A Study on Conceptual Metaphors in the Report on the Work of the Government (2020)
The Report on the work of government (2020) is an annually political discourse, which provides a consistent topic to linguistic research. And conceptual metaphor provided by George Lakoff, is an important part of cognitive linguistics and a way of discourse analysis. From the perspective of conceptual metaphor, this study explores proportion and distribution of conceptual metaphor used in the discourse, and analyzes the function of major metaphors. It is proved that there are totally 12 categories of metaphors, which are made up of 8 major metaphor and 4 minor metaphor. The major metaphors function hierarchically and reflect effect of epidemic represented in the discourse. By analyzing the conceptual metaphor in the discourse, it is expected to shade a light on the understanding of metaphor illustration of the discourse.