A Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In English Commercial Advertisements

The study of metaphors has a long history, which can be traced back to Aristotle in the ancient Roman period. In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson co-published a book, Metaphors We Live By, which not only marks the beginning of cognitive linguistics, it also turns a new page for the study of metaphor. The study of metaphor under the framework of cognitive linguistics is far beyond the boundary of language. It is not a figure of speech but also a way of thought and action, a method to perceive the world.With the development of commodity economy, advertisements are ubiquitous in people’s daily life. As one type of advertisements, commercial advertisements play an important part in delivering the information of products and persuading customers to purchase the products. In recent years, the application of conceptual metaphors in commercial advertisements is increasingly common. The research on conceptual metaphors in English commercial advertisements is relatively fewer compared to conceptual metaphors in other fields. Through the study of conceptual metaphors in English commercial advertisements, the author of the present thesis attempts to provide a cognitive angle for readers to interpret commercials, to improve their abilities to comprehend and appreciate commercials, and to deepen their comprehension of conceptual metaphors and commercial advertisements. In the meantime, it also intends to offer reference to adverting designers and to help them design more creative and successful cases of advertisements.The present thesis adopts the qualitative research to study conceptual metaphors in English commercial advertisements. The examples of English commercials in the thesis are chosen from books on advertisements, English magazines, and the Internet. In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson divide conceptual metaphors into three subtypes, namely structural metaphors, ontological metaphors and orientational metaphors. The author of the present thesis divides conceptual metaphors into monomodal metaphors and multimodal metaphors according to the modality of a conceptual metaphor’s two terms: source domain and target domain. Under the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s classification, the author explores monomodal metaphors and multimodal metaphors in English commercial advertisements. Considering the factor of operability, the author only studies the applications of verbal metaphors and visual-verbal metaphors in English commercial advertisements. Lakoff and Johnson’s theories of conceptual metaphors and Fauconnier and Turner’s theories of conceptual blending provide the theoretical bases for this thesis. Under the framework of the two above theories, the author analyzes monomodal metaphors in English verbal commercial advertisements and multimodal pictorial-verbal metaphors in English pictorial-verbal commercial advertisements. It has been found by the author that the embodied philosophy, natures of creativeness, hiding and highlighting, systematicity facilitate the realization of the advertisements’ promotional function. The thesis not only provides a fresh angle for the readers to interpret English commercial advertisements with conceptual metaphors in them, but lays the foundation for future studies on conceptual metaphors in commercial advertisements.