Study On Metaphor In Car Advertisements Based On CBT And ICM

Advertisement, as product of the development of society and economy, hasattracted the attention of linguists, psychologists, sociologists, economists andaesthetics experts. Foreign and domestic studies have made relevant study of it fromdifferent aspects and progressed professional and academic understanding of the field.These studies are mainly focused on the analysis of advertisement’s language features,pragmatic function, classification, translation, pun and cognition, etc. The commoncharacteristic of these studies is that the formal style of ads is analyzed, but there arefew systematic studies of the mental process of consumers’ understanding of ads andadvertisers understanding of designing advertisement.Metaphor is widely used in car advertisement, which provides the possibility forthe successful communication between advertisers and audiences. Traditionally,metaphor was regarded as a language phenomenon; today cognitive linguists regardmetaphor as human beings’ cognitive mechanism and thinking mode. The presentstudy chooses car ads as research material, qualitative and quantity methods asresearch methods. Most materials download from Internet databases. For furtherenrichment, some car advertisements in last ten year’s magazines are collected. Basedon conceptual metaphor theory, conceptual blending theory and idealized cognitivemodel, the paper made a systematic study and analysis of metaphors in car advertisingfrom cognitive aspect. The classification features, functions and effects of metaphorare discussed, and the metaphorical thinking process of consumers and advertisers’mental process on conceiving and making ads are also considered.Analysis demonstrates that (1) CBT (conceptual blending theory) plays animportant role in the analysis of consumers’ construction processes of metaphoricalmeaning and interpretation processes of ads. CBT clearly reflects the way our humanbeings think, especially in metaphorical thinking. At the same time, through theinterpretation of consumers’ metaphorical thinking and construction of metaphorical meaning in ads, the complexity of human cognition is found.(2) As to the complexity of human cognitive processes, advertisers intentionallysimplify this process when conceiving and making ads. According to ICM (idealizedcognitive model), human beings form many cognitive models when they perceive onething. Advertisers usually simplify all these models to form the ICM by the devices ofmetaphor, metonymy or metaphor-metonymy interaction, thereby intentionally settingtheir implications on promoting product.(3) Metaphor, as a kind of indirect persuasion, when used in ads, has almost apositive function and effect, not only attaining an immediate goal, such as, attractingthe consumers’ attention, but also has a great influence on the construction of brandimage and character, and makes a great contribution to product image.