期刊文章分类查询,尽在期刊图书馆 Abstract：The BBC social news, which delivers information quickly and in a timely manner around the world with distinctive concise language, is well received by the audience. This study takes BBC social news as research object to analyze the economical Features at the level of Metonymy Metonymy and metaphor.
Metonymy
Metonymy does not refer directly to the name of a person or thing, but refers to its closely related name or some of its own attributes
The use of Metonymy is a very essential link in English news writing and it is one of the important ways to achieve the economical language. In BBC social news reports, the most common words are the name of the capital, the big city, the main buildings and so on, which are used to refer to government agencies or related organizations located in the area, for examples, the White House refers to the U.S. government, the Pentagon for the U.S. Department of Defense, Hollywood for the U.S. film industry, Wall Street represents the U.S. financial sector, Fleet Street refers to the British press, etc. The use of metonymy is based on association which means that when people refer to A, they could naturally think of B. A typical instance is here: when the reporter says the words “the White House”, the audiences are able to understand immediately that it symbolizes the U.S. government.
Metonymy is not only regarded as a simple way of language expression, but also an effective tool for information exchange. As a cognitive communicative strategy, it is the intentional use of language by journalists in news writing through circuitous ways, aiming at the convenience and economy of information transmission. As a result, readers can accurately comprehend what journalists mean by association and they can have a deeper understanding and distinct impression of the information covered by the journalists in a more labor-saving way. For instance,
The 9/11 Commission found no evidence (BBC news, September, 2016).
These days you will find it not only when the whole village is celebrating nuptials in the town square, but also in many Cretan tavernas (BBC news, July, 2017).
When the news mentions 9/11, the reader knows that it refers to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Building in New York, USA, on September 11, 2001. And the phrase “the whole village” in the previous examples is used to represent all of the local residents in this village, while compared with “all of the villagers”, the expression “the whole village” more emphasizes on the scope of the celebration and meanwhile points out that the atmosphere has been extremely lively these days.
It can be seen from above researches that metonymy can make the sentences to be expressed more concise and more expressive. So it help can people exchange information more effectively. Additionally, metonymy in BBC social news also makes contribution to emphasis.
Metaphor
As a figure of speech, metaphor makes an implicit, implied, or hidden comparison between two unrelated things which share some common features.
The metaphor in BBC social news aims mainly at two purposes.
One of the aims is to make the information more concrete and specific in order to ease the burden of information comprehension on the audience and to covey more information to the audience. Such metaphors can be frequently found in the BBC social news reports, such as “court” metaphor (“seeking friendly relations”), “divorce” metaphor (“relationship breakdown”) and “sexy” metaphor (“charming and interesting”). Such category of rhetoric in the previous examples has the function of overcoming the obstacles that cannot be spoken directly and indicating additional information to the audience so the reader can more easily grasp the concepts. For examples, the word “divorce”, compared with “relationship breakdown”, a shorter expression, can remind the audience that this event to some extent will bring some not good effect.
When describing new, abstract or complex things, reporters use metaphor to help audience understand relatively unfamiliar entities. So metaphors are very common in English news. Following are some instances,
Whether Russia, one of 15 successor states to the USSR, which broke up in 1991, is still a genuine world power in 2015 is open to question (BBC news, December, 2015).
In the sentence above, reporters uses “a genuine world power” to symbolize Russia, one of 15 successor states to the USSR, which has clear logical meaning and is full of energy. And this Noun phrase instead of “a powerful country in the world” can make the relationship between Russia and other countries in the world more concrete and specific. The BBC social news gain success in saving effort while conveying the maximum amount of information.
On the other hand, the metaphor in the BBC social news is also applied to achieve some aesthetic experience so that the better communicative effect can be achieved.. There is a typical example from BBC social news,
One of the cars on the centrifuge ride became loose, lost power and ride fell to the ground in flames with 44 people inside (BBC news, October 28, 2016).
In this sentence “lost power” originally means “became weaken ”, and here refers to “extinguishing”, which aims to stimulate the reader’s most intuitive understanding of the flame-out of the car, but still left room for readers to think about how sudden the flame-out is. Therefore, metaphor helps reporters to produce a picturesque description, so that the recipient can understand the information more vividly and profoundly.
A large number of metaphors are used in BBC social news reports to immediately report new problems, situations, phenomena, and things that continue to emerge. Limited rhetorical devices of metonymy and metaphor are used to portray an infinite world scene, such language feature of BBC social news is undoubtedly one of the results of using economical function.
Above all, in the level of rhetoric devices, the BBC social news makes good use of rhetorical devices such as metonymy and metaphor to achieve the flexibility and vividness of language. A study of these patterns of the BBC social news language within the framework of rhetorical devices helpful for English learners to understand the fundamental social news writing, and has certain enlightenment for English writing.
作者简介：刘雨1996.8.10女汉重庆彭水本科毕业生应用语言学重庆师范大学400047
论文作者:刘雨
论文发表刊物:《教育学文摘》2019年9月17期5批次
论文发表时间:2020/4/2
标签：重庆论文; 期刊论文; 语言学论文; 尽在论文; 作者简介论文; 文章分类论文; 师范大学论文; 《教育学文摘》2019年9月17期5批次论文;