A Cognitive Study Of Multimodality In Technology Video Advertisements

Advertisement,as an effective means of disseminating commercial information,has become an integral part of modern social life.With the rapid development of economy and the richness of culture,advertising is one of the most representative media that transmit culture to the whole world.In the era of multimodal communication,advertisements resort not only to multimodal but also to metaphor.Technology advertisements are representative in the application of metaphor.The straightforward description of advanced technology in technology video advertisements may cause consumers' misunderstanding,and then exert a bad influence on the effect of promoting consumption.There are lots of researches about advertisements,however,few of the researches are from the cognitive perspective.Conceptual Metaphor Theory believes that metaphor,a basic way of cognition,refers to a systematic mapping from one conceptual domain to another.Most of the researches on metaphor have been based on language for a long time.Nevertheless,the research of metaphor cannot be restricted to language only.Different modes,such as pictorial signs,music and gestures,which are used to construct metaphors should be discussed.The present thesis aims to analyze the construction of multimodal metaphor in technology video advertisements through the following research questions:1.What role does metonymy play in the construction of multimodal metaphor in technology video advertisements?2.What are the characteristics in the choice of modes and multimodal metaphor construction respectively in technology video advertisements?3.What are cognitive motivations of multimodal metaphor in technology video advertisements?Based on Lakoff and Johnson's(1980)Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Forceville's(2009)multimodal metaphor theory,the thesis selects 5 advertisements from 25 advertisements that the author collected to analyze.Through the analysis of 5 cases,this thesis obtains 24 multimodal metaphors.Different modes appear 87 times totally in source domain and target domain.Among them,the most pervasive one is pictorial signs which accounts for 45.98%.Next are written signs and spoken signs that share 18.39%and 17.24%respectively.There are no smells or tastes in the selected 5 cases.Conclusions can be drawn as follows:1.For the selected technology video advertisements,multimodal metaphor is very important for constructing the meaning of advertisements.The process of multimodal metaphor construction also is the meaning construction process of technology video advertisements.Most previous researches about metonymy consider that metonymy is one of cognitive patterns,which provides satisfactory explanation for metaphor in most occasions(Yang&Zhang,2008:8).In the meaning construction of technology video advertisements,metonymy itself cannot construct meaning,but it can help metaphor to construct meaning by motivating the source or target domain of multimodal metaphor.2.The quantity of modes in target domain is more than that in source domain,because most of the target domain relate to product directly or indirectly.Pictorial,written and spoken signs play a dominant role(more than 80%)in technology video advertisements,among which pictorial signs is the most frequently used mode.Written and Spoken signs in technology video advertisements are not outstanding;music plays an important role in constructing multimodal metaphors.Conventional metaphors and product metaphors function in different ways.Conventional metaphors help viewers to understand the meaning of the advertisements.In product metaphors,product can function as target domain which usually appears in personification.Product can also function as source domain to express the function of product by explaining the abstract concept in which the basic type of metaphor is TARTET DOAMIN IS UING PRODUCT.3.From the analysis of the multimodal metaphor meaning construction in technology video advertisements,we can find that brand ideas,product concepts and functions are the major considerations to construct metaphor.Culture has a slight influence,because the selected advertisements are international brands that lack comparability of culture.Brand ideas,product concepts,functions and cultural backgrounds are the cognitive motivations of multimodal metaphor meaning construction in technology video advertisements.In technology video advertisements,products often function as target domain because of the defining brand ideas,product concepts and functions.The research of multimodal metaphors in technology video advertisements also has its practical significance that proves some strategies for advertising designers to design advertisements.