A Study Of Canadian Media Reports About Confucius Institutes:A Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor

Confucius Institute has accomplished a dramatic development and has become the largest International cooperation project during the past decade,which has attracted wide attention of scholars at home and abroad.Research abroad mainly focuses on its goal,political,economical and cultural impact and domestic scholars mainly focus on its Chinese teaching,cultural communication and comparative research.Limited research has been conducted on the development of Confucius Institutes from the perspective of media reports.Media is one of the most important ways to get the public to know about Confucius Institutes.Take the “three big events” that happened in Canada opposing against the Confucius Institute as examples,whether the media report the events out of justice and fairness influences the public opinions.This paper collected the news about Confucius Institutes from two of the main Canadian media The Globe and Mail and CBC News,and analyze it from the perspective of conceptual metaphors.It extracts and analyzes the metaphorical expressions of Canadian media reports on the "three big events" of Confucius Institutes in order to provide reference for the spread of Confucius institutes.Based on Steen's principle identifying the structural metaphors,ontological metaphors and orientation metaphors with quantitative analysis,I calculated the frequency of the conceptual metaphor,then analyzed the metaphors with high frequency.A conclusion is made that Canadian media have a hidden negative attitude towards Confucius Institute.The Chinese and English news in China about the coverage of Confucius institutes can also be used to increase the application of conceptual metaphor.