A Study on the Conceptual Metaphor of News Reports on COVID-19 in Mainstream English Media in China — A Case Study of <i>China Daily</i>

Traditional metaphor regards as a rhetorical device, and believes that is merely an embellishment or decoration in the form of language, its main metaphorical function to beautify enhance effect language expression. Conceptual Metaphor Theory, put forward by famous linguist Lakoff 1980, enables study realize cognitive turn. In recent years, conceptual has not only been applied analysis word meaning general text, but also extended news discourse. The discourse become one important hot topics current research. At beginning 2020, outbreak spread new crown pneumonia epidemic testing people all over world. As China’s mainstream English-language media, China Daily frequently reports on this social event. This intends collect COVID-19 from January 1, 2020 December 31, establish corpus further metaphors. Finally, finds eight kinds metaphors, including war journey building human light book plant metaphors evil reflect values courage, struggle harmony well awareness actively community with shared future for mankind.