Using a corpus of English and Chinese political speeches for metaphor analysis

Abstract

In this article, we present details of our corpus of political speeches and introduce using the corpus for metaphor analysis in political discourse. Although specialized corpora on a variety of topics are now easily available, online political corpora available for public use are scarce. The database our research team has developed contains more than six million English and Chinese political speeches and is currently available free online. Researchers in many fields are able to use the multiple search functions on the website for their specific research purposes. In particular, the corpus is useful for researchers focusing on political speeches and conceptual metaphor analyses. From the perspective of metaphor study, we have taken advantage of several functions to facilitate the corpus-based metaphor analyses. In short, this database enriches the current bilingual resources and contributes to the evaluation of political language by linguists and political scientists. Keywords: corpus, political speeches, metaphor