Cover not available

Article published In: Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 21:2 (2023) ► pp.411–443

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

economy is human

A corpus-based comparative study in English and Chinese economic media discourse

 | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
 | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
 | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Published online: 24 February 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00140.xu
Abstract
Utilizing the framework of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), this paper presents a corpus-based multi-level comparative study of the economy is human metaphor in English and Chinese economic media discourse. While the results indicate a considerable sharing of their respective conceptual structures of “human body”, “human condition” and “human relationship”, they do reveal some differences in terms of their preference and the associated metaphorical expressions. The similarities detected can possibly be attributed to the similar body, physiological function and social attributes all human beings share, which then work as the source for drawing inferences about the economy. The differences however are also likely to be derived from the different saliences of human experience which characterize the English and Chinese social-cultural contexts. Another possible explanation for these differing culturally-sourced linguistic metaphors may well be media language and its idiosyncratic stylistic features.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Research design
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Corpus data
    • 3.3Research procedure
      • A.Metaphor identification and annotation
      • B.Metaphor categorization and calculation
    • 3.4Reliability
  • 4.Results and analysis
    • 4.1Conceptual frames within human domain
    • 4.2Inference pattern
      • 4.2.1Frame HUMAN BODY
      • 4.2.2Frame human condition
      • 4.2.3Frame human relationship
    • 4.3Linguistic level
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (42)
References
Arrese, Á., & Vara-Miguel, A. (2016). A comparative study of metaphors in press reporting of the Euro crisis. Discourse & Society, 27(2), 133–155. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burns, A., & Mitchell, W. C. (1946). Measuring business cycles. New York: NBER.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Castaño, E., Verdaguer, I., Laso, N. J., & Ventura, A. (2014). Economy is a living organism: Metaphorical expressions in a learner corpus of English. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(2), 323–337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J., & Ennis, T. (2001). A comparative study of metaphor in Spanish and English financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes, 20(3), 249–266. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J., & Musolff, A. (2003). ‘Battered hero’ or ‘innocent victim’? A comparative study of metaphors for euro trading in British and German financial reporting. English for Specific Purposes, 22(2), 153–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chung, S.-F. (2008). Cross-linguistic comparisons of the MARKET metaphors. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 4–21(2008), 141–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chung, S.-F., Ahrens, K., & Huang, C.-R. (2003). Economy is a person: A Chinese-English corpora and ontological-based comparison using the conceptual mapping model. Paper presented at the Proceedings of Research on Computational Linguistics Conference XV.
Deignan, A. (1995). Collins Cobuid English Guides 7: Metaphor. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2003). Metaphorical expressions and culture: An indirect link. Metaphor and Symbol, 18(4), 255–271. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). Metaphor and corpus linguistics (Vol. 61). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2010). The cognitive view of metaphor: Conceptual metaphor theory. In L. Cameron & R. Maslen (Eds.), Metaphor analysis: Research practice in Applied Linguistics, Social Sciences and the Humanities (pp. 44–56). London & Oakville: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deignan, A., Gabryś, D., & Solska, A. (1997). Teaching English metaphors using cross-linguistic awareness-raising activities. ELT journal, 51(4), 352–360. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dorst, A. G. (2011). Personification in discourse: linguistic forms, conceptual structures and communicative functions. Language and literature, 20(2), 113–135. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. (2007). Mental Space. In D. Geeraert & H. Cuyckens (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 371–376). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fu, H. (2000). The Zhou book of change. Shandong: Shandong Friendship Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fukuda, K. (2009). A comparative study of metaphors representing the US and Japanese economies. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(9), 1693–1702. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goatly, A. (1997). The language of metaphors. London and New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grady, J. E. (1997). Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphor and primary scenes. (Ph.D). University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (3rd ed.). New York: Mcgraw-hill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hu, C., & Xu, Y. (2017). A comparative study of ECONOMY metaphor based on Chinese and English media corpus. Foreign Language Teaching, 38(5), 38–43.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klamer, A., McCloskey, D. N., & Solow, R. M. (1988). The consequence of economic rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2020). Extended conceptual metaphor theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (2003). Metaphor and the subjective construction of beliefs. In P. Kalaja & A. M. F. Barcelos (Eds.), Beliefs about SLA (pp. 109–128). Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed.) (pp. 202–251). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1996). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. (1995). Metaphor economists live by. Social Research, 21, 215–227.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mirowski, P. (1991). More heat than light: Economics as social physics, physics as nature’s economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Musolff, A. (2016). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pragglejaz Group. (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1), 1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A. A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, A., & Gries, S. T. (2006). Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. In Trends in Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wang, H., Runtsova, T., & Chen, H. (2013). Economy is an organism–A comparative study of metaphor in English and Russian economic discourse. Text & Talk, 33(2), 259–288. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, A. E. (2013). Metaphor, media, and the market. International journal of communication, 71, 1404–1717.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yu, N., & Huang, J. (2019). Primary metaphors across languages: Difficulty as weight and solidity. Metaphor and Symbol, 34(2), 111–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yu, N., Yu, L., & Lee, Y. C. (2017). Primary metaphors: Importance as size and weight in a comparative perspective. Metaphor and Symbol, 32(4), 231–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Sun, Ya, Pan Zheng & Chenle Li
2025. #greenCNPC, #CleanerEnergy: Pragmatic use of self-praise metaphors in Chinese corporate discourse on Twitter/X. Journal of Pragmatics 249 ► pp. 57 ff. DOI logo
Xu, Yuting & Zaijiang Wei
2025. Economy is living organism. Metaphor and the Social World DOI logo
Hu, Chunyu, Aoran Zhang & Yilin Xu
2024. Metaphor, Stance, and Identity: A Corpus-Based Study of CEO Letters in Chinese and American Corporate Social Responsibility Reports. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 67:1 ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue