Corpus studies on the use and framing of metaphor in popular economic discourse

Metaphor patterns used with topics related to trade disputes in popular economic discourse and metaphorical frames suggested by them provide insights into the way metaphor expresses ideological standpoints to similar economic issues in a specific genre. However, systematic and replicable metaphor research procedures to capture metaphor patterns used with trade disputes and their underlying metaphorical frames were not available.
This research aims at capturing metaphor patterns used by journalists from China, the UK and the US to write about trade disputes and the way they seem to frame and evaluate in a systematic and replicable way. To achieve this, this research developed an analytical model that captured three types of metaphor patterns emerging from discourse: metaphor scenario, systematic metaphor and metaphoreme. Guided by this model, this research revised existing research procedures for metaphor analysis from a corpus-linguistic approach in popular economic discourse. Throughout the procedures, this research implemented each procedure with the aim of selecting salient and meaningful information that served to address my research questions. For instance, I built three representative specialized corpora, which provided basis for me to identify salient and meaningful metaphors used with the topics. At the stage of metaphor analysis, I carried out a step-by-step examination of scenario-based and semantics-based metaphorical framings in my data following a bottom-up fashion.
This research was the first to investigate the way metaphor was used to frame trade disputes between China, the EU and the US. My key findings were as follows:1) Some socio-cultural similarities were observed in metaphor patterns used with core trade disputes topics in UKPEDC and USPEDC but not in CPEDC. For instance, UKPEDC and USPEDC seemed to show cultural preferences for using metaphor scenarios associated with more competitive behaviours in game/sports and certain specific game/sports which were less salient in Chinese cultures. 2) Both systematic metaphor and metaphor scenario were observed in three corpora to write about core trade disputes topics but metaphoreme victim and target were observed in CPEDC to frame unfair trade practices targeted at China as negative entities; 3) Metaphor patterns at different levels seemed to coherently complement each other to show similar evaluative slant towards topics but slight differences in the framing implications they suggested; 4) Metaphor patterns in CPEDC seemed to always frame unfair trade practices as negative entities. Metaphor patterns in UKPEDC seemed to frame unfair trade practices in a more negative way than in USPEDC.
The findings of this research contribute to adding empirical insights into the pool of knowledge of the nature and framing function of metaphor in discourse. They also suggest important pedagogical implications for ESP teaching and learning.