Exploring Conceptual Metaphor Types in Financial Markets Reporting: Mainstream vs. Social Media

This study contributes to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) pedagogy by providing an updated examination of conceptual metaphor types (CMTs) employed in financial markets reporting. The investigation delves into the prevalence of CMTs in both social media and mainstream media contexts. Robust patterns were identified to distinguish CMT usage between mainstream and social media by leveraging big-scale data analysis, encompassing 38.6 million documents from The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Twitter and Reddit. The data collection spans fifteen months during the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020–March 2021), marked by socioeconomic upheaval and coinciding with a surge in retail investors using low or no-cost mobile financial trading applications. Examining the proportion of CMTs reveals that war/combat, markets animate, markets inanimate, and health metaphor types have strong associations with both social and mainstream media. The gambling CMT is predominantly linked to social media. In terms of metaphor density, the results indicate a higher concentration in social media compared to mainstream media. Texts sourced from social media, characterized by greater conciseness, emerge as a potential communication barrier. The findings underscore the importance of incorporating authentic texts from social media into specialized language courses, thus enhancing language learning experiences in the domain of financial markets reporting.