A Cognitive Linguistic Interpretation Of Multimodal Metaphors And Metonymies In The Emblems Of China’s Double First-Rate Universities

In recent years,with the development of information technology,multimodal media has emerged.People tend to use various forms to convey information and build meanings.In this context,the research results of multimodal metaphor are rich,covering a variety of languages and disciplines.However,there are few people concerning about the emblems of universities.The emblem of university is a business card for university publicity,which can highlight the overall image of the university.The emblems of universities represent meanings through various modalities such as color,graphic,written symbol and image,highlighting schools’ geographical locations,spiritual cultures,school philosophies,schoolrunning characteristics and school-running pursuits,which constitutes multimodal metaphors and metonymies.However,the current researches on the emblems of universities have certain limitations.First of all,from the perspectives of research,most scholars start from the perspectives of graphic design,philology,culture,etc.Few scholars study its multimodal metaphor and metonymy from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Secondly,from the corpus of research,most studies are case studies and lack systematic.In view of this,this thesis takes the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities as research objects to solve the following problems:1.What are the main modal types? How are the modalities distributed? What does the distribution of modalities in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities imply?2.What metaphors and metonymies exist in each type of modality? What the meanings of the emblems of universities are represented through the mapping of metaphor and metonymy?3.What are the types of the interaction of metaphor and metonymy involved in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities? And how are the meanings of the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities constructed through the interaction of metaphor and metonymy?Based on the conceptual metaphor,conceptual metonymy and the interaction of metaphor and metonymy,this thesis uses quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to explore the multimodal meaning representations in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities.First,the modalities in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities are counted.Then,in-depth analyses of cases lead to the following conclusions:1.The main modalities in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities are: color modality,graphic modality,written symbol modality and image modality.The distribution of modalities implies metaphorical meanings conveyed by universities.2.In the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities,metaphors are divided into color metaphors,written symbol metaphors,graphic metaphors and image metaphors.The types of metonymy include CHARACTERISTICS FOR ENTITY,ENTITY FOR CHARACTERISTICS,WEARING FOR PERSON,INDIVIDUAL ENTITY FOR COLLECTION,POSSESSOR FOR POSSESSED,POSSESSED FOR POSSESSOR,LOCATION FOR LOCATED,LOCATED FOR LOCATION,SUB EVENT FOR HOLISTIC EVENT,ACTION FOR STATE,CONTAINER FOR CONTAINED and REPRESENTATIVE BUILDING FOR UNIVERSITY.Through mapping theory,metaphor and metonymy mainly represent the geographical locations,subject features,school philosophies,school spirits and national cultures in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities.3.The types of the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities are: metaphor coming from metonymy and metaphor containing metonymy.Through metonymy,the source domain of metaphor can be stimulated.Metonymy and metaphor construct the meanings in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities together.According to the study of the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities,we can see that it is feasible to analyze the semantic construction of multimodal discourse by conceptual metaphor,conceptual metonymy and the interaction of metaphor and metonymy.The dual-domain mapping in conceptual metaphor and metonymy provides an important way to reveal the meanings in the emblems of China’s double first-rate universities and to convey the information to be presented to the public.Conceptual metaphor,conceptual metonymy,the interaction of metaphor and metonymy and multimodal metaphor and metonymy are confirmed,and research genre has also been expanded to provide new research orientation for related fields.