From The Cognitive Point Of The Metaphor In Advertising

In the business society, there are so many goods and those who want to win in the severe competition have to make good use of advertisement to attract the attention of the consumers'. Thus, the role of ad becomes more and more important today. The thesis is going to analysis the conceptual metaphors in advertisement from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Different from the traditional linguistics which viewed metaphor as a rhetorical device, cognitive linguistics believes that metaphor is no more than a deviant phenomenon of language but a way people perceive the world, also a powerful tool of cognition。In the book Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff &Johnson claim that"metaphor is primarily a matter of thought and action, and only derivatively a matter of language".According to the cognitive approach of Lakoff&Johnson's experiential view, this thesis adopts a qualitative method to categorize and analyze the metaphors in advertisement and discuss their bodily experiential basis and their role in advertisement. The function of the metaphors'will also be discussed. Through analysis, the author holds that the different functions of conceptual metaphors are basically in accordance with the basic function of advertisement and different type of conceptual metaphors serves respectively as the cognitive basis for the functions of advertisement. Due to the length of the thesis, there exist some limitations, and the author proposes accordingly the opinion for future research.