A Multimodal Metaphor Study On The Construction Of China’s Ecological Image In The New Era

In recent years,multimodal metaphor has become a popular research topic in many disciplines.A multimodal metaphor is a metaphor that is represented by two or more modal symbols in concert.As one of the typical multimodal discourses,documentaries contain a rich variety of multimodal metaphors.However,researchers distribute much attention to metaphors in discourses like advertisements and political cartoons,neglecting metaphors in documentaries.Since the 18 th Party Congress,socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era,and the construction of ecological civilization has received great attention from the CPC Central Committee.As a documentary launched in anticipation of the 15 th Conference of the Parties(COP)Leaders Summit of the Convention on Biological Diversity(CBD),the documentary Song of Life constructs rich metaphorical meanings through various modes such as language,images and sounds,depicting the ecological landscape of China in the new era.This paper analyzes the multimodal metaphors in Song of Life from the perspective of cognitive metaphor with the help of Charteris-Black’s metaphor research framework and Zhao Xiufeng’s Multimodal Metaphor Integration Model,focusing on the following four questions: 1)What multimodal metaphors are used in Song of Life? 2)How do these multimodal metaphors construct metaphorical meaning?What kind of ecological image of China is shaped by these metaphors? 3)What factors influence the choice of multimodal metaphors in Song of Life? 4)What suggestions on the use of multimodal metaphors in Song of Life can be drawn for the construction of China’s ecological image?In this study,the multimodal metaphors in Song of Life are identified and annotated manually by the qualitative research tool MAXQDA.With a multimodal metaphor coding system established by the author in advance,the identified multimodal metaphors are then dragged to their corresponding layers of the continually-improving coding system.Eventually,these metaphors are counted quantitatively and categorically,and are visualized in figures and charts.After an analysis and discussion,this study results demonstrate that: firstly,the documentary deploys a variety of multimodal metaphors over twenty-five categories,including human being metaphors,object metaphors,body part metaphors,family/home metaphors,machine metaphors,container metaphors,and so on,among which human-related metaphors account for the highest proportion.Secondly,the documentary mainly adopts modes like language,image,color,camera perspective,background music,and sound effects to directly represent or indirectly activate the metaphorical source and/or target domains,among which linguistic modes and visual modes are used in a high frequency,but aural modes are deployed much less;through the modal representations mentioned above and metaphorical meaning construction,Song of Life constructs China an ecological image that humans coexist with nature in harmony.Thirdly,through analysis and discussion,four main factors that influence the selection of the multiple human-related multimodal metaphors in this documentary are explored out,namely ideology,culture and history,embodied cognition,and pragmatic function,among which ideology is the most fundamental factor,including two aspects of the traditional Chinese philosophical concept of“nature and man in one” and Xi’s “green water and green mountain are golden and silver mountains” in the new era.Finally,two suggestions on the use of multimodal metaphors to construct China’s ecological image are concluded: first,future documentary creators should increase the frequency of aural modes in representing multimodal metaphors;second,they should ensure a tighter coordination and cooperation among multi-modes that characterize multimodal metaphors.