语言学论文哪里有？笔者认为认知过程是一个多方向的过程，在输入空间、类属空间和混合空间中构建意义。当两个输入空间中的元素相互映射时，就产生了新的语义关系，而解释概念隐喻的相关想象力是必不可少的，这可以使整合过程更具创造性。可以说，概念隐喻在漫画中起着重要的作用，不仅创新了表达形式，而且在解读的同时激发了读者的想象力。
Chapter One Introduction
1.2 Research Motivation and Significance
In the cognition field, metaphor has been widely applied in news cartoons as a rhetorical technique. News cartoons present with metaphors have conveyed information on a limited scope by employing concise images and words. To figure out the implicit information, readers should combine the signs with personal knowledge to complete the cognitive process. The recognition of cartoon content depends on the reader's mind and cognition ability so that the interpretation results will vary from person to person. To avoid controversy when interpreting the image signs in cartoons, the cartoonist should be attentive and designate the proper concepts of the domains and the reasonable and deductible attributes in the similarity of the two domains should take into consideration, which could help readers to complete the process of interpretation building of the conceptual metaphor. In conclusion, this research studies the utilization of conceptual metaphor in the US-China trade war news cartoons and intends to explore the meaning construction process of these news cartoons.
To give details about this systematic research, the initial step to observe the two potential domains, and then identifying which categories of conceptual metaphor for collected cartoons. Subsequently, combining with conceptual metaphor theory and guiding by the three stages: composition, completion, and elaboration to start the image and words signs exploration. This procedure aims to discover what factors would affect the recognition of conceptual metaphors in cartoons.
Chapter Three Theoretical Framework
3.1 Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Metaphor is a systematic mapping through conceptual fields, from a concrete conceptual domain to an abstract conceptual domain, and it's a thought and cognitive approach that people communicate completed by words. Conceptual metaphor is divided into three groups by Lakoff and Johnson (1980): structural metaphor, orientational metaphor, and ontological metaphor.
(1) Structural Metaphor
The structural metaphor applies a well-structured and well-defined concept to express a vague, ambiguous concept or one that lacks internal structure. Take example 1: “The trade dispute between China and the US is a war.” to illustrate.
As we know that “dispute” and “war” are two different concepts, belonging to two different cognitive domains, the concept of “dispute” is rather vague, abstract, while the concept of “war” is more concrete and vivid: there are winner and loser in a war, and it requires participants to attack and defense. However, similar terms may be applied to build the concept “war”: I’ve never won an argument in the debate.
The elements in "trade wars" can be interpreted in this metaphor, for example, trade actions introduced by the governments of China and the United States can be interpreted as arms, and tariff policies can be interpreted as ammunition since the tense situation between the two countries has been to last for a long time. During the “disputes”, the two participants didn’t compromise but fighting towards the goal of maximizing their own interests. In this interpretation, every element in the “dispute” can correspond to the “war”, and the conceptual structure of war is used to construct the “dispute” concept. Furthermore, the conceptual mapping has brought to light the trade tensions between China and the United States.
Chapter Five Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Results
5.1 The Conceptual Metaphor Types
5.1.1 War Metaphor
War is an act of violence, attack, and killing between organizations, countries, and governments against each other, and as well an ambitious battle to achieve certain political, economic, and territorial objectives. The so-called war metaphor is an analogy between normal events and real war, which depicts these events with war-related concepts or elements and could give the target language category a strong press of confrontation and urgency. The trade war between China and the US are intensely confrontational competitions with uncertain outcomes and that is identical to the nature of war. Therefore, these types of cartoons have applied many war metaphors, which they display as war, weapons, competition, and disasters.
War metaphors combined with direct or indirect perceptions and experiences of war from people's daily lives, which play an important role in constructing conceptual knowledge. War has a tremendous impact on human society, which leads to forming a fundamental conceptual domain in people's understanding of the world. Through cognitive thinking and similar associations, people employ words that belong to the concept of war as source domains to recognize things and concepts in the target domains and finally map the concept of trade war in their minds. Demonstrating that trade war between China and the US are as harsh and intense as war, so that readers can perceive what it's like to be there, and thus attain a better perception of the metaphor.
5.2 The Affected Factors
The creation of news cartoons requires the cartoonists to find a concrete concept in reality to correspond to the news event in the cartoon. In the process of conception, the cartoonists’ comments about the event are not intended directly but take the advantage of the cartoon to express. In other words, the author usually depicts specific events, with images of people or scenes as the main focus and words as the supplement to indicate the commentary on the news event, so that the form and emotion are highly correlated, and the reader as can think from the author's view and the realistic meaning reflected as well. Excellent cartoons can make the reader think about the story while reading. As a result, the incorporation of text and images is more conducive to the transmission of news events and is easier for readers to absorb directly.
There are many kinds of visual symbols in news cartoons, including color symbols, graphic symbols, and text symbols, which form a certain structure after combination and synthesize to illustrate. Color symbols refer to the overall color scheme presented in the cartoon, such as warm color tendency or cold color tendency, or the color choice of a specific object in the cartoon, different color property determine the tone of the cartoon. Conventional color cognition as red represent blood in the war, black indicates bad luck or death; graphic symbols can be divided into character images and environmental scenes, according to the principle of visual perception in cognitive psychology, readers could comprehend the images faster than words, so graphics can quickly stimulate the readers in the visual senses and meanwhile convey the theme of the cartoons; While the texts symbols carry the keywords or key information corresponding to the news event, which is complementary to the graphic symbols, neither is indispensable. Therefore, the structure of a cartoon is externally expressed in various visual symbols, and the organization of the structure reflects the cartoonist's understanding of the news event.
Chapter Six Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
While starting the analysis of cartoons in the first place, it is necessary to identify the potential domains and mappings in the cartoons. Comparing the similarities of the conceptual domains and correlating the news event as the context to determine whether the cartoon employs conceptual metaphor as a rhetorical device.
Although only the above 6 cartoons are analyzed, the author has gone through the overall 375 cartoons, and with the systematic analysis according to the three research questions has got the following major findings:
In the US-China trade war cartoons, there are three typical types of conceptual metaphors which are war metaphors, barrier metaphors, and character metaphors. The trade war cartoon applied with these types of conceptual metaphor has been found that they have mainly shaped a negative image of the US economy and industry;
And while going through the interpretation process, even though there have words in the cartoon as a supplementary to avoid ambiguity, but slight deviations could happen due to different personal cognition. The cognitive construction of the conceptual metaphor in the news cartoons not only requires readers to apply the personal knowledge base and creative thinking but also the indispensable news events as added value. Due to the restriction of cartoon space, cartoonists only take the essences from the news content, thus all the minor details are neglected. Therefore, when interpreting cartoons, to avoid mistaking the elements, causes, and effects of events, interpreting in the light of the news could help you get a well understanding of these cartoons.
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