A Study on Ontological Metaphors in Economic Contexts

With the rapid development of human-centered society, linguistics and cultural studies have been combined in modern research. In particular, the study of metaphors has been considered closely in the cognitive context rather than as a linguistic ornament. Metaphors reflect processes of thinking and therefore require a rethinking of notions of meaning, concept, and reason. Consequently, the paper aims to study a model of Conceptual Mapping (map relation between a concrete source domain and an abstract target domain) focusing on ontological-based metaphors that arc deployed in economic reports. In order to achieve the aim, these research objectives were raised; 1) to design a model of economic metaphor processing which is formed through conceptual mapping and 2) to describe national identity through the context of ontological metaphors. We found support for our research methid in work by Lakoff (1993). The metaphorical expressions that describe the modern socio-economic situation were selected from official media such as journals, magazines or news websites in Mongolia. The research data were analyzed and described by qualitative methods.