| At the beginning of research, metaphor studies were only limited to the literary field and we regard metaphor as a kind of rhetorical device. In recent years, metaphor is a kind of cognitive manner in the fields of cognition and psychology, and language is the implementation model of metaphor. With the development of science and technology, discourses in the world are diverse, and various types of discourses require the analyses from different perspectives in order to better interpret them. Consequently, the concept of multimode has become a hot topic in many fields including linguistics. As metaphors are ubiquitous in language use, multimodal metaphors have become one of the research focuses in studying metaphorical expressions.With the rapid development of economy and the increasingly rich culture, advertising is one of the most representative media that can transmit culture to the whole world, and the influence of advertising on culture transmission is immeasurable. Cars are the inseparable and necessary transportation tool for people in modern society, and manufacturers are promoting the cars through the TV ads so as to stimulate their desire to buy cars. There are lots of researches about the ads, however, the research from the cognitive aspects and multimodal metaphors are few. This research attempts to explore the car TV ads from the perspective of multimodal metaphors as the ad discourses are diversified. In order to achieve the purpose, the research intends to answer the following three questions, which are:(1) What kinds of multimodal metaphors do automobile advertisements have and what features do multimodal metaphors have in automobile advertisements?(2) What functions does music have in constructing multimodal metaphors?(3) What are the differences and similarities do the Chinese and American automobile advertisements have?The findings of this research are mainly as follows: 1. There are three kinds of multimodal metaphors in automobile ads. The first is to advertise the new performances and new functions; the second is to emphasize the atmosphere that the car can bring; the third is to represent the automobile brand of this car. 2. The music in the ads can directly activate the source domain so as to build the multimodal metaphors, and indirectly activate the source domain through metonymy. It can also indirectly activate the target domain through metonymy. 3. The source domain of Chinese automobile advertisements still uses visual images to show the metaphors, followed by verbal and non-verbal sounds, and the source domains of American automobile advertisements appeared the same preferences on verbal and visual images.The research indicates that, multimodal metaphors take a very important role in constructing the modern ads so that a better recognition and appreciation of the modern ads should be ascribed to the understanding of multimodal metaphors When watching these ads, we should analysis the multimodal metaphors to make sure if this automobile is suit for us or not. And at the same time, through comparing Chinese automobile ads and American ads, Chinese ads should use more multimodal metaphors. The multimodal metaphors have great influence on modern TV advertisements, so we should pay much more attentions. |
