A study of political metaphors in journalistic texts: by translating metaphorical usage in Election Reports about the 2003 California Governor Election

• Main Authors: Chien-Wen Chou, 周倩雯
• Other Authors: Weng-Long Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/58194867995982417965

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用德語所 === 93 === Recent works on semantics has investigated the place of metaphor in everyday speech. However it was for a long time allotted to a very minor role in translation theory. Actually, it is not just rhetorical device for talking about politics, for they exemplify how people ordinarily conceive of politics. Moreover, metaphors are also frequently used in the language of politics. Although it is only one aspect of political discourse, but it’s useful starting points for looking at some of the ways in which political language operates. For example, the metaphor “Election is War” is one of the most elaborately used metaphor to account for the political metaphors. This kind of metaphor often deludes people into believing that negotiation and compromise are forbidden by the rules. Our purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the wide range of metaphor usage in German and Chinese campaign language. Because so many metaphors surround political issues are rooted in fields of war, sport, contest or anything other than confrontational – even if we are not always consciously aware of these roots – it is high time for translation theory to make a start on thorough and systematic discussion of the translation of metaphors. The paper therefore focuses metaphors as an essential part of the language of politics. It aims to classify and analyze the metaphorical expressions used in the news coverage of the 2003 California Governor Election. Data were collected from newspaper coverage and web sites during the election period, roughly from August to November 2003. It analyzes the cultural content of metaphors in newspapers and web sits on the election. In order to illustrate the differences of metaphorical usage in the politics between German and Chinese, we also put the Chinese news coverage of the Taiwan Presidential Election together. Data were collected from as well newspaper coverage and web sites from August 2003 to March 2004. We found that the pervasive lexicon of metaphors can reflect the local election culture. In Addition, we attempt to show the various metaphors reflect not only the universal tendencies of human conception, but also the culture of language-specific characteristics. Meanwhile, in this thesis we also deal with interesting aspects of translating political metaphors, such as the words, expressions and metaphors rich in culture specific connotations. So do the problems of translating it. What emerges from our actual analysis is that the translatability of metaphor fluctuates according to the complex of cultural and linguistic factors involved in each particular case. Furthermore, by interlingual comparison and contrast we intend to identify and analyze the specific cultural and linguistic components of a given metaphor and provide different methods of translating metaphors to unravel the complexities of the culture-bounded phenomenon of metaphor.