A Contrastive Study Of Metaphor Constructions Of The “Belt And Road” News In Chinese And British Mainstream Media From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

BRI,proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013,attracted extensive attentions of all fields,among which BRI news has been the heated target.A variety of researches laid their emphasis on the metaphorical constructions in BRI news.While the majority of studies are conducted from Conceptual Metaphor,few realize that Conceptual Blending has a stronger explanatory power because it can well reveal the dynamic nature of the online meaning construction processes of metaphors.This study selects China Daily,The Guardian,The Independent,The Times and Daily Mail as sources,and uses Antconc 3.5.8 to self-build two corpus.Under the four types of conceptual integration networks,the emergent structures of the high-frequency metaphors in BRI news are explored via the dynamic processes of composition,completion and elaboration.The similarities and differences of metaphor constructions between these media are therefore observed and interpreted.The findings are given: 1)All the four conceptual integration network models are found in Chinese and British media,among which the single-scope networks occur the most,implying that conventional metaphors are popular in BRI news.The low frequency of double-scope networks indicates that both media rarely use novel metaphors.2)Through the meaning constructions of FRIENDSHIP,STAGE,JOURNEY and BUILDING Metaphors,it is seen that both of the media emphasize that BRI is an initiative for economic cooperation,and a co-existence of both opportunity and challenge.Differently,when constructing the meanings of WAR,HUMAN and ECONOMIC Metaphors,Chinese media objectively describe that BRI is beneficial for mutual development,while British media suspect the win-win objectives of BRI.3)Considering the ideological values,Chinese media insist that BRI is a win-win path of peaceful development.Although British media express their support,they implicitly worry that BRI may pose a threat to their development.A CBT exploration into the metaphorical representations in Chinese and British media can well reveal the meaning construction mechanism and is of great significance for readers to understand metaphors in BRI news texts.