Abstract:Through a long history of the study of metaphors, the traditional theory and contemporary theory are gradually formed and developed. Especially, the contemporary theory is of great importance to the multi-disciplinary development of metaphors. Nowadays, a large amount of work has been done using either cognitive, discourse or corpus approach to analyze metaphors. Though having different methods and emphasis, all of these approaches adopted in extensive researches contribute to a synthesized approach to metaphor studies. Critical Metaphor Analysis is initiated by Charteris-Black, who describes his approach of Critical Metaphor Analysis as “a perspective that brings together perspectives from critical discourse analysis, corpus analysis, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics”. By taking a critical perspective in analyzing the metaphor usages appearing in political discourse, one would uncover the relations among language, thought and society and improve his linguistic awareness in critical reading. The necessity to incorporate cognitive semantics with pragmatics, conceptual metaphor theory with discourse analysis, critical metaphor analysis with critical discourse analysis, and quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis are explained and stressed. Due to the close relationship between metaphors and politics and ideology, Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign speeches can be studied following the theory of critical metaphor analysis to explain the motivations of the speaker, the functions of metaphors concerning persuasiveness and ideology and the effects of metaphor usage on the hearers.

Keywords: metaphor; critical metaphor analysis; ideology; campaign speech

Contents

摘要

Abstract

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

1.1 Background-1

1.2 Layout-1

Chapter 2 Metaphor-3

2.1 Major Theories of Metaphor-3

2.1.1 Traditional Theories-3

2.1.2 Contemporary Theories-4

2.2 Approaches to Metaphor-4

2.2.1 Cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches to metaphor-4

2.2.2 Discourse approach to metaphor-5

2.2.3 Corpus approach to metaphor-5

2.3 Metaphor and Politics-5

2.4 Metaphor and Ideology-6

Chapter 3 Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis-7

3.1 An Introduction-7

3.2 A critical review of the CMA theory-7

3.2.1 Cognitive semantics and pragmatics-7

3.2.2 Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and discourse analysis-7

3.3 Methodology-9

3.3.1 Quantitative and Qualitative analyses-9

3.3.2 Metaphor Deciphering in CMA-10

Chapter 4 Application of CMA in Obama’s Campaign Speeches-11

4.1 Introduction-11

4.2 Metaphor Identification-11

4.3 Metaphor Analysis-12

4.4 Summary-14

Chapter 5 Conclusion-17

References-19

Acknowledgements-20