The renowned Chinese magazine, “Vista Story,” has successfully transitioned from traditional mass media to new media by expanding its business presence on Microblog, WeChat, Bilibili, and Tik Tok. As of October 2022, its official WeChat account “Visa Week” boasts over 5 million followers. The articles published on WeChat offer a fresh and humorous perspective on everyday phenomena.
This thesis employs the conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory to analyze the metaphorical expressions used in internet discourse, specifically in two series of articles titled “A Garden of Earthly Delights” and “A Survival Guide for People in the Workplace” over three years. The analysis examines eighteen pieces from fourteen articles and categorizes them based on source domains and grammatical units using the model of conceptual integration network. Furthermore, seven examples demonstrate how these metaphors create irony, exaggeration, and humor.
The study finds that nature, war, and human are the three common source domains used in discourse while nouns, verbs, and verb-noun phrases are frequently employed as grammatical units. The first three metaphors often form single-scope networks due to their strong association with conceptual metaphor theory. In contrast, verb-noun phrases tend to form mappings between two inputs. Moreover, the analysis confirms that both theories work together complementarily.
Overall, this research shows that internet discourse is abundant in conceptual metaphors that add humor to enhance article vitality while also shortening the distance between readers.
