A Cognitive Study Of Metaphors In Editorial Cartoons On Air Pollution In China

Editorial cartoon,a special genre with an interaction between image and language,mainly involves such topics as political situations,economic activities,social and cultural issues,nature and environments,and the like.It expresses positive or negative attitudes towards certain situations and thus influences people's opinion.Metaphorical concept,mostly favored by cartoonists,is employed in editorial cartoons for it can effectively conceptualize the complex problems and soften the critical stance.However,studies of editorial cartoons based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT)and multimodal metaphor theory from the perspective of cognitive linguistics is relatively rare in contrast with numerous researches on editorial cartoons from other various perspectives.In addition,as smog hits China hazardously in recent years,air pollution problem turns into one of the heated topics in editorial cartoons home and abroad,but relevant studies are limited.Therefore,this thesis attempts to analyze metaphors in editorial cartoons on air pollution in China based on CMT and multimodal metaphor theory from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and explore the following three research questions:(1)What are the main themes of metaphors in editorial cartoons on air pollution in China?(2)What are the formal manifestations of these metaphors?(3)What are the characteristics of these metaphors in terms of the content and formal manifestation mentioned above?In order to answer these three questions,100 editorial cartoons on air pollution in China with a time span from 2013 to 2016 are gathered from authoritative websites.Metaphors in these cartoons are identified,counted,discussed,categorized,and analyzed attentively.As a consequence,this study comes to the following findings:Firstly,target domains of 243 metaphors identified in this study mainly focus on four themes involving SMOG/PM2.5,VICTIM,POLLUTANT SOURCE,and SUPERVISION AUTHORITY.Typical conceptual metaphors are SMOG/PM2.5 IS A WEAPON,VICTIM IS A PATIENT,POLLUTANT SOURCE IS A CHARACTER,and SUPERVISION AUTHORITY IS A FIGHTER.Secondly,metaphors in present corpus are grouped into pictorial metaphors and verbo-pictorial metaphors.The formal manifestation of the former contains P-(?)(P for pictorial,0 for implied,left for source domain and right for target domain),(?)-P,and P-P;The formal manifestation of the latter covers P-V(V for verbal),P-PV,PV-P,PV-PV,PV-V,and V-P.Among them,P-(?),P-P,P-V,and P-PV occur most frequently.Thirdly,personification,spatial dimension,scenario,and colour metaphors are employed in the content themes more often to convey ideas and express attitude;Formula A-ING IS B-ING is prominent in pictorial source domains and pictorial target domains,which is conceived as the dynamic mini-narratives.Then the air pollution status quo in China reflected by these characteristics is:SMOG/PM2.5 is pervasive and dangerous;POLLUTANT SOURCE in various types takes a dominant role and seems uncontrollable;VICTIM is so weak and powerless that suffers a lot;SUPERVISION AUTHORITY needs to try utmost to strengthen the regulation in the days to come.