The Meaning Construction And The Persuasive Strategy Analysis Of Multimodal Metaphor In Printed Advertisements From The Perspective Of Visual Grammar

Given the fact that nowadays the manifestation of metaphors have extended to non-verbal modes including music,pictures,gestures and so on,recently a number of researchers spent tremendous time and efforts on shifting metaphor study from verbal texts to the domain of interdisciplinary multimodality for the purpose of providing a larger space for the development of metaphor researches to match the development of human communications realized in multiple ways.Nevertheless,most of the researches on multimodal metaphor are conducted from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Seldom are there studies examining the multimodal metaphor on the grounds of systemic-functional theories.Based on the Forceville & Urios-Aparisi‘s Multimodal Metaphor and Kress & Van Leeuwen‘s Visual Grammer,the thesis attempts to explore the metaphor potential and the metaphor constructions of representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning in construction of multimodal metaphors in printed advertisement including the public service advertisement for anti-smoking and commercial advertisement for shoes.And based on the Application of Aristotle‘s Rhetorical Appeals,the thesis intends to discuss the persuasive strategies of these printed advertisements.After analyzing 30 anti-smoking advertisements and 30 shoe advertisements,the thesis mainly finds that 1)Multimodal metaphors can be constructed in representational meaning including the narrative process and conceptual process.In narrative process,replacement of conventional grammatical units including participants,process and circumstance can construct metaphors.Conceptual process is further divided into classificational process,analytical process and symbolic process.Metaphor constructions are realized by symmetrical composition,partial features added to a whole and partial replacement of a whole,symbolic attributive and symbolic suggestive respectively;2)Metaphors constructed in interactive meaning are mainly concerned with the symbolic relation between viewers and images.The constructed metaphor IMAGE-VIEWER RELATION IS CAMERA POSITIONING is a metaphoric system which includes SOCIAL DISTANCE IS SHOT DISTANCE,INVOLVEMENT IS HORIZAONTAL ANGLE and POWER RELATION IS VERTICAL ANGLE;3)Metaphors constructed in compositional meaning deal with the information value of the spatial position.The metaphorical system INFORMATION VALUE IS SPATIAL POSITION is induced with several corresponding sub-metaphors,GIVEN IS LEFT/NEW IS RIGHT,IDEAL IS UP/REAL IS DOWN,and IMPORTANCE IS CENTER/UNIMPORTANCE IS MARGIN;4)Anti-smoking advertisements in this case,mainly cause the audience negative emotions such as horror and sadness and warn viewers the destructive performance to persuade audience into giving up smoking while the commercial advertisements,shoes advertisements in this paper,mostly use appreciation to show the great quality and performance of the shoes such as waterproof,shock-resistance elegance and light weight to attract the target customers and increase consumptions.Combining the perspectives of the systemic-functional theories and cognitive linguistics,and based on the Application of Aristotle‘s Rhetorical Appeals,the thesis,to some extent,broadens the analysis of multimodal metaphors and the persuasive strategies in printed advertisements and proposes some suggestions for future studies in the field of multimodal metaphors.