A Study of Metaphor on Financial News Headlines from the Cognitive Perspective--A Case Study of Financial Times_英语论文

摘要

得益于经济全球化和信息化时代的迅猛发展，许多新生的财经概念随之诞生，但这些概念通常是抽象和缺乏普适性的，所以新闻业广泛运用隐喻来描述这些概念以解释经济的运行与发展。本文将在概念隐喻理论框架下探讨《金融时报》财经新闻标题里的认知隐喻。

本文随机选取了2018年下半年内33期《金融时报》中的180条标题进行研究，研究发现：1）十种概念隐喻常被应用于财经新闻的标题中，其中上下隐喻、战争隐喻和人类隐喻出现频率较高，且这些隐喻派生出来的亚范畴隐喻亦会服务于新闻主旨。2）财经新闻标题中的隐喻具有多样性，且单一标题中亦可能存在多种隐喻。3）以天气为源域的概念隐喻在财经新闻标题中非常突出，文本的文化背景对概念隐喻呈现的类型有着深远影响。4）概念隐喻的应用对培养经济思维，理解经济现象，提高新闻普适性，促进语言教学和增进跨文化交流和跨文化商务往来有着积极意义。

关键词：认知  概念隐喻  财经新闻标题  

Abstract

Benefited from the overwhelming development of financial globalization and information, a bunch of new-born financial concepts emerged. These concepts, however, are abstract and lack of universality. Thus, journalism uses metaphors widely to describe economy’s operation and development. This paper would study the cognitive metaphors in financial news headlines from Financial Times within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory. 

In this paper 180 headlines, collected from 33 randomly selected newspapers in the second half of 2018 are conducted into the study. It is found that (1) ten kinds of conceptual metaphors are frequently applied in financial news headline among which up/down metaphor, war metaphor and human being metaphor appear the most, meanwhile these metaphors would derive subcategorized metaphors which also serve the news purpose; (2) financial news headline has its variety and several metaphors may exist in single headline; (3) conceptual metaphors with weather as source domain are striking in financial news headline, which signifies that cultural background of the text profoundly influences the presenting type of conceptual metaphor; (4) the application of conceptual metaphor plays a significant role in cultivating economic thinking, understanding economic phenomenon, improving news universality, promoting language teaching and learning, and boosting cross cultural communication and business contacts.

Key words: cognition  conceptual metaphor  financial news headline 

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction 1

1.1  Background Information 1

1.2  Purpose and Significance 1

1.3  Data Collection and Methodology 2

1.4  Structure 3

Chapter Two  Literature Review 4

2.1  Studies in Metaphor 4

2.2  Definition and Features of Financial News Headlines 5

2.3  Conceptual Metaphor in Financial Context 6

2.4  Summary 8

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework 9

3.1  Conceptual Metaphor Theory 9

3.2  Working Mechanism of Conceptual Metaphors 9

3.3  Classification of Conceptual Metaphors 10

3.4  Characteristics of Conceptual Metaphors 13

Chapter Four  Case Analysis of Conceptual Metaphor in Financial News Headlines 16

4.1  Overview of Financial Times 16

4.2  Data Analysis 16

4.3  The Ontological Metaphor 17

4.4  The Orientational Metaphor 20

4.5  The Structural Metaphor 22

4.6  Features of Conceptual Metaphors in Financial News Headlines 26 

4.7  Society Functions of Conceptual Metaphors in Financial News Headlines .27

Chapter Five  Conclusion 29

5.1  Findings 29

5.2  Limitations 30

Bibliography

Appendix

Acknowledgements