A Corpus-Based Comparative Study Of The Metaphorical Constructs Of The Chinese And English Popularization Discourse About The 5G Technology

This dissertation takes the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the study of Critical Discourse Analysis as the basic theoretical foundation and makes use of approach of the Critical Metaphor Analysis and the MIPVU metaphor identification procedure. It makes a comparative study of the metaphors between the Chinese and English white papers of 5G technology, analyzes the possible causes of the similarities and differences behind the different metaphors. The research is set in the case of a concrete issue --- 5G technology (The fifth generation of wireless networks and technology). It is believed that 5G will enable a host of new technologies that will change the standard of public and private sector operations. Due to 5G’s role in the transformation of technology, different social actors are active in constructing various narratives about 5G. Moreover, as a developing country with ambition in technology development, China has been making efforts in popularizing the 5G technology. On the other hand, USA and some other countries have been trying to maintain their advantages in this field. These phenomena provide us a broader landscape to study the popularization discourse. As such, this dissertation carries out a comparative study of metaphorical constructs of 5G popularization discourse between Chinese and English. Scientific popularization is generally considered to be an 'intermediary' discourse, lying in between that of the science world and that of the general public. However, as Myers (2003) said, popularization is a process involving different actors, institutions and forms of authority. Therefore, this study chooses to start with the source end of the popularization- the research and development entities and industry organizations. In this study, we collected the white paper on 5G technology within the time range from January 1,2013 to June 30,2021, and established a Chinese corpus and an English one, based on which, we identified and analyzed the two corpora by following the paradigm of Corpus research, and placing its focus on the realization and function of PERSONIFICATION. The semantic annotation system Pymusas, the Corpus analysis tool AntConc and Wmatrix are employed to extract the key semantic domains from the Chinese corpus and the English corpus respectively. The classification of semantic domains can facilitate the manual metaphor identification. Then, the metaphorical representations are analyzed with the method of Critical Metaphor Analysis, namely the identification, interpretation and interpretation of metaphor. In this process, we use the metaphor identification procedure (MIPVU) to identify the linguistic metaphors in the corpora. These linguistic metaphors are manually classified according to corresponding semantic domains. Then the resonance value of source domain is calculated and the source domains are sorted according to the metaphor resonance value, and after that the similarities and differences of the metaphor are analyzed to explore the social, cultural and ideological factors involved. The results indicate that the two corpora share some common conceptual models about the technology, mainly drawn from concepts concerning the human being, including the physical features, activities, abilities and qualities of individuals and the social experiences, including war, journey, sport and game, and play etc.. These similarities reveal their common thinking of the 5G technology as a fierce and open competitive field, requiring patience, strategies, hard work and sacrifice. The compatibility of these metaphorical presentations highlights the significance of the 5G technology to the entities concerned. This study also demonstrates the role linguistic analyses play in metaphor functions, but it is necessary to look further into societal structure, including historical, cultural, as well as political and economic factors in order to give full explanation. The economic and political factors explain some salience of the positive tone in both corpora. Meanwhile, some ideological factors also give rise to their diverse conceptual representations of the emerging technologies between the two language communities.