| Advertisement is a tool of information transmission and persuasion as well as a complicated medium. The success of an advertisement depends on whether it can effectively arouse customers' psychological association. It has been widely accepted that cognitive metonymy is one of fundamental conceptual mechanisms that has great impact on human thought and language. Based on theory of idealized cognitive model (ICM), the thesis conducts an analysis of English and Chinese cosmetic advertisements. ICMs occupy a fundamental position in the generation and understanding of metonymy. Within an ICM,conceptual relationships that are generated are considered as 'metonymy-generating'relationships. The types of metonymy-generating relationships are classified as under two general configurations: whole-part configuration and part-part configuration. In terms of the theory, this thesis aims to explore metonymy in cosmetic advertisements as well as conduct a comparison between cognitive features of English and Chinese cosmetic advertisements.Therefore 120 pieces of English advertisements and Chinese advertisements are randomly collected from televisions and internet, which are posted in the year of 2015 and 2016. Among all these advertisements, 113 pieces use metonymy. Then a quantitative and qualitative study is conducted, on account of which how many metonymies used belong to each type of ICMs and how these advertisements gain accessibility to human's mind are clarified. 6 types of metonymies within whole-part configuration are found in the collected English cosmetic advertisements which involve Thing-and-part ICM, Scale ICM, Constitution ICM, Event ICM,Category-and-member ICM, Category-and-Property ICM while 5 types of metonymies within whole-part configuration are discovered in the collected Chinese cosmetic advertisements which concern Thing-and-part ICM, Scale ICM, Constitution ICM, Event ICM,Category-and-member ICM. On the other hand, 6 types of metonymies within part-part configuration are figured out in the collected English cosmetic advertisements which refer to Action ICM, Causation ICM, Perception ICM, Production ICM, Possession ICM, Location ICM and a discovery of 6 types metonymies within part-part configuration is made which includes Action ICM, Causation ICM, Perception ICM, Production ICM, Containment ICM,Location ICM. Thus the thesis presents a classification of metonymy in the collected English and Chinese cosmetic advertisements. Apart from this, cognitive similarities and peculiarities of metonymy between English and Chinese advertisements are revealed through the research.In terms of cognitive similarities, both English and Chinese have a clear preference for using whole-part metonymies in cosmetic advertisements. As for cognitive peculiarities, English cosmetic advertisements involve the word class conversion in the use of action ICM and due to difference of culture background PRODUCER FOR PRODUCT metonymies within Production ICM occur more in English cosmetic advertisements while COMPANY FOR PRODUCT in Chinese cosmetic advertisements.Analysis of language in English and Chinese cosmetic advertisements can reveal how people think through operational mechanism of metonymy. A comparative study between cognitive features of metonymy in the collected English and Chinese cosmetic advertisements gives a deep understanding of thinking pattern of English and Chinese, which may provide some reference for cosmetics dealers who want to enter international market. |
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