Study Of Multimodal Metaphor In Public Service Advertisements

Metaphor is not only linguistic phenomena, but also a mode of thinking and cognitive mechanism. In the realm of language, scholars have made a thorough research on metaphor and metonymy. The conceptual essence and cognitive mechanism of metaphor have been generally accepted by linguistic scholars. For one thing, study of metaphor merely on language level is not persuasive enough to testify their conceptual essence and cognitive mechanism. If it is the truth that the nature of metaphor is conceptualized, it also should be testified in multimodal discourse. For another, multimodal discourse develops so rapidly in the information era. Thus, multimodal signs are more and more pervasive in the daily life, and multimodal discourses are increasingly popular among communicators. Metaphors in multimodal discourses receive focal attention from scholars.From the perspective of cognitive semantics, this paper lays its basis on the theory of multimodal discourse (especially Visual Grammar by Kress & van Leeuwen) and conceptual metaphor. By analyzing six selected Public Service Advertisements (PSA) in terms of multimodal metaphor, this paper aims to demonstrating the metaphorical meaning conveyed by these PSAs, and further revealing the specifically cultural connotations behind these PSAs. This paper applies theoretical research method and qualitative analysis method. It first makes a description of multimodal metaphor theory, conceptual metaphor and metonymy theory, visual grammar theory and generic features of PSA. Then it analyzes each PSA, including:to tell how many modes does the multimodal metaphor contain; to explain how these modes interact to construct the multimodal metaphor; and finally to reveal what are the metaphorical meanings conveyed and what are the underlying cultural connotations implied by each PSA.The study finds out that in all multimodal metaphors of these PSAs, there are generally three kinds of modes:verbal, visual and aural mode. Some multimodal metaphors are constructed by three modes, while others by two kinds of modes. By complementing and restraining with each other, these modes jointly compose the multimodal metaphor. It is also found out that in the discourse of PSA there are some multimodal metaphors that consist of several multimodal metonymies. The metaphorical meaning and the implied cultural connotations varies according to the variety of the PSA.