Cognitive Construction Study On Multimodal Metaphor In Commercial Films

Metaphor is both an important rhetoric device and a principal way of thinking.The studies on metaphor have gone through the phases of rhetoric,semantics,and pragmatics to cognitive linguistics.The understanding of metaphor also goes deeper from a figure of speech to a means of cognition.Although conceptual metaphor theory proposes the nature of thinking and conceptualization in metaphor,metaphors in language phenomena are exclusively studied back then.Multimodal metaphor theory shifts the metaphor research onto the track of multiple perspectives and disciplines.Other modes are verified to be as expressive as words and can collaborate in the cognitive construction process to make metaphoric meaning more distinctive and attractive.Conceptual blending theory treats metaphor construing as the projections among different mental spaces,which illustrates the characteristics of dynamic and narration in multimodal metaphors and is proved to be full of explanative power.Commercial films refer to the cinematographic works in which advertisements are implanted and deep impressions of the products are left on people's mind and thus the desire to purchase is stimulated.Commercial films are good at telling stories and are strongly persuasive.On one hand,people's demand on novel stories enables the medium of films to be ideal advertising carriers and films are not merely a way of recreation any longer.On the other hand,the feature of "fragmentation" in receiving information and absorbing knowledge and the thinking of "commoditization" with the latest technological innovations have facilitated the formation and prosperity of film advertising.Micro films,as an emerging form of commercial films,own the characteristics of clear theme,visual and auditory shocks,telling novel stories and strong persuasion just like those of traditional films except that they do not last as long.Current multimodal discourse analysis mainly focuses on pictorial advertising,political cartoons,public service advertisements,posters and propaganda films,and rarely pays attention to micro film commercials that are prevailing on the Internet.This thesis chooses the genre of micro film advertising as its analysis object and tries to reveal the cognitive construction of multimodal metaphors existing in the selected micro film commercials.The thesis is on the theoretical ground of conceptual metaphor theory,multimodal metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory and conducts a research on the meaning construction of multimodal metaphors in micro film commercials from the perspective of cognition with a descriptive method.The first step is to specify the study object.The thesis chooses three samples of micro film advertisements with clear metaphorical intention and extensive acceptance as its study object from all the collected cases.Next,the analysis of the samples is accomplished.The conceptual metaphors and multimodal metaphors that appear in these micro film commercials are identified and illustrated under the theoretical framework of conceptual integration network.Finally,the results of the research are produced.Multimodal metaphors are demonstrated to exist extensively in micro film commercials and are a significant method of expressing meaning.Conceptual blending theory is able to decipher the cognitive mechanism of multimodal metaphors and interpret their meaning construction.There is certain theoretical and practical significance in this thesis.On the theoretical level,it extends the scope on metaphor research and provides more materials for conceptual metaphor,multimodal metaphor and conceptual blending theory and also testifies the feasibility and operability of these theories.On the practical level,it offers a new perspective for micro film study and cognitive support for people to better understand and appreciate micro film commercials.In addition,enlightenment and reference are brought forward for advertisers and advertising practitioners to produce more marketing works of high quality.