The Effects Of Syntactic Structures Of Fusion-structured Visual Metaphors On Conceptual Representation

In the modern life characterized by globalization,images have become an important carrier of information dissemination.Over the years,in order to improve interest and enhance the impression of the advertising,as well as improve brand attitude,more and more visual metaphors have been used in advertising.At present,most of the studies in this field,by studying the influence of visual metaphor in advertising,focus on the effects of metaphorical advertisements on the cognitive behavior of viewers.Moreover,some relevant research proved that comprehension of metaphor is a multi-modal process,but the concrete cognitive processing form of visual metaphor,especially the conceptual representation of visual metaphor,combined with the interdisciplinary perspective of linguistics,still needs to be further verified.Based on a thorough literature review,verbalization forms of fusion-structured visual metaphors were hypothetically proposed in three syntactic structures(A is B,A is like B,A with B).Guided by the mixed model of comparison and categorization and interaction model of visual metaphor comprehension,this study empirically identified,among three syntactic structures(A is B,A is like B,A with B)in Chinese(A 是 B,A 像 B,A 和 B),which one was the most effective in reflecting the conceptual representation of fusion-structured visual metaphors in the context of advertising,that is,which was the most effective to verbalize the concept of fusion-structured visual metaphors,with the best effect on the conceptual processing of fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising.Two steps were designed in this study.In the first step,an online questionnaire survey was designed and delivered to find out the most effective syntactic structure(verbalization form)in illustrating the fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising.The results showed that compared with “A is B” and “A with B”,the syntactic structure “A is like B” is the most effective verbal representation of fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising with highest appropriateness.The second step conducted a behavior experiment with an aim to explore which syntactic structure(verbalization form)can achieve the best cognitive effect on the conceptual processing of fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising.By comparing the reaction time and accuracy rate under the three syntactic conditions,it was found that the syntactic structure “A is like B” was chosen by most participants and its processing time was the shortest among the three.In addition,the results showed that the syntactic structure “A is like B” could achieve the best cognitive effect on the conceptual processing of fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising.To sum up,this study demonstrated that despite the effectiveness of all three syntactic structures in representing fusion-structured visual metaphors,there are differences in verbalizing and conceptualizing the fusion-structured visual metaphors.The syntactic structure “A is like B” is the most effective in reflecting the conceptual representation of fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising,mainly due to the similarity comparison effect,reversibility effect and perceptual similarity effect.The present study opens a new perspective for the classification of visual metaphor at the verbal level,expanding the empirical research on visual metaphors;meanwhile,it also provides a reference for future experimental studies on visual metaphor using verbal representations.Moreover,the findings of this study can offer a reference for advertising designers,that is,when designing fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising,they should use simile expression(A is like B)to help viewers to better comprehend the implicit meaning intended by metaphorical images.