Article published In:
Metaphor and the Social WorldVol. 14:1 (2024) ► pp.130–153
The diachronic and cross-linguistic use of trade metaphors in U.S.-China governmental discourse
A socio-cognitive approach
This article compares diachronic and cross-linguistic uses of source domains for framing the target domain of
trade in governmental discourses under the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Jiang Zemin, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping.
Taking a socio-cognitive approach, we examine trade metaphor use across time periods (1993–1997 vs. 2017–2021) and languages
(American English vs. Mandarin Chinese) in nationally dominant discourses. At the micro-level of trade corpora, both the
quantitative and qualitative analyses show that the higher-level source domains (e.g., building) and their
(re)constructed lower-level source domains (e.g., cornerstone vs. pillar) are semantic fields whose use varies
with discourse contexts. The usages of the distinct lower-level source domains highlight divergent cognitive forms of trade
ideologies, which are embedded in dynamic political structures; they help reveal the implicit trade relations and ideological
motivations at the macro-level of trade discourse contexts. The macro-level analyses reveal that nationally dominant discourses
are constructed around domestic and global interests, and that power relations are (re)constructed diachronically and challenged
transnationally through dominant discursive practices.
Keywords: trade metaphor, source domain, corpus, governmental discourse, social cognition, dominant discourse, trade relations
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Source domains in metaphor theories and (political-)economic discourse analysis
- 3.Theoretical framework
- 4.Corpus and coding method
- 5.Results and analysis
- 5.1A diachronic perspective
- 5.1.1The Clinton era vs. the Trump era
- 5.1.2The Jiang era vs. the Xi era
- 5.2A cross-linguistic perspective
- 5.2.1The Clinton-Jiang trade dispute
- 5.2.2The Trump-Xi trade dispute
- 5.1A diachronic perspective
- 6.Discussion and conclusion
- Notes
-
References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
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