The Representation And Interpretation Of Multimodal Metaphors In TV Play Ups And Downs: A Cognitive-pragmatic Unified Account

Nowadays, the theoretical focus on the interpretation of metaphor has been shiftedfrom purely verbal metaphors to multimodal metaphors whose target and source arerendered exclusively or predominantly in two different modes/modalities with thedevelopment of the multi-information era. Metaphor can structure thought and action.Metaphors can be used to express people’s thought and intention at the same time.However, a new genre study of multimodal metaphors in the context of TV Play has notbeen shaped in its own right. Therefore, the present study is directed toward a case study’srepresentation and interpretation of how multimodal metaphors at different modes takeeffect in the creation of complicated metaphors under the specific case study (Ups andDowns) from a cognitive-pragmatics point of view.Multimodal Metaphor can be identified by two codes according to the Dual CodingTheory: verbal and non-verbal delivered in life. Metaphor is “verbal” in the sense that itserves as a way to find out how human beings think and believe. Metaphor is “non-verbal”to the extent that it is contributed by information in other signifying systems such aspictorial information, music and sound effect and etc. In this paper’s case study, these twocodes are both independently and interlaced in terms of TV play’s genre analysis. Thepaper will select three cases from Ups and Downs on three aspects: theme metaphors, twoimportant business negotiation metaphors and love metaphors, which will be carried on amultimodal analysis.In Ups and Downs, theme metaphors tend to show it in a nonverbal way to expressthe underling connotation. This paper will analyze the internal relationship of nonverbalmessages from a multimodal analysis. In Ups and Downs, the business negotiationsconcerning the illegal personal interest usually cover the real purpose, which is theimplicit target domain. So the paper will apply Conversational Implicature and PolitenessPrinciple to make the link and meaning possible between multi-source domain and theimplicit target domain. In Ups and Downs, love can be more powerful from the nonverbalmessages, which could express something more meaningful.Through the case studies, the paper gets these conceptual metaphors: LIFE IS SWIMMING, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, SUCCESS IS UP, FAILURE IS DOWN, SCCOMPANY IS SALMON, SAISI IS WINE, and LOVE IS SPIRAL SHELL. The casestudies show that the relationship between verbal and nonverbal messages is dependentand interrelated on the theoretical basis of CMT and Conversation Principle plusPoliteness Principle.