Based on the event-structure metaphor in conceptual metaphor theory, this paper collects the titles in the English-Chinese COVID-19 news reports which contain conceptual metaphors, and classifies them in accordance with different source point domains. We found that there are a large number of war metaphors and competition metaphors in both English and Chinese headlines. Thereinto, many animal and plant images and natural physical things appeared in the English corpus, while more educational metaphors in the Chinese corpus. To some extent, due to the common experiential basis, the idea of war is deeply rooted in the hearts of people, and the disasters brought by war to mankind are not without similarities as diseases. Besides, according to the cultural dimensions system of Hofstede, English and Chinese have their own tendencies to the source domains with the influence of collectivism, individualism and power distance.
Cite this paper
Li, Y. (2022). A Comparative Study of Conceptual Metaphors in English and Chinese COVID-19 News Headlines. Open Access Library Journal, 9, e8521. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1108521.
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