A Cognitive Study on Conceptual Metaphors of Economic Reports in The Economist

摘 要：In traditional linguistic theories，metaphor has been perceived as a kind of rhetorical device and one of the characteristic features of language，which is just an ornament and embellishment.Metaphors We Live By，co-authored by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in 1980，changes peoples opinions of metaphor.Metaphor is not only a figure of speech，but also a cognitive mode of thinking. Since then，people stepped into a whole new phase of understanding metaphor. In modern theories of metaphor，metaphor is pervasive in daily life. It is reflected in language and affects peoples thoughts and actions.“The ordinary conceptual system of human being is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”（Lakoff & Johnson，1980： 1）This dissertation intends to analyze conceptual metaphors in economic reports based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory.

關(guān)鍵詞：The Economist；conceptual metaphor；cognition；economic reports

中圖分類(lèi)號(hào)：G212；H05 文獻(xiàn)標(biāo)識(shí)碼：A 收稿日期：2018-03-06

作者簡(jiǎn)介：李思恒（1989—），女，廣東茂名人，廣東石油化工學(xué)院外國(guó)語(yǔ)學(xué)院外語(yǔ)系教師，講師，碩士研究生，研究方向：翻譯、二語(yǔ)習(xí)得、文學(xué)。

Nowadays，with the rapid growth of economy， especially the economic globalization，financial activities have exerted great influence on peoples daily life. People begin to pay attention to economic reports and try to learn the real economic situation from them. The Economist，founded in 1843，which was famous for reporting from special and globalization perspective， attracts peoples attention. The number of studies on metaphors in economic reports has increased greatly in recent years. However， compared with traditional metaphor theories，the Cognitive Linguistic Theory can explain the functions and mechanism of conceptual metaphors better.

This dissertation aims to help readers to read and understand economic reports and figure out the trends of economy. Hopefully，the findings in the study can be applied to news reporting and English teaching.

Ⅰ.Introduction

1.Background

News are very important，they affect peoples daily life in every aspect including economy，politics，culture， sports and so on.People are exposed to a great amount of news from news broadcast，newspapers and the internet. A lot of information can be obtained from those sources.One can learn what is going on in the whole world through news.As a result，news reading is a significant way for people to know something about the world. In the past，people who read financial and economic reports were economists and commentators.The rapid development of economy，especially the globalization arouses peoples interest in economic reports. They need to keep a close eye on the current trends of the economy because of the fierce competition. The Economist，launched in 1843 in London by James Wilson，is one of the most influential economic journals in the world. It is well known for its humorous and sarcastic language style. None of the reports are signed，because the editors believe that what matter are the reports themselves instead of their writers. With its insightful reports，The Economist is getting more and more attention from home and abroad.However，many technical terms in economic reports are too obscure for ordinary readers.So it is necessary for reporters to find a way to make those words more understandable. Therefore， using metaphor comes out as an effective way to achieve that goal and many researches have been done to explore the advantages of using metaphors in economic reports.

In the Cognitive Linguistics Theory， metaphor is a mode of thinking and acting rather than a figure of speech. It refers to explaining something in terms of another， which helps to comprehend the reports better. Besides， when readers try to understand the metaphors in economic reports， they are also figuring out the mapping processes from source domains to target domains.

The dissertation aims to use the Cognitive Linguistic Theory to uncover the functions and working mechanism of metaphors in economic reports and the mapping processes. Verifying the view that cognition plays an important role in the emergence and understanding of metaphors is another focus of this dissertation. It is expected to provide some suggestions for readers to digest economic reports easily and offer certain useful advice on news writing and English teaching.

2.Significance of the Research

The research undertaken in this dissertation is significant in the follow aspects.

Firstly， financial and economic reports have begun to get concerns from more people. A considerable amount of reports can be seen in newspapers， broadcast and the internet. But not many publications give advice for non-professional economy readers to comprehend the technical terms in reports. Some of them just tell the readers that it is necessary to know the metaphors. However， they do not draw a conclusion about the comprehending patterns of metaphors， with which readers can save lots of time while reading economic reports.

Secondly， viewing conceptual metaphors from the cognitive linguistic perspective makes researchers begin to take metaphor as a cognitive method and analyze the use of metaphor in economic reports at syntactical and textual levels instead of lexical level.

Thirdly， the results of studying conceptual metaphors can give some instructions for reporters when they want their reports to tell the truth and at the same time make them reader-friendly.

3.Methodology

This dissertation is going to do a cognitive study on the conceptual metaphors in economic reports. The research method in the dissertation is qualitative and it is data-based. Observation is the way the author uses to obtain the data. “The examples will be analyzed and interpreted according to the context of situation. The research paradigm is therefore exploratory-interpretive and it employs a non-experimental method and yields qualitative data and results. The analysis will be an interpretive one.” （Huang & Ghadessy， 2008： 49）

Twenty reports are chosen randomly in The Economist. 315 metaphors are picked from those reports. Firstly， all the metaphors are sorted out and divided into ten categories according to different target domains. They are ECONOMY as PERSON，ECONOMY as WAR， ECONOMY as ANIMALS/PLANTS， ECONOMY as JOURNEY，ECONOMY as BUILDING，ECONOMY as SPACE， ECONOMY as CONTAINER， ECONOMY as MACHINE，ECONOMY as LIQUID and ECONOMY as WEATHER. Secondly， the author records the frequency of occurrences of different target domains. Thirdly， the dissertation chooses one of them as a case study and uses the established theoretical model to explain the mapping processes. At last， conclusions are drawn and revealed.

Ⅱ.Theoretical Framework

“Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought and practice. It is concerned with investigating the relationship between human language， the mind and socio-physical experience. ” （Evans， Bergen & Zinken，2006：1）Evans et al. （ibid.： 5） indicate that the Conceptual Metaphor Theory was one of the earliest and most important theories to take a cognitive semantic approach. For a long time in the development of the cognitive linguistics，it was one of the dominant theories and despite its limitations，it still remains an important perspective.

1.Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Metaphor is more than a kind of linguistic phenomenon. In fact， it is a perceptual and conceptualizing tool for people to know the world. Metaphors in language come from the metaphorical thinking processes and reflect the working processes of the mind. Metaphor is a powerful instrument for us to comprehend the unknown world or reacquaint the known world. “Conceptual Metaphor Theory has been highly influential both within cognitive linguistics and within the cognitive and social sciences， particularly in neighboring disciplines like cognitive psychology and anthropology.”（Evans & Green，2006： 296）

（1）The unidirectionality of metaphor.Evans and Green （2006： 296） said that an important observation made by conceptual metaphor theorists is that conceptual metaphors are unidirectional. This means that the mapping processes of metaphors are from a source domain to a target domain，but it cannot go the other way around. For instance， when ARGUMENT is conceptualized in terms of WAR， WAR cannot be structured in terms of ARGUMENT. The process of argument is a battle while a real fight between two parties in the battle field is not a conversation. Hence the terms of target domains and source domains encode the unidirectional nature of the mapping.

Evans and Green （2006： 296） illustrate that the unidirectionality still works even when two different metaphors share the same domains. They use PEOPLE ARE MACHINES （ibid.： 297） and MACHINES ARE PEOPLE （ibid.： 297） as examples.

PEOPLE ARE MACHINES：

a.John always gets the highest scores in mathematics； hes a human calculator.

b.Hes so efficient； hes just a machine！

c.Hes had a nervous breakdown.

MACHINES ARE PEOPLE：

a.I think my computer hates me； it keeps deleting my data.

b.This car has a will of its own.

c.I dont think my car wants to start this morning.

Although these two metaphors seem to be the mirror image of one another， it can be found that the mappings are totally different. In PEOPLE ARE MACHINES， the non-stop-working quality and functions of machines are mapped onto people while as far as MACHINES ARE PEOPLE is concerned， the temperament and the love and hatred feelings of people are mapped onto machines. This shows that even they have the same two domains， mappings are different. Thus， each metaphor is dissimilar with others.

（2）Motivation for target and source.The prevalent explanation for the motivation for target domains and source domains is that target concepts tend to be more abstract and lack physical characteristics. They are often higher-order concepts and related to more complex experiential knowledge structures，for example，LOVE.On the contrary，source domains are more specific and visual，JOURNEY，for instance. So target domains need metaphorical conceptualizations. The need gives rise to the motivation for target and source.

（3）Metaphor and image schemas.

“Subsequent to the development of the Images Schema Theory， the idea that certain concepts were image-schematic in nature was exploited by Conceptual Metaphor Theory. ”（Evans & Green，2006：300） Besides，Lakoff and Johnson （1980：207） argue that image schemas can serve as source domains for metaphoric mappings. Image schemas are related to the pre-conceptual embodied experience. They are backbones of a series of similar activities and used to organize peoples experience and connect them together. Image schemas can be mapped onto abstract concepts and thus be used to form abstract concepts of human beings.

（4）Invariance.“There appear to be certain restrictions in terms of which source domains can serve particular target domains， as well as constraints on metaphorical entailments that can apply to particular target domains.” （Evans & Green，2006：301） That is what Lakoff called invariance principle. Lakoff （1993） explains that “metaphorical mappings preserve the image schemas of the source domain， in a way consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain”. What the invariance principle does is to make sure that the image schemas and structures are the same throughout the whole mapping process. Moreover， the structure of source domains must be consistent with target domains. This constrains potentially incompatible mappings. Therefore， the metaphoric entailments that are incompatible with the target domains will fail to map during the process.

Ⅲ.Discussion

1.Introduction

For decades， scholars and linguistics have done a variety of researches regarding conceptual metaphors from the cognitive perspective， which has been elaborated in Chapter Two. In this chapter， the author concentrates on the practical analysis of the metaphors in economic reports and gives detailed explanations of the mapping processes of metaphors.

2. Overall Study： Data Analysis

The author collects 315 metaphors from The Economist and groups them into ten typical types of conceptual metaphors according to the conceptual metaphor theory. They are PERSON， JOURNEY， WAR， SPACE， ANIMALS/PLANTS， CONTAINER， LIQUID， WEATHER， BUILDING and MACHINE metaphor. To depict them clearly， the data are shown in Table 1.

From the table above， conclusion can be made as follows.

（1）Types of metaphor.There are ten typical types of metaphors that are very common in economic reports. They are sorted according to different source domains. They are PERSON， JOURNEY，WAR，SPACE，ANIMALS/PLANTS，CONTAINER，LIQUID， WEATHER，BUILDING and MACHINE.

（2）Uneven frequency of occurrences of different metaphors.Each type of metaphor has its own frequency of occurrences in economic reports. Among the ten source domains， PRSON， JOURNEY and WAR contribute to the majority of the total data. This means that reporters often use PERSON， JOURNEY and WAR to describe the characteristics of economy.

3. Case Study： ECONOMY as PERSON

People are usually self-centered. When people try to explore the unknown world or explain something， they tend to use themselves as reference objects and acquaint the unfamiliar objects with what they know.

（1）Data analysis.In order to understand them better，I divide the PERSON metaphors into three sub-categories. They are entities， quality and functions. Entities stand for nouns， quality are usually adjectives or adverbs and functions refer to verbs. The data is shown in Table 2.

From the table bellow， it can be found that the functions of person are often used as metaphors to describe economy. In other words， most of the ECONOMY as PERSON metaphors are expressed by verbs. Using verbs can depict the economy trend more vividly and reduce the amount of obscure terms for readers.

The following are some sentences that contain the PERSON metaphors. They are listed according to different sub-categories.

The entities of PERSON metaphor in ECONOMY：

a.“The obvious answer is to increase its size， but the fund has an inherent weakness.” （Net.2.）

b.“The hedge-fund industry needs to produce outsize returns for the rest of 2011 if it is to restore its reputation.” （Net.10.）

c.“And illiquidity is a symptom of concerns about solvency.” （Net.11.）

d.“The pain may be most intense in southern Europe， where the pressure for austerity is greatest.” （Net.9.）

e.“This particular specter hails from 2008， as plunging stock-markets and worries about the health of the banking system call to mind events of three years ago.” （Net.1.）

f.“Two more cajas have been granted an extension but will also fall into state hands if they cant find private capital by the end of this month.” （Net.4.）

g.“Spain will probably get a new government next month； its problems are very long in the tooth.” （Net.4.）

h.“That makes Mr. Deaton skeptical of campaigns by some economists to put‘happinessdata at the heart of policymaking.” （Net.4.）

The quality of PERSON metaphor in ECONOMY：

a.“A desperate Greek government is pursuing the idea， too.” （Net.1.）

b.“An underlying rationale for Eurobonds is that the public finances of the euro area as a whole look quite respectable.”（Net.2.）

c.“In this anxious market environment， people lose their rationality.” （Net.13.）

d.“That means French banks are relatively vulnerable to the sorts of system-wide freezes that occurred in credit markets in the aftermath of Lehmans failure in 2008.” （Net.13.）

e.“In 2009 Barclays， a capital-hungry， British bank， agreed to sell its investment-management unit.” （Net.8.）

f.“Panicked banks and governments， including the Federal Reserve， JPMorgan Chase， UBS and the Bank of Ireland， turned to the company for help in evaluating illiquid portfolios.” （Net.8.）

g.“Or will a sluggish economic recovery， which has left over 14m Americans out of work， doom him to defeat in November 2012.” （Net.9.）

h.“With interest rates close to zero， money-market funds cannot offer a decent return.” （Net.7.）

The functions of PERSON metaphor in ECONOMY：

a.“Diaspora bonds will face obstacles.” （Net.1.）

b.“The study found that companies caught up in mere accounting scandals saw their shares drop by an average of 8.8% over the six months on either side of the incident.” （Net.2.）

c.“Collapsing share prices tell only part of the story. ”（Net.2.）

d.“The reason for the difference is that Western markets rely on contracts being enforced by courts and on investors， suppliers and customers all acting on the basis of audited accounts.”（Net. 2.）

e.“The ECB can soothe markets by buying bonds， but beyond certain point such purchases threaten its independence.”（Net. 2.）

f.“The question for Germany in particular is whether this is a price worth paying to save the euro.”（Net. 2.）

g.“Hedge funds have seduced many an investor.”（Net.10.）

h.“They had just witnessed‘the greatest sudden burst of volatility ever.”

（Net.10.）

The above examples mainly show the characteristics of human beings. People have hands， hearts， and reputation and so on. “The hands of the government” can refer to the interference of the government in economy. Sometimes， people get sick and become sluggish or weak， so does economy. When economy is going through a hard time and entering into a recession， it will become weak and vulnerable. But after a period of adjustment， it will recover from the illness and be strong and thriving again.

（2）Mapping process from PERSON to ECONOMY.It has been mentioned in Chapter Three that the mapping processes of metaphors are projecting the characteristics of source domains onto target domains. When people want to comprehend some metaphorical terms， they first understand them with their basic knowledge and physical experience. And then they combine their knowledge and experience with the terms and find the similarities between them. At last， metaphorical terms are being understood.

The author takes the entity “death” as an example. The mapping processes of ECONOMY as PERSON metaphors can be illustrated in Figure bellow.

The figure is a general picture of how entities， relationship， features and inference pattern of the source domains map onto the target domains. There are four steps in the mapping process.

Step 1： Mapping of the entities from PERSON domain to ECONOMY domain.

The entities of a person are mapped onto the economy domain. There are certain entities about a person， for example，“death”， it usually stands for the closure or bankruptcy of a company. In the meantime，“health” is often used to refer to the development of economy while “recovery”means the economy is in good condition again and gets more profits.

Step 2： Mapping of the relationship from PERSON domain to ECONOMY domain.

The relationship between people and other objects is mapped onto economy domain. People can have various relationships with a diverse range of objects. For instance， “angry” not only can describe that one is mad at somebody， but also can be a metaphor to explain the unstable economy trend. “Being threatened” states that someone is being menaced by others. But if economy is being threatened， it may show that some unfavorable factors are doing harm to the development of economy.

Step 3： Mapping of the features from PERSON domain to ECONOMY domain.

Features of human being are mapped onto the economy domain. Good conditions of economy are often related to the good shape of people. When people would like to express that economy is thriving day by day， “strong” is used. Similarly， recession of economy is related to sickness and diseases. “Vulnerable” “weak”“exhausted” and “sluggish” are features of both sick people and the bad states of economy. If a company is not able to make ends meet， it will be like a person who is going to die and cannot make any profit.

Step 4： Mapping of inference pattern from PERSON domain to ECONOMY domain.

When the mapping processes are being dealt with， the inference pattern is involved， too. This implies that the logical inferences of people are applied to economy. If a person caught a cold， a doctor will be needed. So does economy. If the unemployment rate keeps increasing and many companies are bankrupt， governments need to take some effective measures to boost the economy.

Following the Invariance Principle， different stages and features of person are mapped onto economy domain. Meanwhile， “the principle of Target Domain Overrides determines that only the necessary properties and structures of person are made use of during the mapping process. ” （Ma，2007） Thus， not everything about person is mapped onto the economy domain.

4.Summary

It can be concluded that all the metaphors consist of three elements： a source domain， a target domain and a mapping process. The mapping can be divided into four steps， which are mapping of entities， mapping of relationship， mapping of features and mapping of inference pattern. Besides， with the Invariance Principle and Target Domain Override， only the features that are relevant can be mapped onto the target domains. Metaphors and metaphorical mappings are not arbitrary. They are based on peoples physical experience and the understanding of the physical world.

Ⅳ.Conclusion

In this dissertation，I select 315 metaphors from The Economist and groups them into ten categories. The frequency of occurrences of each metaphor has been calculated and the ECONOMY as PERSON metaphor is chosen as a case study to analyze its mapping process. So far， this dissertation has answered the questions that are proposed in the Introduction part.

In response to the first question， ten types of metaphors are commonly seen in economic reports：ECONOMY as PERSON，ECONOMY as JOURNEY， ECONOMY as WAR，ECONOMY as SPACE，ECONOMY as ANIMALS/PLANTS，ECONOMY as CONTAINER， ECONOMY as LIQUID，ECONOMY as WEATHER，ECONOMY as BUILDING and ECONOMY as MACHINE.Among them，ECONOMY as PERSON occupies the largest proportion of all metaphors. ECONOMY as JOURNEY comes the next，and ECONOMY as WAR is the third.

The second question is about the mapping processes from source domains to target domains. The mapping processes are comprehended based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. During the mapping， entities， relationship， features and inference pattern of source domains are mapped onto target domains. Those elements must be the same from the beginning to the end of the processes. But not all parts of source domains are mapped，only the necessary parts are involved.

To sum up， conceptual metaphors in economic reports come from the mutual experience of human beings. People get to know better about the abstract concepts through the entities in the physical world.

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