A Study On Visual Metaphor In Society Caricatures Of Zikai Feng

With the recognition and development of metaphorical thinking from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, scholars represented by Forceville put forward the concept of multimodal metaphor, which means that conceptual metaphor under the cognitive linguistics not only exists in languages but also exists in other symbolic systems like sounds, gestures and pictures. The society caricatures of Zikai Feng are famous and they consist of pictorial modes and verbal modes and are full of metaphors. The society caricatures of Zikai Feng always make full use of the skillful combination of pictures and words to convey information and to inspire readers.Visual metaphor refers to the metaphor whose target domain and source domain can be perceived by vision. As a cognitive phenomenon, visual metaphor is widely used in the society caricatures of Zikai Feng. Studying topological property of visual metaphor is a new way to cope with metaphor, and main scholars who have made contributions to the theory include linguist Shenghuan Xu(2014), cognitive scientist and psychologist Lin Chen(2005), etc. Topological property is a concept originally comes from geometry, referring to the characteristic of a plane figure which presents invariance over a series of continuous transformations. The topological property of the visual metaphor is realized in its formula of “the target domain is the source domain”.This thesis discusses the phenomena of visual metaphors in the society caricatures of Zikai Feng on the basis of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory from the cognitive linguistics, multimodal metaphors, visual metaphors and the topological properties of visual metaphors. Firstly, the present research aims to discuss the relationship and the interaction between verbal modes and pictorial modes in visual metaphors in society caricatures. Secondly, this thesis analyzes the topological properties of visual metaphors in society caricatures of Zikai Feng in detail and further explains the view of “TARGET IS SOURCE”. Thirdly, the present study discusses the influence of topological properties of visual metaphors on the caricaturist’s construction of metaphors in his caricatures and the transmission of intentions of caricatures. According to the discussion of instances of visual metaphors and their topological analysis, we can conclude that visual metaphors in society caricatures of Zikai Feng include monomodal metaphors of pictorial type and multimodal metaphors of verbal-pictorial type, and also conclude the function of verbal modes in verbal-pictorial metaphors. Besides, we can get to know the topological properties of visual metaphors in society caricatures of Zikai Feng and their effects on the construction of metaphors and the expressions of the caricatures’ intentions. Researching the society caricatures of Zikai Feng from the perspective of visual metaphor may help us better understand such caricatures under the theoretical guidance, and may provide implications for future interdisciplinary studies.