On Representation Mechanism Of The Multimodal Metaphors In Public Service Advertisements

Metaphor, as a cognitive model, is ubiquitous in cognitive activities of human-being. As one of the basic thinking patterns, it is represented not only in language, but also in static and moving pictures, sounds, gestures, etc. However, the study of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) has long been confined by linguistic evidences. The exclusive properties of non-verbal or multimodal representation are frequently missed or misunderstood (Forceville,2009a). Under the influence of multimodal turn of linguistics, multimodal metaphor research has been emerging with generic feature, distinctive feature, relation between metaphor and metonymy, similarity representation, etc. as its key research issues. But, the representation mechanism of multimodal metaphors in dynamic multimodal discourses is still to be further studied.Based on the self-built corpus of 34 public service advertisements selected from CCTV (2010-2014), the thesis strives to explore the representation of multimodal metaphor in public service advertisements, with a mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative research.The findings are as follows:(1) There are 85 multimodal metaphors in the corpus, which are classified into 13 types according to ways of representation. The most popular types include S-wpoT-wpo (15%) and S-wpoT-wo (11%) and the least prevalent types of representation S-wpT-w (2.35%) and S-woT-w (2.35%). This signifies that public service advertisements of CCTV, to achieve their specific aims of popularization, tend to use diversified types of modes in metaphor representation. (2) The representations of the six most prominent types of multimodal metaphors (the four most prominent types and the two least prevalent types) are different permutations of various modes under specific context and specific themes. They exhibit three features. First, the modes are diversified and correlated to different perceptual channels; second, different combinations of modes are selected in accordance with exclusive features of source and target domains; Third, the representation of target domain is more likely to be based on concrete entities than its verbal counterpart. (3) The representation of similarities relies on perceptual resemblance, simultaneous cueing, mixed approach, montage and verbal image, which bear the two features as follows:dynamicity and narrativity. (4) Different modes or modalities play their part in the form of various submodes in the representation of multimodal metaphor and they are involved in two types of synergy patterns, namely, intensive relation and non-intensive relation.The thesis, with TV public service advertisements as subject, expands the rationale of multimodal metaphor and furthers its theoretical exploration in dynamic multimodal discourses channeled by TV. The study not only contributes to the research of meaning representations of public service advertisements, but also has some practical implications in promoting the design and production of public service advertising.