The Study Of The Meaning Of Multimodal Metaphor In English Cosmetic Advertisements

With the development of society and the improvement of living standard, people start to concern their appearance and beauty. The cosmetics gradually become the necessities in human's daily life. As a medium, the cosmetic advertisement plays an important role in the product propaganda and the way to arouse people's motivation to purchase. Thus, it is of much practical significance to have a study on the cosmetic advertisement. At present, the researches on cosmetic advertisement are mainly conducted from the view of pragmatics, systemic-functional grammar and cultural value, etc. and the materials are mostly the cosmetic advertising language and slogans. The analysis of the multimodal metaphor in dynamic cosmetic advertisement from the cognitive approach, especially within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, is scant-very little. As a new-born theory, multimodal metaphor theory is proposed in recent years. Many scholars devote themselves to the theoretical and practical research on multimodal metaphor. But the research objects are limited to the static advertisement and the political caricature. The dynamic cosmetic advertisement is seldom studied.In this thesis, N?5 fragrance advertisement, le lift sérum skincare advertisement and coco rouge advertisement are selected as the research objects. Based on the mapping model of conceptual metaphor theory(CMT) and idealized cognitive model(ICM), the author adopts the qualitative method to analyze the meaning of multimodal metaphor in Chanel cosmetic advertisements. Through the analysis, the major findings can be summarized as follows:Firstly, in three cosmetic advertisements, the meaning of multimodal metaphor is constructed by the interaction of various kinds of modes. The picture mode is the most basic one in providing information of the products. It can not only present the source domain but the target domain. Then spoken and written modes are the second to express the metaphorical meaning. The last one is music mode, which assists picture, spoken and written modes in constructing the meaning of multimodal metaphor. Furthermore, the source domain is relatively hard to recognize when compared with the target domain. It requires the cognitive subject to have the relative background knowledge of the object.Secondly, a common feature is shared in constructing the meaning of multimodal metaphor in three cosmetic advertisements, that is, ordinary life-world meaning is presented by text meaning. The advertiser organizes the ordinary life-world meaning of the consumers and presents it in a form of advertisement. The advertisement is the carrier of text meaning.Thirdly, it is found that the metaphorical meanings in three cosmetic advertisements manifest different types of meaning from the philosophical perspective. The metaphorical meaning conveyed in Chanel N?5 fragrance advertisement belong to the ideational meaning. The referential meaning and the behavioral meaning are expressed in Chanel le lift sérum advertisement and Chanel coco rouge advertisement respectively.This thesis proves that the meaning of multimodal metaphor in dynamic cosmetic advertisement is the result of interaction of different modes and the meanings belong to different types of meaning. It broadens the research sphere of conceptual metaphor and theory of meaning.