The Cognitive Metaphorical Mapping in Commercial Media News Reports
This chapter conducts an analysis of metaphors in both American and Chinese news reports on the foundation of the mapping process as well as the dynamic meaning construction of the conventional metaphor and novel metaphor correspondingly. Other major aspe
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The Cognitive Metaphorical Mapping in Commercial Media News Reports
Abstract This chapter conducts an analysis of metaphors in both American and Chinese news reports on the foundation of the mapping process as well as the dynamic meaning construction of the conventional metaphor and novel metaphor correspondingly. Other major aspects of this chapter that have been adequately analyzed are the terms of metaphorical expressions, features of the target and source domains, the manner of delivery for abstract concepts on concrete subjects, the features of the input spaces as well as the formation of the generic and blended spaces. From the gathered data, there are 298 Chinese and 248 English metaphorical expressions identified. Instances of metaphors in the Chinese corpus are interpreted and analyzed. Although (Goatly in The language of metaphors. Routledge, London, 1997) believes that metaphoricity is a matter of degree, and metaphors are divided into five categories, namely active, tired, sleeping, buried, and dead metaphors, the author follows (Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press, London, 2003) classification on metaphors in this study of the book. This chapter starts from the examination of the conventional and novel metaphors emerging in the news reports that illustrate news writers’ cognitive processes. In addition, similarities and differences between the two languages are detected and discussed. Keywords Metaphorical mapping · Conventional metaphors · Novel metaphors
4.1 Analysis of Conventional Metaphors Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 140) argue that conventional metaphors “structure the ordinary conceptual system of our culture, which is reflected in our everyday language”. Having combined the two proposals on conventional metaphors, the author conducts a thorough quantitative identification and calculation, which exists in both Chinese and English data. Initially, the author expatiates on those conventional metaphors and their mapping process.
© Science Press 2020 W. Yang, A Cross-Cultural Study of Commercial Media Discourses, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8617-0_4
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4.1.1 The HUMAN BEING Metaphor In Greek, the renowned philosopher Protagoras once put that “man is the measure of all things” (Wang 2007: 181). The thought signifies that humans tend to regard themselves as the center of the world. With this belief, people are more likely to perceive abstract and obscure objects in terms of human beings, especially, by applying the features of humans to those elements that are difficult to comprehend. Table 4.1 and Table 4.2 illustrate the conceptual elements that are sorted by basic mappings. Table 4.1 Metaphorical representations of the HUMAN BEING metaphor in Chinese news reports Conventional metaphor—The HUMAN BEING metaphor
Metaphorical representations
Numbers
PHYSICAL Being
动脉 main artery
13
INTELLIGENT Being
INTELLIGENT Being
肌理 texture
7
基因 gene
5
手脚 hands and feet/limbs
3
奋斗 struggle/strive for
3
经历
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