Scapegoat or manipulated victim? Metaphorical representations of the Sino-US currency dispute in Chinese and American financial news

This article compares the metaphorical representations of the currency dispute between China and the United States in two newspapers, i.e., China Daily (CD) from China and The New York Times (NYT) from the United States, in order to investigate the role of conceptual metaphors in framing the dispute and constructing the argumentative position and ideological stance of each newspaper. The findings suggest that while five dominant metaphor themes can be identified in both newspapers: physical movement, physical conflict/war, health/strength, victim, and machine, they are appropriated and reformulated in different ways to construct the argumentative position and ideological stance of each newspaper. NYT prefers to frame the dispute as a physical conflict and the Renminbi as a victim of government control and manipulation and argues for the overhaul of the machine of China's exchange rate policies. CD favors the conceptualization of the dispute as a war and the Renminbi as a scapegoat for the problems of the United States and insists on the adjustment of the machine of China's exchange rate policies.