Abstract: With the advent of information age, information has become an important concept in our daily life. Therefore, more and more English new words about information, i.e. information-related neologisms, have sprung up like mushrooms and received increasing attention. With the information-related neologisms collected from websites like Word Spy as examples, this paper attempts to analyze the conceptual metaphors of these neologisms, so as to see how people understand and construct the abstract concept of “information” from the perspective of conceptual metaphor.

Key words: Information-related neologisms; information; conceptual metaphor

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Information-related Neologisms-3

2.1 Word-formation of the Information-related Neologisms-3

3. Conceptual Metaphor Theory-6

3.1 Cognitive Mapping of Metaphor-7

3.2 The Principle of Invariance-9

4. Conceptual Metaphors of Information-related Neologisms-10

4.1 INFORMATION IS FOOD-10

4.2 INFORMATION IS GOODS-13

4.3 INFORMATION IS ROAD-15

4.4 INFORMATION IS DISEASE-15

4.5 INFORMATION IS OTHER THINGS-17

4.6 Cognitive Construal of Information-18

5. Conclusion-20

Reference-