A Comparative Analysis On Conceptual Metaphors In Chinese And American Leaders’ Speeches From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor

With the development of society,exchanges and cooperation between countries are getting closer and closer.Politicians are paying more and more attention to public speeches in the international community,such as speeches at the United Nations.Politicians,especially leaders,hope to gain audience support through their speeches in order to achieve their political purposes of propaganda and diplomatic relations.In order to be better understood and accepted by the audience,politicians usually use some simple and vivid language to express those abstract political concepts.At this point,metaphor becomes their best choice.In this thesis,the author explored and analysed,1)What types of conceptual metaphors are used in Chinese and American leaders’ speeches.2)What are the similarities and differences in the use of conceptual metaphors in Chinese and American leaders’ speeches.3)According to CMA theory,what are the reasons for the similarities and differences in the use of metaphors.The corpus used in this thesis is selected from speeches delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Trump at the United Nations.The Chinese corpus is 9534 words,while the American corpus is 5646 words.Based on Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor theory,this thesis uses the Critical Metaphor Analysis(CMA)method proposed by Charteris Black to make a comparative analysis of metaphor in Chinese and American corpuses in three steps: metaphor recognition,metaphor interpretation and metaphor explanation.Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are applied in the research process.Research shows,1)Conceptual metaphor exists in a large number of political speeches in China and the United States.2)The metaphors used in Chinese Leader’political speeches mainly include: journey metaphors,human metaphors,school metaphors,etc.The metaphors used in American presidential political speeches mainly include war metaphors,human metaphors,journey metaphors and so on.3)Metaphor in the two corpuses has both similarities and differences.It is found that the differences in the use of these metaphors are mainly due to the differences in social culture and thethemes of speeches between the two countries.The comparative analysis of metaphors in leaders’ speeches between China and the United States from the perspective of critical metaphor is helpful to the further study of Chinese and American political culture and the translation of political discourse.In foreign language teaching,the analysis of the underlying socio-cultural basis of metaphor will help students understand the culture of the country and thus better understand and master the language.