A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Sports News From The Perspective Of Critical Metaphor Analysis

Metaphor research is one of the important research fields in contemporary linguistics.Metaphor is not only a rhetorical device,but also a way of thinking.Among many scholars’ studies from different perspectives,critical metaphor analysis is a new development direction.At present,scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on its application in political discourse,but seldom on sports discourse.The successful holding of the Beijing Winter Olympics is conducive to the development of winter sports,which is of great significance to improving the physical fitness of the whole people and promoting the Olympic spirit.Therefore,the domestic and foreign news media have carried out a large number of reports on it.This thesis collected 153 sports news reports about the Beijing Winter Olympics from February 4,2022 to February 20,2022 from the official websites of China Daily and Cable News Network(CNN).Through analysis,this study has the following findings:(1)China Daily mainly uses three conceptual metaphors,namely,WAR metaphor,JOURNEY metaphor,and SHOW metaphor.The three main conceptual metaphors used by CNN are WAR metaphor,JOURNEY metaphor,and SHOW metaphor.(2)The main conceptual metaphors used by China Daily and CNN in the Beijing Winter Olympics report are the same,and the metaphorical mapping mechanism is also roughly the same.However,the choice and use of metaphors in Chinese and American corpora have different emphasis.Through the interpretation of metaphor,it is concluded that in the process of constructing the mapping mechanism of metaphor between China and the United States,the target domain corresponding to the same source domain is also different.(3)The Chinese media is committed to promoting the athletes’ spirit of transcending themselves,while the United States focuses on expressing the athletes’ desire to defeat their opponents through aggressive words.This highlights the belligerent image of the United States.According to the metaphorical discourse model,we can find the reasons for the above similarities and differences from four aspects: experiential factor,historical factor,cultural factor and ideological factor.The similarities of metaphor use come from similar life experiences,while the differences come from different historical backgrounds,cultural values and ideologies.The Winter Olympic sports news written by the media of China and the United States has played a publicity role.It can be seen that the Chinese media tend to express positive emotions,while the United States emphasizes aggression and transmits certain negative emotions.This study not only promotes the application of critical metaphor analysis in comparative study of the two countries’ discourses,enriches the research methods of sports news,but also helps news media people improve the methods of external communication,and readers remain rational and critical thinking in a complex information world.