Metaphor Power in the US-China Trade War Discourse

The article studies the role of metaphor in modeling the enemy image in the US-China trade war discourse. Based on the metaphor power theory, speech impact of metaphors on cognitive, semantic and communicative levels is described. The cognitive level of metaphor power is manifested in the metaphors of different intensity, namely conventional and noval, semantic metaphor power is manifested in the metaphors that differ in semantics and language form, namely orientational, ontological and structural, and, finally, communicative metaphor power is associated with the metaphor’s position in the text structure. All the three levels of metaphor power can be identified quantitatively by metaphor power indices (MII – intensity index, MfTI – index of functional typology, MStI – index of the text structure). Indices are interpreted on the data of previously conducted case studies, which allows us to determine the degree of metaphor power. Proposed methodology also includes identification of the most typical metaphorical models that make it possible to describe direction and content of discursive conceptualization. News texts corpora representing the trade war have been studied, showing Chinese discourse being more influential with indicators of intensity and functional typology indices reflecting the emotionality and transformational nature of the metaphors used, while metaphors in American articles seem to be more aimed at rational and identification impact. The main target concepts in the studied texts were “trade war” as a new reality of bilateral relations between countries and the actors of these relations, the US and the PRC. In the trade war discourse, the image of trade war is created as a “fierce geopolitical battle” (China) or “inevitable economic confrontation” (USA). Metaphors are also used to make changes to the evaluative component of the concepts CHINA (as a thief and a fraudster in American discourse) and USA (as a gendarme with a baton in Chinese discourse) in order to form a certain attitude and cause-and-effect relationships in their audience.

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