The Construction of Images of China from the Perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis: A Case Study of Climate Change Reports in <i>China Daily</i>

Metaphor is not only a rhetorical device, but also pervades our ordinary conceptual system. Due to the abstract and complex nature of climate change issues, metaphors can be found everywhere in such reports. Since the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing the abstract in terms of the concrete, analyzing metaphors is to deepen the understanding of the concepts and ideologies behind climate discourse. Based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA), this paper adopts a combined approach of corpus and Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) to analyze the metaphors in <i>China Daily</i>’s climate change discourse and the images of China constructed by these metaphors. On the one hand, it is found that there are eight types of metaphors in total, among which four types: the struggle metaphor, the journey metaphor, the competition metaphor and the war metaphor dominate. One the other hand, these metaphors shape the national image of China as a fighter, a leader and a collaborator in the combat against climate change. By exploring the national images of China constructed through metaphors in climate discourse in <i>China Daily</i>, this paper aims to expand the areas of application of Critical Metaphor Analysis, while providing new perspectives and methods for the study of national image construction.