A Comparative Multimodal Metaphor Study Of New Product Launch Between Apple Inc. And Huawei Company

Metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a way of thinking and cognition and exists in our daily life.With the rapid development of science and technology,people can communicate with each other through various ways.Communication not only involves language mode,but also involves the combination of words,pictures,sounds and even more modes to deliver information.So,the study of metaphor also has changed from a single language mode into the study of multimodal metaphor like pictures,words,sounds and other semiotics.In recent years,multimodal metaphor researches have mainly focused on static print advertisements,political comics,movie posters and language teaching texts etc.,however,researches on multimodal metaphor in the dynamic product launch still have large room for research and the comparative study of those dynamic discourses between different countries becomes more significant.Therefore,this research mainly focuses on the multimodal metaphor of the serial video shots of new product launch between Apple Inc.and Huawei Company.This research selects 6 new product launches of Apple Inc.and Huawei Company from 2015 to 2017,among which three are Apple's new product launch and the other three are Huawei's new product launch.All new product launches are downloaded from the video sites http://www.iqiyi.com and http://v.youku.com and are divided into 150 video shots containing multimodal metaphors by the video screenshot software--Hyper Snap,Apple and Huawei accounts for 75 respectively.Based on Forceville's multimodal metaphor theory,Feng Dezheng's multimodal metaphor mapping mechanisms and Lakoff and Johnson's three metaphor types,the thesis analyzes the similarities and differences of new product launch between Apple Inc.and Huawei Company from the two perspectives of mapping ways and metaphor types of multimodal metaphor.Moreover,the thesis explores the reasons of the similarities and differences from the cognition perspective,mainly explains the similarity reasons from the aspects of thinking way,physiological basis and cognitive style and also explains the different reasons for multimodal metaphor inthe new product launch from three aspects: empirical philosophy,social culture and technical confidence.It not only expands the research field of multimodal metaphor into dynamic multimodal texts,but also provides some new perspectives for companies to improve the quality of product launch so that companies can better use product launch to promote their new products.