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Economy or ecology: metaphor use over time in China’s Government Work Reports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2023

Ya Sun Open the ORCID record for Ya Sun [Opens in a new window] ,
Deyi Kong Open the ORCID record for Deyi Kong [Opens in a new window]  and
Chenmeng Zhou Open the ORCID record for Chenmeng Zhou [Opens in a new window]
Ya Sun
Affiliation:
School of International Studies, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China
Deyi Kong*
Affiliation:
School of International Studies, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China
Chenmeng Zhou
Affiliation:
School of Chinese Language and Literature, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China
*
Corresponding author: Deyi Kong; Email: deyi1997@126.com
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Abstract

Government attention selectively distributed to various issues in policy-making processes is usually reflected in language, such as metaphors in political discourse. In addition, metaphor change may reveal how conceptualizations of major topics such as economy and ecology evolve over time. After self-building a corpus of China’s 45-year Government Work Reports, this study explores whether there is a difference in attention to topics of economy and ecology over time and investigates the diachronic change of metaphor use on them based on a modified framework for diachronic metaphor change analysis. Results show that attention to economy has been steadily decreasing while attention to ecology has been growing, and that there is an increasing tendency of using more economy and ecology metaphors. Metaphor change on the use of source domains is arranged on a continuum, ranging from constant use (war for economy and ecology, and journey and object for economy), incremental change (living organism and building for economy and ecology, and object for ecology) to fundamental change (building and living organism for ecology). This study may enrich the understanding of diachronic metaphor change by providing a Chinese perspective on the metaphor use in government discourse over time.

Keywords

Metaphor changeecologyeconomygovernment attentionChina’s Government Work Report
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2023 , pp. 551 - 573
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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