A Cognitive Approach To Multimodal Emotion Metaphors In Media Ritual

Emotion is the subjective cognitive experience of human beings to the objective world.Metaphor,as one of the general cognitive thinking modes in human society,plays a role in the cognitive representation and conceptualization for abstract emotions.In recent years,the vigorous development of cognitive linguistics has enriched the study of emotion metaphor.Nevertheless,most of the previous research merely concentrates on the static discourse analysis from cognitive perspective.The cognitive research on the systematic representation and meaning construction of emotion metaphor in dynamic discourse analysis remains untouched.Nowadays,with the diversified development of media,media ritual tends to apply multiple media modalities in media events so as to present cultural practice behavior and process with symbolism and performability.As a typical media ritual,Touching China directed by CCTV(China Central Television)comprises a large number of metaphorical emotional expressions,which leaves a certain space for the cognitive study on multimodal emotion metaphors in media ritual.Grounded on multimodal discourse theory and conceptual integration theory,this thesis employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods to explicate the multimodal emotion metaphors in Touching China by dint of multimodal analysis software ELAN(EUDICO Linguistic Annotator).First of all,a multimodal corpus of Touching China is built to probe into the distribution and representation of multimodal emotion metaphors.Secondly,the meaning construction mechanism of multimodal emotion metaphor is explored within the framework of conceptual integration theory.Finally,the cognitive pragmatic functions of multimodal emotion metaphor are unveiled from the view of the discourse meaning of dynamic discourse itself as well as the audience/designers of media ritual.The research findings are as follows:(1)A total of 411 multimodal emotion metaphors are collected from the self-built multimodal corpus of Touching China.On account of the number of modalities primarily involved,multimodal emotion metaphors in the corpus can be divided into three superordinate categories,namely,Dual-modal emotion metaphors(56.4%),Tri-modal emotion metaphors(30.7%)and Multi-modal emotion metaphors(12.9%).Furthermore,the above three categories can be subdivided into 25basic-level categories in accordance with the representational collocation of five modalities involved,namely,pictorial,verbal language,written language,gesture and sound modalities.This is an indication that the representation of multimodal emotion metaphors in Touching China is essentially the diversified combination and collaborative allocation of various modalities in dynamic discourse.Dependent on dynamic perception signs such as visual and auditory signs,emotion metaphor in multimodal discourse is more concrete than that in static text with an aim to achieve the certain purpose of communication.Moreover,there are three relationships among the modalities involved,that is,supplementation,composition and coordination.(2)The meaning construction mechanism of multimodal emotion metaphor can be elucidated via conceptual integration theory.During the cognitive processing of multimodal emotion metaphor,cognitive interaction imposes an impact among spaces,with meaning space,modality representation space,relevance space,input spaces and cross-spaces involved,to consequently activate the corresponding spatial mapping and integration.In this way,the meaning construction of diverse emotions in multimodal emotion metaphors is achieved.Meanwhile,strong emotional effect and impact is also created beyond the original emotional meaning.(3)Multimodal emotion metaphor bears multiple cognitive pragmatic functions.As far as the discourse meaning of dynamic discourse itself is concerned,multimodal emotion metaphor preforms functions of meaning representation,discourse cohesion and coherence.Concerning media ritual as a social interaction mode,multimodal emotion metaphor plays a role in epistemology,interaction and emotion in terms of the audience of media ritual.As for the designers of media ritual,multimodal emotion metaphor functions as communication,discourse and persuasion.On the whole,the cognitive approach to multimodal emotion metaphors in media ritual contributes to the extended and intensive study on emotion metaphor and multimodal discourse analysis,providing empirical reference for the related theoretical application.Furthermore,this thesis is conducive to better understanding of media ritual as a special cultural practice process and enhances the cultivation of “multimodal reading ability” in the information age.