Comparative Analysis Of Multimodal Metaphor In Chinese And American Editorial Cartoons On Food From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

An editorial cartoon is a popular form of news report or comment at present,whose material originates from daily life and recent social events.Generally,it is viewed as a combination of humorous texts and exaggerated images,so as to convey comments on news and express the author's views.Editorial cartoons are aimed to expose or criticize social problems.Cartoonists often adopt similarities between the source domain and target domain to convey metaphorical meanings and exaggerated implications,which can reflect current social problems and convey their attitudes and views,thus affecting readers' thoughts and opinions.Since the conceptual domains involved in editorial cartoons are of different types,such as pictorial mode and verbal mode,the metaphors constructed by the mapping process are multimodal metaphor.Many scholars apply this theory to the study of advertisements,movies,political cartoons,and the like.However,few scholars make a detailed comparative analysis of editorial cartoons.Based on Lakoff & Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor and Fauconnier &Turner's Conceptual Blending Theory,this thesis intends to make a comparative analysis of the multimodal metaphor between Chinese and American editorial cartoons on food.This study selects 25 Chinese and American editorial cartoons on food respectively,published on the authoritative website from 2017 to 2019,and employs Conceptual Metaphor and Conceptual Blending Theory to analyze the corpora.The result of this thesis draws the following conclusions.Firstly,the meaning construction mechanism of multimodal metaphor between Chinese and American editorial cartoons on food is involved with several mental spatial mappings or projectings,thus forming four multimodal metaphor networks.Secondly,there are some cognitive similarities of multimodal metaphor between Chinese and American editorial cartoons on food,such as the use of images,colors,words and other modes.As the single-scope network and the double-scope network of multimodal metaphor are more creative,they both prefer to employ the two more complex networks to express the author's views.Thirdly,there are also differences in multimodal metaphors between Chinese and American editorial cartoons on food.For example,Chinese editorial cartoons on food tend to use pictures,colors,text modes,which not only complement but also imply meanings.The latterprefers to use pictorial modes,color modes and seldom use verbal modes to express the author's views.Finally,it is found that there are certain food safety problems in both China and America.However,the Chinese government has promulgated a series of food safety laws and regulations,which has strengthened the management of quality and safety inspection departments,trying to solve the current food safety problems.While the American government also needs to promulgate or amend the food safety law to ensure that people live in a healthy and safe environment.Through the comparative analysis of the multimodal metaphor in Chinese and American editorial cartoons on food,this thesis explores the dynamic meaning construction mechanism of multimodal metaphor,the cognitive similarities and differences and the current food situation reflected.In addition,it is helpful to enrich the corpus of multimodal metaphor,to provide a new perspective for the interpretation of multimodal metaphor,and it has certain practical significance to cultivate readers' critical thinking and multimodal interpretation ability.