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Interpretation Of Metaphor In Advertising Via Conceptual Blending Theory

Posted on:2008-05-05Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360215475554Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Among the various facets of metaphor, the working mechanism can be considered the core of metaphor in that understanding the working mechanism will promote understanding the nature of metaphor and thus taking full advantage of metaphor in various areas in order to ultimately better perceive the world.Advertisements have entered into people's life with the development of society. To save space or time and impress the consumers most, advertisers are going to pay attention to the effective and strategic use of language. As a result, they resort to different rhetorical devices, such as metaphor, pun, parallelism, irony and personification, etc. At the same time, since a lot of advertising language and advertising pictures are metaphors and since metaphors in advertising are fairly typical, the author of this paper chooses metaphors in advertising as the research subjects utilizing the qualitative research. Based on this reality, the present study tries to analyze metaphors from the perspective of conceptual blending theory and to test the explanatory power of the conceptual blending theory.The thesis begins with Chapter One, which illustrates the significance for studying metaphors, that is, to answer the question why we study metaphor as the subject of this thesis, and further states the specific research subject, research methodology, research purpose, and the structure of the thesis.Chapter Two firstly offers an introduction to advertising, in which appears the classification of advertising, and the characteristics of language use in advertisements. And then there is a brief literature review of the history of metaphor study: spanning from rhetoric study, semantic study, grammatical study, pragmatic study, to cognitive study. Finally, a study of metaphor in advertising is mentioned generally.Chapter Three mainly clarifies the mental spaces and framework of conceptual blending theory, gives a vivid and detailed account of the conceptual blending operation, and further brings in conceptual integration network and its classifications, and finally elaborates the conceptual blending process with examples.In chapter four, we apply conceptual integration networks in particular, to the analysis of metaphor in advertising. First generally examines the explanatory power of conceptual blending theory, and then conducts a specific research of metaphor in advertising by studying cross-domain mappings in the conceptual blending processes of metaphor in advertising. The purpose is to test the adequacy and descriptive power of the blending framework and this study is also expected to come up with new insights to widen the wealth of data that is necessary to verify the generality of conceptual integration. Based on its definition and characteristics, several metaphors in ads were chosen as data of this cognitive study. Mappings across cognitive domains play central role in language and thought. All blending depends on cross-domain mapping. Conceptual integration must follow five optimality principles, under whose constraints we can build up four types of conceptual integration whose classification is based on the projection of organizing frame.Chapter five will summarize the current thesis, point out the novel findings as well as the weakness and limitations of the research concerning the future studies of metaphor in advertising. The application of the conceptual blending theory to the analysis of metaphor in advertising entails dual meanings. Firstly, applying the cognitive linguistic theory to the analysis of metaphor in ads can achieve a better representation of the meaning construction processes of metaphors, hence arriving at a more in-depth understanding of the mechanism of metaphors and facilitating the comprehension and appreciation of metaphors. Secondly, applying the cognitive linguistic theories to analyzing natural-language discourses can provide a general examination of the explanatory power of the theory, with an effort to find their strengths and weaknesses in analyzing real-world discourses and further to reinforce the strengths and improve the weaknesses for better explanatory adequacy. Finally, the author offers some suggestions for modern ads, and furthermore states the trends of metaphors in ads.
Keywords/Search Tags:advertising, metaphor, conceptual blending, integration networks, cross-domain mapping
PDF Full Text Request
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