The Examination Metaphor and its Source Image Transformation in Chinese Urban Discourse

Abstract

The examination metaphor in Chinese urban discourse appears more and more frequently, becoming a new kind of metaphor with Chinese characteristics, and its related research is an exploration of the external communication of urban image based on philosophical cognition and discourse rhetoric. The study of metaphors in urban discourse can follow the theoretical paradigm of "two identification and three grouping", in which specific metaphors are identified through quantitative and qualitative identification procedures, followed by a three-step grouping analysis of metaphor generation mechanism, diffusion performance, and motivation function to comprehensively and systematically describe and explain these metaphors. The examination metaphors in this investigation are used more frequently than war metaphors as the characteristic metaphors of Chinese urban discourse and enter the new-age urban discourse through the cognitive mechanism of conceptual integration; the examination metaphors have fixed types and rich collocations; they are generated under a variety of cognitive, rhetorical, cultural, and figurative motives and play the functions of discursive rhetoric, image shaping, and empathic cognition. Finally, it is important to balance the advantages and disadvantages of exam metaphors in urban discourse and to develop new paths of discourse metaphor research.