| In the past decade,as a subfield of conceptual metaphor,multimodal metaphor combines metaphor and modality,which has attracted the continuous attention of scholars at home and abroad.Nevertheless,the field is still in a relatively immature state nowadays,which is closely related with metaphor identification tools,research tools,the interaction relationships between modes and the modal categories in related researches.Advertisement has laid a certain foundation for the research in the field.However,different from the purpose of commercial advertisement,the features of cognitive devices and modal interaction in public service advertisement are worth further discussion.Since the winter of 2019,COVID-19 has drawn public concern globally.In this process,public service advertisement in video form can convey important information and give people scientific guidance for prevention,and the abundant and typical video corpuses in different countries lay a foundation for this study.This study aims to compare and analyze mono-modal meanings,interactive relationships among modes in multimodal metaphors as well as the universality and diversity of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy in the public service advertisement(henceforth abbreviated as PSA)of COVID-19 from China,the United Kingdom(henceforth abbreviated as UK)and France.This study selects 10 Chinese,British and French PSAs as research corpus,respectively.The 30 video advertisements are from authoritative organizations in various countries,such as CCTV,NHS and the government of France.With the help of metaphor identification tools MIPVU and VISMIP,text-processing software Ant Conc3.5.9 and video-analyzing software El AN 6.2 on identification,annotation,extraction and statistics of the research corpus,this paper mainly aims to answer the following three questions:(1)Which modes are used in video PSAs about COVID-19 in China,UK and France? And what are the meanings and features of each mono-modality?(2)What are the types,ratios and features of interactive relationships between modes in the multimodal metaphors among PSAs from three countries?(3)What similarities and differences exist in the relative cognitive constructions of metaphors and metonymies among PSAs from three countries?Research findings: first,from a macro perspective,with the development of the epidemic,the themes of relevant PSAs in various countries are evolving,and the integration of various types of information could assist the addressees to construct a cognitive network.Among them,“protective measures” and “vaccination” are the common concerns in the PSAs of China,UK and France,and “public chopsticks” and“Chinese doctors” have become the unique topics of PSAs in China.After sorting out key words in the verbal mode,it can be found that “public chopsticks”,“John Elton”and “freedom” are the distinctive key words in Chinese,British and French PSAs respectively,which,to a certain extent,echoes with the correlative topics of advertisement.Furthermore,from the micro perspective,the features of modes in the PSAs from China,UK and France are as follows.1.The main mood structure of verbal mode in advertisements from China,UK and France is declarative mood,while imperative mood and interrogative mood rank second and third.Integrated with the related function,the frequent use of declarative mood in PSAs mainly plays the role of persuading the addressees.In addition,imperative mood is often combined with the topic of “protective measures” while the interrogative mood closely connected with narrative plots can arouse the interests of the addressees.2.As for pictorial mode,the interactive meaning in Visual Grammar Theory is mainly constructed through contact,social distance and horizontal perspective.Among them,“offer” contact,close-up shot and eye-to-eye perspective account for a large proportion in advertisement from three countries.Different from the trend of verbal mode,“offer” contact has the intention of conveying information in an indirect and creative way,while close-up shot and eye-to-eye perspective attempt to shorten the distance with the addressees and immerse them into the advertisement contexts.3.In terms of music mode,the distribution of instrumental music is much larger.It is demonstrated that compared with China and UK,French PSAs own more vocal music which tends to be combined with narrative plots and accompanied by changing pitch and rhythm.Furthermore,the characteristics of pitch,pitch range and rhythm in instrumental music present different trends in advertisements from three countries.Second,in the corresponding cognitive constructions,the interactive relationships between verbal mode and pictorial mode are the core content of this study.According to the statistics,the integrative relationship accounts for the largest proportion in Chinese,British and French corpora.After further subdivision,there are two patterns of integrative relationship: VP-VP pattern and V-P pattern.VP-VP pattern aims to deepen the audience’s impression and avoid ambiguity,while V-P pattern can better arouse addressees’ interest through time difference represented by two modes.In addition,combined with narrative PSAs,the anchoring function of verbal mode requires the addressees to have the ability of judgement and high degree of notice.Relaying function of verbal mode plays the decisive role of verbal information and strengthening effect of pictorial mode,which,to some extent,are beneficial for addressees to comprehend and internalize the PSAs of “protective measures”.This paper also extends the interactive relationships to the interaction with music mode.It is found that vocal music exists in integrative relationship with both verbal mode and pictorial mode in PSAs from France.Third,in conceptual metaphors,compared with structural metaphor and orientational metaphor,the relevant corpus of this study mainly consists of ontological metaphors,and the source domain gives the trend of abstraction.This trend is closely connected to the reversibility between two domains and the conventionalization of abstract concepts in the cognitive constructions.Besides,the cognitive basis of related metaphors in different countries has different trends.Most metaphors in Chinese PSAs are based on perceived structural similarity,while PSAs in UK and France have the tendency to be based on correlation in experience.Vaccination,keeping social distance,wearing masks and quarantine are common conceptual domains in advertisements from three countries and are all related with the source domain “love”,which reflect the sense of community and aim to persuade the addressees to make joint efforts on the protective measures.The proportion of conceptual metonymies in the corpus is smaller.Among them,root metonymy mainly covers THE PART FOR THE WHOLE,SUBEVENT FOR COMPLEX EVENT and CHARACTERISTIC FOR ENTITY.To some extent,this paper makes up for the grey areas of the previous studies,consolidates the theories of Conceptual Metaphor,Conceptual Metonymy,Functional Grammar and Visual Grammar,and further expands and extends the related investigations of multimodal metaphor and PSA.Through comparing and concluding the mono-modal meanings,the interactive relationships among modes and cognitive construction in the relevant corpus from different countries,this study can offer some guidance to the researchers,advertisement designers and addressees. |
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