A Study Of Multimodal Metaphor Comprehension In Editorial Cartoons By English Learners

Editorial cartoon,often referred to as political cartoon,is a type of medium which mainly applies pictures and verbal expressions to express demonstration and opinions on social issues.It entails a large amount of multimodal metaphors.As the development of conceptual metaphor,the source domain and target domain of multimodal metaphor are represented by different modalities.Previously,research on multimodal metaphor in editorial cartoons laid much emphasis on representative forms and features,whereas little attention has been paid to comprehension aspect.The study selects English learners as subjects,trying to explore their comprehension situations of multimodal metaphors in editorial cartoons.The thesis tries to answer the following three research questions:1.What are the comprehension situations of different types of multimodal metaphors in editorial cartoons by English learners?2.How do English learners recognize source domains and target domains of multimodal metaphors in editorial cartoons?3.What factors affect English learners’ comprehension of multimodal metaphors in editorial cartoons?According to the representative form of source domain and target domain,multimodal metaphor in editorial cartoons can be divided into six categories,namely,PVMs(source domain is image,target domain is text),PSMs(source domain is image,target domain is symbol),PPMs(both domains are images),P?Ms(source domain is image,target domain is hidden),?VMs(source domain is hidden,target domain is text),and V?Ms(source domain is text,target domain is hidden).The study selects 20 editorial cartoons as research material,with 10 from China and 10 from America.These cartoons are presented for 30 English major students to conduct experiment.Through quantitative method,the comprehension situation of six types of multimodal metaphor is generalized,as well as their recognition of source domain and target domain.Influential factors for comprehension is also concluded by qualitative analysis.The study finds that:(1)English learners reflect different comprehension situations of six types of multimodal metaphors in editorial cartoons.Questionnaire reveals that for PVMs,the comprehension of target domain is better than source domain.As for PSMs,it is not certain which domain is comprehended better.As for P?Ms,readers comprehend source domain better than target domain.As for the left three categories,namely,PPMs,?VMs,and V?Ms,since we have very few samples,with only one example under each model,the thesis does not discuss these three models.(2)English learners’ recognition of source domains and target domains of multimodal metaphors are different according to different types,and the common point is that when both domains are visible for readers,they will express their expression for either one domain or both the source domain and the target domain.(3)The influential factors for comprehension of multimodal metaphor in editorial cartoons can be divided into three aspects: first is the type of multimodal metaphors;second is cultural factors,including readers’ background knowledge about editorial cartoons,as well as readers’ understanding about content and theme;third is the design of editorial cartoons.