Abstract
This study explores the conceptual metaphors used in the official news discourse of China’s reform and opening-up. The BCC People’s Daily Corpus is selected as the database from which concordances of the Chinese word gaige (reform) are retrieved and collected to build a reform-themed concordance corpus. The analysis of metaphors identified from the structure “gaige + shi” has revealed that journey is the predominant source domain of reform metaphors. The source, goal, path, and mode elements of the journey schema are also analyzed in detail. It is found that these elements are mobilized by the state media as important strategies in calling for more people in joining the reform and keeping it moving forward towards destinations one after another.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Williams, R.: Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press (1976, 1983, 2015)
Bennett, T., Grossberg, L., Morris, M.: New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Blackwell Publishing (2005)
Hindess, B.: Reform and revolution. In: Bennett, T., Grossberg, L., Morris, M. (eds.) New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, pp. 300–304. Blackwell Publishing (2005)
Ryan, S.M.: Reform. In: Burgett, B., Hendler, G. (eds.) Keywords for American Cultural Studies. NYU Press, New York (2007)
Zhang, X.D.: An investigation of the origin of the concept of ‘gaige kaifang’. Mao Zedong Thought Study 33(1), 126–129 (2016) (in Chinese)
Li, L., Dong, S., Wang, V.X.: Gaige and reform: a Chinese-English comparative keywords study. In: Su, Q., Zhan, W. (eds.) From Minimal Contrast to Meaning Construct. FCL, vol. 9, pp. 321–332. Springer, Singapore (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_22
Li, L., Wang, X.: Gaige (Reform) in Mandarin Chinese across the Taiwan Strait: a corpus-assisted comparative keywords study. In: Language and Culture Studies at Macao, pp. 104–113 (2019) (in Chinese)
Li, L., Wang, X., Huang, C.-R.: Social changes manifested in the diachronic changes of reform-related Chinese near synonyms. In: Dong, M., Gu, Y., Hong, JF. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 13250, pp. 184–193. Springer, Cham (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06547-7_15
Flowerdew, J., Leong, S.: Metaphors in the discursive construction of patriotism: the case of Hong Kong’s constitutional reform debate. Discourse Soc. 18(3), 273–294 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926507075476
Yu, Y.: Metaphorical representations of “leftover women”: between traditional patriarchy and modern egalitarianism. Soc. Semiot. 31(2), 248–265 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2019.1625515
Forceville, C., Paling, S.: The metaphorical representation of depression in short, wordless animation films. Vis. Commun. 20(1), 100–120 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357218797994
Kilgarriff, A., Rychlý, P., Smrz, P., David, T.: The Sketch Engine. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Eleventh EURALEX International Congress, Lorient, France (2004)
Li, L., Huang, C.-R., Gao, X.: A SkE-assisted comparison of three “prestige” near synonyms in Chinese. In: Hong, J.-F., Su, Q., Wu, J.-S. (eds.) CLSW 2018. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 11173, pp. 256–266. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04015-4_22
Li, L., Wang, Xian.: The development of COVID-19 word list from the perspective of emergency language services. China Terminol. 23(2), 32–41 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1673-8578.2021.02.005
Group, P: MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor. Symb. 22(1), 1–39 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1080/10926480709336752
Ahrens, K., Jiang, M.: Source domain verification using corpus-based tools. Metaphor. Symb. 35(1), 43–55 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2020.1712783
Hou, Z.: A corpus-driven analysis of media representations of the Chinese Dream. Int. J. English Linguistics 6(1), 142 (2016). https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v6n1p142
Lv, S.: Xiandai Hanyu Babai Ci. Commercial Press (1999) (in Chinese)
Charteris-Black, J.: Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230000612
Musolff, A.: Metaphor and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Basingstoke, p. 14 (2004)
Charteris-Black, J.: Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2011)
Lakoff, G.: The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In: Ortony, A. (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, pp. 202–251. Cambridge University Press (1993). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173865.013
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the research project RP/FLT-04/2022 supported by the Macao Polytechnic University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Li, L., Wang, V.X., Lim, L. (2023). Reform is a journey: Conceptualizing China’s Reform and Opening-Up in the Official News Discourse. In: Su, Q., Xu, G., Yang, X. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13496. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28956-9_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28956-9_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-28955-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-28956-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)