A dynamic metaphor perspective on Trump and Xi's trade negotiation in governmental discourse

This article investigates the evolution of U.S.-China trade negotiation in governmental discourse under the presidencies of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping (2017–2021). Paying attention to the development of the political context, we examine trade metaphor use in American and Chinese governmental texts from a dynamic metaphor perspective. Based on the three dominant patterns of metaphoricity activation in the Trump and Xi trade corpora, the analyses reveal that trade metaphors in these governmental texts involve dynamic cognitive (metaphoricity transformation), affective (sentiment development), and socio-political (attitude change) processes. Unlike Cameron's (e.g., 2007) finding that the dynamics of metaphor use at a micro timescale (e.g., minutes) contribute to the reconciliation of discourse participants at a macro timescale (e.g., years), the results show that metaphoricity transformation across a micro timeline (e.g., days, months) does not advance the reconciliation across a macro timeline (years). Although the Trump-Xi trade dispute decreased at the end of 2019, the analyses of dynamic metaphors show that bilateral antagonistic perspectives continued for years.