Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018)

Zimeng Pan

doi:doi:10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018)

Zimeng Pan

Published in Humanities and Social Sciences (Volume 10, Issue 3)

Received: 13 April 2022 Accepted: 19 May 2022 Published: 26 May 2022

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Abstract

Media reports are often analyzed as a specialized variety of discourse that may reflect the social and cultural values of a nation, and metaphors always function to enhance the effectiveness of media discourse. Metaphors in news have long been explored by sociolinguistic researchers, but diachronic studies that examine how metaphor use changes over time are still limited. Following a corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this study examined the metaphorical characterizations of corruption-related concepts in three English-language news media of China (Global Times, China Daily, and People’s Daily) over 12 years from 2007 to 2018. The findings can be summarized into the following four aspects: (1) The types of source domains were largely stable over time, i.e., WAR, POISON and DISEASE, DIRT, PLANT, and ANIMAL; (2) The mapping within a source domain changed diachronically; (3) Increased use of creative metaphors and enriched metaphorical depictions were found in the more recent years; and (4) The metaphors appeared to evoke more Chinese cultural schemas across time, which in turn provided contexts for further understandings of these metaphors. It is thus argued that the news discourse in China has been experiencing an ongoing process to employ more creative metaphors to express Chinese worldviews and cultural beliefs. It has also shown that a qualitative discourse analysis combined with quantitative corpus-assisted methods can provide effective research framework for an in-depth diachronic understanding of the changes in metaphor use. This study may be of assistance to researchers who are interested in media studies, sociolinguistics, and news writing.

Published in	Humanities and Social Sciences (Volume 10, Issue 3)
DOI	10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
Page(s)	134-141
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Metaphor, Cultural Schema, Media Discourse, Diachronic Study, Corpus

References

[1]	Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold.
[2]	van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News As Discourse. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Association.
[3]	Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[4]	Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
[5]	Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural Linguistics: The State of the Art. In: Shariﬁan, F. (Ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Singapore: Springer, pp. 1-28.
[6]	Polzenhagen, F. & Wolf, H. (2007). Culture-specific conceptualisations of corruption in African English: linguistic analyses and pragmatic applications. In: Sharifian, F. & Palmer, G. B. (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins, pp. 125-168.
[7]	Bratu, R. & Kažoka, I. (2018). Metaphors of corruption in the news media coverage of seven European countries. European Journal of Communication, 33 (1), pp. 57-72.
[8]	Jing-Schmidt, Z. & Peng, X. (2017). Winds and tigers: metaphor choice in China’s anti-corruption discourse. Lingua Sinica, 3 (2), pp. 1-26.
[9]	Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
[10]	Pan, Z. (2019). Struggling between national pride and personal empowerment: the language ideologies held by Chinese university students towards China English. Lingua, 227, pp. 102702.
[11]	Jensen, K. E. (2017). “Corpora and Cultural Cognition: How Corpus-Linguistic Methodology Can Contribute to Cultural Linguistics”. In: F. Shariﬁan, (Ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Singapore: Springer, pp. 411-432.
[12]	Preux, A. D. S & Blanco, O. M. (2021). The power of conceptual metaphors in the age of pandemic: the influence of the war and sport domains on emotions and thoughts. Language & Communication, 81 (2), pp. 37-47.
[13]	Dai, Q. (2002). Zhonghua Chengyu Cihai [Chinese Idiom Dictionary]. Beijing: Renmin Ribao Chubanshe [People’s Daily Press].
[14]	Berti, C. (2019). Rotten Apples or Rotten System? Media Framing of Political Corruption in New Zealand and Italy. Journalism Studies, 20 (11), pp. 1580-1597.
[15]	Charteris-Black, J. (2005). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 54.
[16]	Pan, Z. (2020). Culture-specific conceptualisations relating to corruption in China English. Lingua, 245, pp. 102948.
[17]	Littlemore, J. (2003). The Effect of Cultural Background on Metaphor Interpretation. Metaphor and Symbol, 18 (4), pp. 273-288.
[18]	Negro, I. (2015). ‘Corruption is Dirt’: Metaphors for Political Corruption in the Spanish Press. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 92 (3), pp. 213-238.

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Zimeng Pan. (2022). Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018). Humanities and Social Sciences, 10(3), 134-141. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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Zimeng Pan. Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018). Humanit. Soc. Sci. 2022, 10(3), 134-141. doi: 10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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Zimeng Pan. Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018). Humanit Soc Sci. 2022;10(3):134-141. doi: 10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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@article{10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15,
  author = {Zimeng Pan},
  title = {Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018)},
  journal = {Humanities and Social Sciences},
  volume = {10},
  number = {3},
  pages = {134-141},
  doi = {10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.hss.20221003.15},
  abstract = {Media reports are often analyzed as a specialized variety of discourse that may reflect the social and cultural values of a nation, and metaphors always function to enhance the effectiveness of media discourse. Metaphors in news have long been explored by sociolinguistic researchers, but diachronic studies that examine how metaphor use changes over time are still limited. Following a corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this study examined the metaphorical characterizations of corruption-related concepts in three English-language news media of China (Global Times, China Daily, and People’s Daily) over 12 years from 2007 to 2018. The findings can be summarized into the following four aspects: (1) The types of source domains were largely stable over time, i.e., WAR, POISON and DISEASE, DIRT, PLANT, and ANIMAL; (2) The mapping within a source domain changed diachronically; (3) Increased use of creative metaphors and enriched metaphorical depictions were found in the more recent years; and (4) The metaphors appeared to evoke more Chinese cultural schemas across time, which in turn provided contexts for further understandings of these metaphors. It is thus argued that the news discourse in China has been experiencing an ongoing process to employ more creative metaphors to express Chinese worldviews and cultural beliefs. It has also shown that a qualitative discourse analysis combined with quantitative corpus-assisted methods can provide effective research framework for an in-depth diachronic understanding of the changes in metaphor use. This study may be of assistance to researchers who are interested in media studies, sociolinguistics, and news writing.},
 year = {2022}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018)
AU  - Zimeng Pan
Y1  - 2022/05/26
PY  - 2022
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
DO  - 10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
T2  - Humanities and Social Sciences
JF  - Humanities and Social Sciences
JO  - Humanities and Social Sciences
SP  - 134
EP  - 141
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-8184
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
AB  - Media reports are often analyzed as a specialized variety of discourse that may reflect the social and cultural values of a nation, and metaphors always function to enhance the effectiveness of media discourse. Metaphors in news have long been explored by sociolinguistic researchers, but diachronic studies that examine how metaphor use changes over time are still limited. Following a corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this study examined the metaphorical characterizations of corruption-related concepts in three English-language news media of China (Global Times, China Daily, and People’s Daily) over 12 years from 2007 to 2018. The findings can be summarized into the following four aspects: (1) The types of source domains were largely stable over time, i.e., WAR, POISON and DISEASE, DIRT, PLANT, and ANIMAL; (2) The mapping within a source domain changed diachronically; (3) Increased use of creative metaphors and enriched metaphorical depictions were found in the more recent years; and (4) The metaphors appeared to evoke more Chinese cultural schemas across time, which in turn provided contexts for further understandings of these metaphors. It is thus argued that the news discourse in China has been experiencing an ongoing process to employ more creative metaphors to express Chinese worldviews and cultural beliefs. It has also shown that a qualitative discourse analysis combined with quantitative corpus-assisted methods can provide effective research framework for an in-depth diachronic understanding of the changes in metaphor use. This study may be of assistance to researchers who are interested in media studies, sociolinguistics, and news writing.
VL  - 10
IS  - 3
ER  -

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Author Information

Zimeng Pan

School of Foreign Languages, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China

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Zimeng Pan. (2022). Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018). Humanities and Social Sciences, 10(3), 134-141. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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ACS Style

Zimeng Pan. Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018). Humanit. Soc. Sci. 2022, 10(3), 134-141. doi: 10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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AMA Style

Zimeng Pan. Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018). Humanit Soc Sci. 2022;10(3):134-141. doi: 10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15

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@article{10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15,
  author = {Zimeng Pan},
  title = {Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018)},
  journal = {Humanities and Social Sciences},
  volume = {10},
  number = {3},
  pages = {134-141},
  doi = {10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.hss.20221003.15},
  abstract = {Media reports are often analyzed as a specialized variety of discourse that may reflect the social and cultural values of a nation, and metaphors always function to enhance the effectiveness of media discourse. Metaphors in news have long been explored by sociolinguistic researchers, but diachronic studies that examine how metaphor use changes over time are still limited. Following a corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this study examined the metaphorical characterizations of corruption-related concepts in three English-language news media of China (Global Times, China Daily, and People’s Daily) over 12 years from 2007 to 2018. The findings can be summarized into the following four aspects: (1) The types of source domains were largely stable over time, i.e., WAR, POISON and DISEASE, DIRT, PLANT, and ANIMAL; (2) The mapping within a source domain changed diachronically; (3) Increased use of creative metaphors and enriched metaphorical depictions were found in the more recent years; and (4) The metaphors appeared to evoke more Chinese cultural schemas across time, which in turn provided contexts for further understandings of these metaphors. It is thus argued that the news discourse in China has been experiencing an ongoing process to employ more creative metaphors to express Chinese worldviews and cultural beliefs. It has also shown that a qualitative discourse analysis combined with quantitative corpus-assisted methods can provide effective research framework for an in-depth diachronic understanding of the changes in metaphor use. This study may be of assistance to researchers who are interested in media studies, sociolinguistics, and news writing.},
 year = {2022}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Changes in Metaphor Use in Media Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Study (2007-2018)
AU  - Zimeng Pan
Y1  - 2022/05/26
PY  - 2022
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
DO  - 10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
T2  - Humanities and Social Sciences
JF  - Humanities and Social Sciences
JO  - Humanities and Social Sciences
SP  - 134
EP  - 141
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-8184
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.hss.20221003.15
AB  - Media reports are often analyzed as a specialized variety of discourse that may reflect the social and cultural values of a nation, and metaphors always function to enhance the effectiveness of media discourse. Metaphors in news have long been explored by sociolinguistic researchers, but diachronic studies that examine how metaphor use changes over time are still limited. Following a corpus-assisted discourse analysis, this study examined the metaphorical characterizations of corruption-related concepts in three English-language news media of China (Global Times, China Daily, and People’s Daily) over 12 years from 2007 to 2018. The findings can be summarized into the following four aspects: (1) The types of source domains were largely stable over time, i.e., WAR, POISON and DISEASE, DIRT, PLANT, and ANIMAL; (2) The mapping within a source domain changed diachronically; (3) Increased use of creative metaphors and enriched metaphorical depictions were found in the more recent years; and (4) The metaphors appeared to evoke more Chinese cultural schemas across time, which in turn provided contexts for further understandings of these metaphors. It is thus argued that the news discourse in China has been experiencing an ongoing process to employ more creative metaphors to express Chinese worldviews and cultural beliefs. It has also shown that a qualitative discourse analysis combined with quantitative corpus-assisted methods can provide effective research framework for an in-depth diachronic understanding of the changes in metaphor use. This study may be of assistance to researchers who are interested in media studies, sociolinguistics, and news writing.
VL  - 10
IS  - 3
ER  -

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