Investigating Sports News Headlines from the Perspective of Conceptual Metaphors: A Case Study of Headlines during the Qatar World Cup

Abstract

This paper, based on the theory of conceptual metaphors, uses sports news headlines from the Qatar World Cup as the research object and systematically analyzes the patterns of metaphor application in sports news. The study found that there are three main types of conceptual metaphors in sports news headlines: structural metaphors are the most abundant, including the war metaphor that compares football matches to war (e.g., "迎战"  and "备战") and the journey metaphor that views the match process as a journey (e.g., "首发"  and "全场"); orientation metaphors express changes in status through up and down concepts, such as using "暴涨"  and "晋级"  to indicate positive states, and "止步"  to express adverse outcomes; entity metaphors are primarily based on container metaphors, using terms like "挺进"  and "入围"  to conceptualize match stages as spaces that can be entered. These metaphorical expressions utilize familiar concepts to explain abstract sports content, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of news headlines and the efficiency of information dissemination and reflecting the value of metaphors as an important cognitive tool in news communication.