economy is human

Abstract

Utilizing the framework of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), this paper presents a corpus-based multi-level comparative study of the economy is human metaphor in English and Chinese economic media discourse. While the results indicate a considerable sharing of their respective conceptual structures of “human body”, “human condition” and “human relationship”, they do reveal some differences in terms of their preference and the associated metaphorical expressions. The similarities detected can possibly be attributed to the similar body, physiological function and social attributes all human beings share, which then work as the source for drawing inferences about the economy. The differences however are also likely to be derived from the different saliences of human experience which characterize the English and Chinese social-cultural contexts. Another possible explanation for these differing culturally-sourced linguistic metaphors may well be media language and its idiosyncratic stylistic features.