A Study Of Multimodal Metaphors In Printed Advertisements From The Perspective Of The Conceptual Blending Theory

Metaphor is one of the hot issues of linguistic study.Lakoff and Johnson(1980)introduce the conceptual metaphor theory in their work Metaphors We Live By.Compared with traditional study on metaphor which regards metaphor only as a kind of rhetorical device,the conceptual blending theory considers metaphor as the basic way of thinking of human being.It exists not only in language phenomena,but also in various aspects of human thought and behaviors.The essence of metaphor is to understand one concept in term of another concept.Language is only one kind among numerous kinds of communication media for human beings.If metaphor is the basic way of thinking,conceptual metaphor theory concluded from pure language phenomena may not be persuasive enough.Therefore,scholars have started to research metaphors in other communication media,such as images,colors,music,etc.Since1990 s,Forceville and other scholars have explored the study of verbal metaphor to multimodal metaphor.Forceville(2009: 23)proposes the definition of multimodal metaphor based on the definition of mode.The multimodal metaphor is the metaphor whose target and source domains are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes(Forceville & Urios-Aparisi,2009: 23).Forceville(1996)also classifies multimodal metaphor into four kinds according to the features of target domains and source domains.The achievements of multimodal metaphor study abroad mainly focus on three aspects.The first is genre study.The most popular genre study is the study on advertisements.The next popular genre is political cartoon.Different from advertisements which focus on the positive features of products,political cartoons are good at criticism and satire.Besides these two kinds of genre,studies on gestures,music and movies are also popular.The second focus of multimodal metaphor study is the salient features of multimodal metaphor itself.The third focus is on the relationship between multimodal metaphor and metonymy.Mittelberg & Waugh(2009: 329)state the inevitable function of metonymy.The study of multimodal metaphor abroad has developed for only about 30 years.The study in China is still at the initial stage.The domestic studies of multimodal metaphor mainly concentrate on two aspects.The first is the introduction of multimodal metaphor theory and studies abroad.Some scholars develop some new views based on the studies abroad.The second aspect concentrates on the case study of a genre including advertisements(Lan,2013),news cartons(Yu,2013),gestures(Yan,2013),etc.It can be found that the studies on advertisements mainly concentrate on commercial advertisements which pay attention to advocating the advantages and features of products or services.However,studies on public service advertisements are not many.Besides,most of them are case studies based on one or several advertisements which are unsystematic.Few studies have been done on the meaning construction of one type of advertisements.Therefore,this study attempts to study the multimodal metaphors in printed advertisements of animal protection.The conceptual blending theory has become popular since the 1990 s.Fauconnier proposes the conceptual blending theory based on the mental space theory.He develops the mappings between two mental spaces to an integrated dynamic cognitive network among four mental spaces.This network has been widely applied to the analysis of the cognitive process of various linguistic phenomena with strong explanatory power.According to the conceptual blending theory,people build up conceptual packets in mental spaces,when they use the language or think.The process of meaning construction is in fact the process of conceptual blending.A blending network consists of two input spaces,a generic space and a blended space.The common abstract structures or frames are projected into the generic space.The elements and relations from input spaces are partially projected into the blended space.And an emergent structure is constructed in the blended space after the composition,completion and elaboration of partially projected elements and relations.The construction of emergent structure marks the accomplishment of conceptual blending.This thesis analyzes the multimodal metaphors in printed advertisements of animal protection from the perspective of the conceptual blending theory aiming to answer the three research questions below:(1)How are two input spaces of multimodal metaphors identified in printed advertisements of animal protection?(2)How are the meanings constructed in these multimodal metaphors in printed advertisements of animal protection within the network of conceptual blending?(3)What are the functions of multimodal metaphors in printed advertisements of animal protection?Advertisements used in this study consist of two parts.The first part is searched from the website WE LOVE AD,which is the most powerful online database for world creative adverts.The author set the key word of searching as animal,language as English,medium as print,and industry as public interest and non-profit.There are 61 advertisements in the results.23 of them are useful data for this study which focus on animal protection and have multimodal metaphors.The second part of advertisements are searched from the Internet by key words animal advertisements and World Wildlife Fund(WWF for short)and International Fund for Animal Welfare(IFAW for short).In total,45 metaphorical printed advertisements of animal protection are collected as data to be analyzed in this study.After the data are collected,the research procedure has four steps.Firstly,identify the types of multimodal metaphors according to Forceville’s classification and study how target domains and source domains which are the two input spaces of each type are identified.Secondly,summarize the types of multimodal metaphors according to the content of target domains and source domains.Thirdly,analyze the process of meaning construction of different types of multimodal metaphor summarized in the second step within the conceptual blending network.Lastly,summarize the functions of multimodal metaphors in printed advertisements of animal protection.The major findings of the study are presented below.In the contextual metaphor,the target domain is presented by the image directly,while the source domain is suggested by the pictorial context.In the hybrid metaphor,both the source domain and the target domain are partially presented in the image.The metonymy PART IS WHOLE is involved to identify the source and target domains.In the pictorial simile,both source and target domains are presented in its entirety.It is the easiest to identify two domains in the pictorial simile among four types.In the integrated metaphor,the source domain is pictorially presented directly.The identification of the target domain relies on the observation of the form of the source domain.Words,names and logos of authorities who publish the advertisements also help us to identify two domains and to decide which the target domain is and which the source domain is.In printed advertisements of animal protection,the target domains are animals and the source domains mainly consist of human beings,objects and other animals.Therefore,it can be summarized that there are three types of multimodal metaphors: ANIMAL IS HUMAN BEING,ANIMAL IS OBJECT and ANIMAL A IS ANIMAL B.The metaphor ANIMAL IS HUMAN BEING reminds people that there are similar relationships in the world of animal as human beings thus evoking human beings’ love and pity to animals.On the other hand,this type of metaphor makes the animals do what the human beings always do to animals to human beings to evoke the terrified feeling which reminds people of the harm to animals by the human behavior.The metaphor ANIMAL IS OBJECT reminds people of the terrible situation that animals are in face of by the broken or disappearing objects.The metaphor ANIMAL A IS ANIMAL mainly includes ANIMAL IS PANDA.This metaphor reminds people that other animals are as valuable as pandas.Multimodal metaphor has three main functions in printed advertisements of animal protection.The first is informative function.Multimodal metaphor relates animals to familiar phenomena in daily life to deliver the information of the current situation of animals.The second is persuasive function.Advertisements could stimulate emotion by multimodal metaphors.Emotional persuasion is more powerful than boring reasoning.The last is aesthetic function.Multimodal metaphor in printed advertisements can be regarded as a game of words and pictures.The elaborate pictures and color assortment can give the viewers an enjoyment.The process of identification of metaphor in advertisements is very interesting which needs imagination.This study further testifies that metaphor is a basic way of thinking of human beings which appears not only in language,but also in other communication media.Besides,the conceptual blending theory is applied to the analysis of the multimodal metaphors in public service advertisements,which makes the identification and interpretation more comprehensive.The thesis also has a collocation of multimodal metaphors types in advertisements of animal protection which helps people to understand the deeper meanings of the advertisements,and also provides theoretical basis for the designers of public service advertisements.This thesis also points out the limitations of this study and suggestions for further study.