Metaphor, Entertainment and Contemporary China

Abstract

This study has shown that news writers employ a variety of metaphors in their writing, and this makes metaphor a distinctive feature of entertainment writing. The findings also suggest that the choice of metaphor is an integral part of the rhetorical goal of the People’s Entertainment Channel, that is, ‘to produce pleasure’. In this section, I summarise four key rhetorical strategies for the construction of entertainment in news writing and the role of metaphors in them. These are: highlighting conflicts while downplaying moral justification; establishing emotional ties with readers; recycling people’s collective entertainment resources; cultivating illusion and satisfying voyeurism.