(2)How is the meaning of the conceptual metaphors in the political discourses constructed?(3)What underlying ideologies of our country in building the Belt and Road are revealed in the conceptual metaphors? This thesis combines quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis to analyze conceptual metaphors in the data under the theoretical framework of CMA.This study will be carried out through three steps: metaphor identification,metaphor interpretation,and metaphor explanation.First,as for metaphor identification,this study is innovative in methodology by employing the Metaphor Identification Procedure(MIP)of the Pragglejaz Group to identify linguistic metaphors and using the WordNet and SUMO to identify the conceptual metaphors.Then,the in-depth analysis is given to the mapping mechanism of conceptual metaphors to interpret their meaning construction process.Finally,the underlying ideologies of the Belt and Road Initiative are explained based on Chinese social and historical background.Data analysis shows that there are mainly ontological metaphor and structural metaphor in the political discourses of the Belt and Road Initiative.Conceptual metaphors with higher frequency in ontology metaphor are +NATION IS HUMAN+,+ECONOMY IS A MAN+.Conceptual metaphors that are used with higher frequency in structural metaphor are +THE BELT AND ROAD IS A BUILDING+,+TO WORK FOR PEACEFUL COOPERATION AND COMMON DEVELOPMENT IS TRAVELLING ALONG A PATH TOWARDS A DESTINSTION+,+SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IS A WAR+.The conceptual metaphors in the political discourses of the Belt and Road Initiative disclose the socialism ideologies in China.The personification metaphor implies that China is striving to promote the democratization of international relations and build a community of responsibility to promote economic development.The use of building metaphor reveals the principle of democratic centralism and China transforms its role from participating in globalization to shaping globalization.The journey metaphor reflects the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics,helps to build a good image of a great power and gain more international voice.By conceptualizing social and environmental problems as enemies,war metaphor can arouse the morale of soldiers and demonstrate the determination of the Chinese government in anti-corruption,poverty alleviation and environmental protection. |
