Comparative Study On Environment Image Construction Of Sino-US Heavy Industry Companies:CMA Perspective

Along with the trend of �empirical turn� and �social turn� in cognitive linguistics,the empirical study of metaphor is pushed forward to set its basis on corpus and to take extensive social issues as its research subjects.In terms of environmental management which is one of social hotspots of current society,the environmental cognition revealed through metaphor contributes to digging out the ideological source of environmental problems.The contrastive analysis between China and America makes it more conducive to identifying the cultural factors behind environmental cognitions,which assists the two countries to make good for deficiency and helps to promote the formation of justified environmental cognitions and rational environmental behaviors.The present study,under the guidance of the paradigm of CMA(Critical Metaphor Analysis),analyzed the environment images built through metaphors by Sino-US heavy industry companies.By adopting the corpus-based empirical research method together with corpus tool Wmatrix,the quantitative method was used to collect data for contrastive study to find out the differences in environment metaphor usage in CSR(Corporate Social Responsibility)reports between Sino-US heavy industry companies.Then,through qualitative analysis,the cognitions towards environment and the similarities and differences between these cognitions were found,and cultural and social factors behind these differences were further explored.This research aims to solve the following three questions:(1)What kinds of metaphors are used by Chinese and American heavy industry companies to construct environment image?(2)What are the similarities and differences between the choice of conceptual metaphors for Chinese and American heavy industry companies to construct environment image?(3)What are the social and cultural factors behind the similarities and differences?In the process of metaphor identification,data collection and contrastive analysis,the findings reached are as follows:(1)Overall,the metaphor categories used by Chinese and American heavy industry companies to construct environment image are economy metaphor,conflict metaphor,human metaphor,entertainment metaphor,journey metaphor,building metaphor,power metaphor and social metaphor.(2)Seven out of the total eight metaphor categories and nine of fourteen conceptual metaphors are shared by Chinese corpus and American corpus,which indicates the specific metaphors used by Chinese and American heavy industry companies to construct environment image are quite different,but their cognitions towards environment are still similar on some level.The shared cognitions,to some degree,represent much of the universality in the cognitions of human being towards environment.Economic metaphor category appears in a relatively high frequency in both Chinese corpus and American corpus.Taking frequency as the yardstick,the first three metaphor categories appearing in Chinese corpus are conflict metaphor category,economic metaphor category and entertainment metaphor category;the categories ranking in the first three in American corpus are economic metaphor category,power metaphor category and human metaphor category.As for the total frequency of environment-related metaphor usage,the metaphors in Chinese corpus are more than that in American corpus,which is partly due to the conventionalized metaphor expression �protect environment� in the Chinese language.While the number of types of metaphor keywords in American corpus is much bigger than that in Chinese corpus,which shows the flexibility and diversity of metaphor usage in American corpus.Besides,the conflict metaphor category has an extremely high frequency in Chinese corpus,and the building metaphor is the metaphor category solely existing in Chinese corpus.While power metaphor is a distinctive metaphor used in American corpus,and the business metaphor in economic metaphor category is a unique in American corpus.(3)The main social and cultural factors behind the metaphor usage in Chinese corpus are: strong uncertainty avoidance,long term,restraint,collectivism and Chinese unique building culture,as well as the increasing attention to people's livelihood and health care reform in China.While the influencing factors in American corpus are: individualism,weak uncertainty avoidance,short term,short power distance as well as business culture,journey culture,sport culture.Cognitions towards environment of Chinese and American heavy industry companies have their own advantages and disadvantages respectively,which can provide reference for each other.The above findings changed to some extent the research status of lacking empirical foundation of environment metaphor.The companies' cognition towards environment shown through qualitative analysis functions as contrast and reference for companies to change attitude and resets a proper cognition towards environment.At the same time,the basis and evidence for government guidance and supervision of relevant companies are correspondingly provided.Searching for the cultural and social roots under these cognitions means to find the nurturing soil of improper cognitions towards environment,which is critical in solving the problems fundamentally.Still,the limitations of this research also offer lessons and inspiration for future study.