A Contrastive Study Of Multimodal Metaphors Between Chinese And English Automobile Advertisements

In the field of cognitive approach to language, metaphor is not just a language phenomenon,but rather a basic way of cognition or thinking. According to the basic idea of cognitive approach to language, human being's way of thinking and behavior are metaphorical in nature. Besides, the form of metaphor can be represented by image, gesture, sound, music, taste, smell and touch as well as by language. In multimodal metaphors, various kinds of visual, auditory and linguistic elements make different effects in the process of recognition, but also coordinate with each other.Automobile advertising, as a common way of expression in people's life, conveys messages by means of texts, pictures, sound and other modes, and in which conceptual metaphors are more often than not reflected.Advertising research is a research activity that sets examples and makes analysis of the existing advertisements for the purpose of improving the quality and effectiveness of advertising. Automobiles, as an indispensable means of transportation in modern life, are also a symbol of identity, social status, values and the national culture. In the modern society, automobile advertisements emerge endlessly with creativity and have already become an important part of advertising. Automobile advertisements usually appear in newspapers, magazines and other media, and are generally represented by pictorial and verbal forms, which jointly function the promotion of automobile brands. There exist a lot of researches on automobile advertising, which mainly focus on the dimensions of advertising creativity, linguistic features, translation skills and so on. However, there are few contrastive studies between Chinese and English Automobile advertisements.This study aims to study the similarities and differences of multimodal metaphors between English and Chinese automobile advertisements, and to explore their respective motivations. The research questions include:(1) What are the characteristics of the multimodal metaphors in English and Chinese automobile advertisements?(2) What are the similarities and differences between English and Chinese automobile advertisements? And what are the motivations? Samplinganalysis and comparative analysis are adopted for the choice of cases out of over 100 English and Chinese automobile advertisements for a contrastive study in terms of quality, humanistic care, social status, unique style and cultural heritage. The multimodal conceptual metaphor theory is then used to study the respective mode preference of Chinese and English automobile advertisements and to explore the similarities and differences between Chinese and English automobile advertisements in terms of language features, artistic expression and culture, value orientation, way of thinking and their motivations.This study features some innovation and breakthrough both in theory and practice. Firstly, it provides a new approach to the study of automobile advertisements.Instead of the past one-dimension studies of automobile advertisements, based on either their language or their pictures, an integrated approach is used; Secondly, it can improve the consumers' recognition level of the multimodalities in the automobile advertisements and achieve a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the similarities and differences between English and Chinese automobile advertisements as well as their motivation; Thirdly, it can help automobile advertisement designers to learn and use the advanced techniques of automobile advertisements, enhance their awareness of multimodalities and competence for multimodal automobile advertisements. Hence, it can do some help to promote the development of the automobile industry.