A Study On Conceptual Metaphors In Economic Reports In The New York Times From The Perspective Of Cognitive Liguistics.pdf

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES *** TRIỆU KHÁNH TOÀN A STUDY ON CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN ECONOMIC REPORTS IN THE NE[.]

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES *** TRIỆU KHÁNH TOÀN A STUDY ON CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN ECONOMIC REPORTS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS NGHIÊN CỨU ẨN DỤ Ý NIỆM TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO VỀ KINH TẾ TRÊN TẠP CHÍ NEW YORK TIMES DƯỚI GĨC NHÌN CỦA NGÔN NGỮ HỌC TRI NHẬN M.A MAJOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Linguistics Code : 60.220.201 Supervisor : Dr Phạm Thị Thanh Thùy HANOI - 2016 CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled ―A Study on Conceptual Metaphor in Economic Reports in the New York Times from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics‖ is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of PostGraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Hanoi, 2016 Triệu Khánh Toàn i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT For the completion of this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable support from many people First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr Phạm Thị Thanh Thùy for her hearty guidance, valuable criticism, detailed comments and corrections, without which this work would not be completed My thanks also go to all my instructors in my M.A programs whose valuable support and knowledge have greatly contributed to the completion of this thesis Last but not least, I would love to show my gratitude to my family and friends who always give me endless encouragement Without all of them, this thesis can hardly be fulfilled ii ABSTRACT This paper critically analyses conceptual metaphors used in economic reports in the New York Times (2013-2014) from the perspective of cognitive linguistics The research aims at determining the frequency of conceptual metaphors used in economic reports, identifying the frequency of each source domain used to conceptualize the target domain of economy, and shedding light on the functions of conceptual metaphors in this field The research has found that due to its frequency, conceptual metaphor can partly feature economic reports Also, it is found that several domains such as A JOURNEY, WAR, A GAME AND SPORTS, A HUMAN BEING are more frequently used in the discussion of economic terms Furthermore, conceptual metaphors are expected to bring rhetorical effects, emotional value and conceptual function to the discourse iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Objectives and scope of the study 2.1 Objectives of the study 2.2 Scope of the study Significance of the study Research methodology 4.1 Research questions 4.2 Research approach 4.3 Data collection and analysis Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT 10 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 10 1.1 Cognitive linguistics 10 1.2 Metaphors 11 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 20 2.1 Study on conceptual metaphors 20 2.2 Study on conceptual metaphor in economic discourse 23 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 26 3.1 Research questions 26 3.2 Research methodology 27 3.2.1 Data and data collection 27 3.3 Research procedures 30 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 32 iv 4.1 Frequency of conceptual metaphors denoting ECONOMY in economic reports on New York Times 32 4.2 Frequency of different source domains in conceptual metaphors denoting ECONOMY in economic reports on The New York Times 37 4.3 Discussion on the value added by conceptual metaphors in business reports on New York Times 60 PART C: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 66 Research findings 66 Implications 68 2.1 Implications for translation and teaching translation 68 2.2 Implications for teachers and students 70 Limitations and suggestions for further study 71 3.1 Limitations 71 3.2 Suggestions for further study 72 REFERENCES 74 APPENDIX 78 List of economic reports from the New York Times 78 APPENDIX 80 QUESTIONNAIRE 80 v LIST OF TABLES The mappings of conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A Table JOURNEY Table The number of titles with conceptual metaphors 31 The frequency of conceptual metaphors denoting Table ECONOMY in the main part of economic reports on The 34 New York Times Table The number and percentage of conceptual metaphors 36 denoting ECONOMY with different source domains Table reasons for preference of the sentences with metaphorical expression vi 58 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale The study of metaphor has a long history and was first established by Aristotle who considers metaphors as a way of transferring names of two objects on a basis that they share some common features In other words, metaphors can be commonly seen as a way of referring to one thing under the name of another based on their similarities (Đỗ Hữu Châu, 2005) and the scope of study is limited to literature Until recently, a new wave of studying metaphors has been proposed on the foundation of cognitive linguistics This views metaphors as a popular phenomenon permeating all aspects of languages, not only in poems and the likes The concept of conceptual metaphor has been introduced then In contrast to the previous view on literature metaphors, the system of conceptual metaphors is created automatically, unconsciously and understandably without much effort (Trần Văn Cơ, 2007) Lakoff and Johnson‘s (1980) proposed a bright example of a conceptual metaphor, LOVE IS A JOURNEY This conceptual metaphor is made up of a fixed set of well-established mappings, which is illustrated in the table below: Source domain: JOURNEY mappings Target domain: LOVE TRAVELLERS  LOVERS VEHICLE  LOVE RELATIONSHIP JOURNEY  EVENTS IN THE RELATIONSHIP OBSTACLES ENCOUNTERED  DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED DECISIONS ABOUT  CHOICES ABOUT WHAT TO DO  GOALS OF THE RELATIONSHIP DIRECTION DESTINATION OF THE JOURNEY Table 1: The mappings of conceptual metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY Obviously, the more concrete domain of JOURNEY helps structure ideas belonging to the target domain of LOVE Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) also argue that knowledge of the sort specified by the conceptual metaphor is necessary for the creation and comprehension of conceptual metaphors That is to say, without such knowledge and previous experience, one would not be able to understand some concepts of the more abstract domain LOVE (Lakoff &Johnson, 1980) Similarly to the example proposed by Lakoff, many other cases of metaphors have been studied, contributing to the comparisons of metaphorical mechanism between two languages In Vietnam, Nguyễn Thị Kim Anh (2014) takes a deep look at the conceptual metaphor MARRIAGE IS A JOURNEY, which aims at facilitating the teaching of cultural aspects in foreign language teaching With the same purpose, an investigation into conceptual metaphors for life, death, and time in Vietnamese and English has been conducted by Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh (2010) One of the most favored target domains to be described through source domains is economy It is admitted that, the world economy has never failed to win people‘s attention though it has undergone numerous ups and downs in the last few decades Hence, the economic reports in newspapers, journals and magazines have proved themselves to be an essential part of the daily life For this reason, certain linguistic features are taken into great consideration in the production of reports and articles so that ideas can be effortlessly perceived in such an abstract and abstruse field Metaphor, one of the linguistics features, commonly occurs in economic reports for the reason that metaphors facilitate readers‘ understanding of the abstract domains by means of the concrete domains (Köveces, 2002) Within the business domain, conceptual metaphors are supposed to be of great popularity since the more abstract domain of economy should be conceptualized by a number of more concrete domains For example, we usually see such a metaphoric expression as seeing just one way for Greece to go: up (The New York Times, 2014) The example illustrates the use of the concrete domain of JOURNEY to structure ideas belonging to the domain of ECONOMY Studies on such use of metaphoric expressions have been of certain extensiveness Silva Bratož (2004) conducts a comparative study of metaphor in English and Slovene used in popular economic discourse The study aims to figure out the domains used business reports in both languages to conceptualize the domain of economy Similarly, Black and Ennis (2001) carry out another study of ... 1999) make a number of specific claims about conceptual metaphors One important among which is that conceptual metaphors usually build a linkage between a concrete domain and an abstract domain in. .. decide the value added by conceptual metaphors 4.3 Data collection and analysis This research is conducted mainly based on the primary data collected from economic reports of The New York Times and... outside the domain of language The second major hypothesis of the cognitive linguistic approach is embodied in Langacker‘s slogan (1987) ‗grammar is conceptualization.‘ A major aspect of human cognitive