Cover not available
Article published In:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 21:2 (2023) ► pp.411–443

economy is human

A corpus-based comparative study in English and Chinese economic media discourse

| Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
| Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
| Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Utilizing the framework of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), this paper presents a corpus-based multi-level comparative study of the economy is human metaphor in English and Chinese economic media discourse. While the results indicate a considerable sharing of their respective conceptual structures of “human body”, “human condition” and “human relationship”, they do reveal some differences in terms of their preference and the associated metaphorical expressions. The similarities detected can possibly be attributed to the similar body, physiological function and social attributes all human beings share, which then work as the source for drawing inferences about the economy. The differences however are also likely to be derived from the different saliences of human experience which characterize the English and Chinese social-cultural contexts. Another possible explanation for these differing culturally-sourced linguistic metaphors may well be media language and its idiosyncratic stylistic features.
Keywords: corpora, economic media discourse, multi-level comparative study, Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Research design
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Corpus data
    • 3.3Research procedure
      • A.Metaphor identification and annotation
      • B.Metaphor categorization and calculation
    • 3.4Reliability
  • 4.Results and analysis
    • 4.1Conceptual frames within human domain
    • 4.2Inference pattern
      • 4.2.1Frame HUMAN BODY
      • 4.2.2Frame human condition
      • 4.2.3Frame human relationship
    • 4.3Linguistic level
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 24 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00140.xu
References
Arrese, Á., & Vara-Miguel, A.
(2016) A comparative study of metaphors in press reporting of the Euro crisis. Discourse & Society, 27 (2), 133–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burns, A., & Mitchell, W. C.
(1946) Measuring business cycles. New York: NBER.Google Scholar
Castaño, E., Verdaguer, I., Laso, N. J., & Ventura, A.
(2014) Economy is a living organism: Metaphorical expressions in a learner corpus of English. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27 (2), 323–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, J.
(2004) Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, J., & Ennis, T.
(2001) A comparative study of metaphor in Spanish and English financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes, 20 (3), 249–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, J., & Musolff, A.
(2003) ‘Battered hero’ or ‘innocent victim’? A comparative study of metaphors for euro trading in British and German financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes, 22 (2), 153–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chung, S.-F.
(2008) Cross-linguistic comparisons of the MARKET metaphors. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 4–2 1(2008), 141–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chung, S.-F., Ahrens, K., & Huang, C.-R.
(2003) Economy is a person: A Chinese-English corpora and ontological-based comparison using the conceptual mapping model. Paper presented at the Proceedings of Research on Computational Linguistics Conference XV.
Deignan, A.
(1995) Collins Cobuid English Guides 7: Metaphor. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
(2003) Metaphorical expressions and culture: An indirect link. Metaphor and Symbol, 18 (4), 255–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Metaphor and corpus linguistics (Vol. 61). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) The cognitive view of metaphor: Conceptual metaphor theory. In L. Cameron & R. Maslen (Eds.), Metaphor analysis: Research practice in Applied Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities (pp. 44–56). London & Oakville: Equinox.Google Scholar
Deignan, A., Gabryś, D., & Solska, A.
(1997) Teaching English metaphors using cross-linguistic awareness-raising activities. ELT journal, 51 (4), 352–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dorst, A. G.
(2011) Personification in discourse: linguistic forms, conceptual structures and communicative functions. Language and literature, 20 (2), 113–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, G.
(2007) Mental Space. In D. Geeraert & H. Cuyckens (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 371–376). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M.
(2002) The way we think. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Fu, H.
(2000) The Zhou book of change. Shandong: Shandong Friendship Press.Google Scholar
Fukuda, K.
(2009) A comparative study of metaphors representing the US and Japanese economies. Journal of Pragmatics, 41 (9), 1693–1702. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goatly, A.
(1997) The language of metaphors. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grady, J. E.
(1997) Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphor and primary scenes. (Ph.D). University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M.
(2010) Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (3rd ed.). New York: Mcgraw-hill.Google Scholar
Hu, C., & Xu, Y.
(2017) A comparative study of ECONOMY metaphor based on Chinese and English media corpus. Foreign Language Teaching, 38 (5), 38–43.Google Scholar
Johnson, M.
(1987) The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: Chicago University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klamer, A., McCloskey, D. N., & Solow, R. M.
(1988) The consequence of economic rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z.
(2010) Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2015) Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020) Extended conceptual metaphor theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kramsch, C.
(2003) Metaphor and the subjective construction of beliefs. In P. Kalaja & A. M. F. Barcelos (Eds.), Beliefs about SLA (pp. 109–128). Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(1993) The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed.) (pp. 202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1996) Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.
(1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M.
(1989) More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: Chicago University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, D. N.
(1995) Metaphor economists live by. Social Research, 2 1, 215–227.Google Scholar
Mirowski, P.
(1991) More heat than light: Economics as social physics, physics as nature’s economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Musolff, A.
(2016) Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Pragglejaz Group
(2007) MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22 (1), 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T.
(2010) A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanowitsch, A., & Gries, S. T.
(2006) Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. In Trends in Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wang, H., Runtsova, T., & Chen, H.
(2013) Economy is an organism–A comparative study of metaphor in English and Russian economic discourse. Text & Talk, 33 (2), 259–288. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, A. E.
(2013) Metaphor, media, and the market. International journal of communication, 7 1, 1404–1717.Google Scholar
Yu, N., & Huang, J.
(2019) Primary metaphors across languages: Difficulty as weight and solidity. Metaphor and Symbol, 34 (2), 111–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yu, N., Yu, L., & Lee, Y. C.
(2017) Primary metaphors: Importance as size and weight in a comparative perspective. Metaphor and Symbol, 32 (4), 231–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar