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An Analysis of the war Metaphor in the Chinese Government White paper “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action”

Language and Cognitive Science / 2023,7(1): 52−68 / 2023-08-16 505 570

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• Authors: Yanan      Hou     
• Information:

  School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

• Keywords: effectsof metaphor; mapping theory; MIP; motivations for metaphor; self-built corpus
• Abstract: A salient example of the function of media is the government white paper “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action.” Metaphor is a kind of language phenomenon which exists pervasively in people’s lives. Based on the mapping theory of Lakoffand Johnson, this article analyzes the WAR metaphor in a government white paper and tries to explore the reasons for and effectsof using this metaphor. Based upon a small-sized corpus built on “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action,” I use the metaphor identification procedure (MIP to manually identify instances of metaphors in an initial analysis and then use AntConc to identify metaphors in a second analysis based on the context to improve the accuracy of the data. With empirical evidence, it is found that the WAR metaphor is more widely used in the white paper than other metaphor examples such as the TEST metaphor and the DEVIL metaphor. Then, representative metaphor examples are selected from the corpus to explore the mapping process of the WAR metaphor. Finally, this article points out the underlying historical and cognitive motivations for the wide use of the WAR metaphor and further analyzes its effects.The advantages include highlighting the Chinese nation’s spirit of solidarity and encouragement of people’s immediate action, while the disadvantages can be seen in the negative and violent nature of war.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.35534/lcs.0701003
• Cite:

  Yanan Hou． An Analysis of the war Metaphor in the Chinese Government White paper “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action”［J］．Language and Cognitive Science，2022，7（1）：52−68．