A Study Of Metaphor In Chinese Public Service Advertisements Based On Conceptual Blending Theory

Public service advertisement is a way of information transmission and persuasion. Its purpose is to draw the audience's attention, stimulate their mental association, affect their values and thus arouse their awareness of social problems. Public service advertisement presents social responsibility and it is the symbol of social civilization. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the study of public service advertisement. As a kind of common language phenomenon, metaphors are widely employed in public service advertisement because of its special rhetorical function and expressive effects. Metaphors can make the theme of public service advertisement more prominent and more attractive, which can help achieve its goals. Therefore, studying metaphors and public service advertisement under the same framework is of great significance. Previous studies on metaphors in public service advertisement are mainly from perspectives of semiotics, rhetoric, function and pragmatics. However, previous studies have failed to conduct comprehensive interpretations of the dynamic process of the meaning construction of metaphors in public service advertisements. The development of Conceptual Blending Theory breaks through the limitations of the traditional study on metaphors and it provides a solid theoretical basis for interpreting the cognitive mechanism behind the meaning of metaphor. This paper applies Conceptual Blending Theory to illustrate the online process of the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements, aiming to applying the theory to expound the cognitive mechanism of the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements and provide a new research perspective and method for the study of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements.This paper adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches, selects 30 senior postgraduates majoring in English randomly and invites each of them to get some related resources of Chinese public service advertisements from magazines, newspapers and the Internet. Afterwards, they each is asked to write down 5 pieces of Chinese public service advertisements that give them the deepest impression. And then the author extracts Chinese public service advertisements which involve metaphors as research objects, and applies the Conceptual Blending Theory proposed by Fauconnier and Turner to analyze every step of the process of meaning construction of metaphors, that is, the construction of mental spaces, cross-domain mappings in simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks and double-scope networks, and the emergent structure in the blended space. In a word, this paper illustrates the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements, reveals the unconscious dynamic blending process in the comprehension of metaphor, and confirms the great cognitive and explanatory power of Conceptual Blending Theory.This paper intends to answer three questions:(1) What's the occurrence frequency of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements and how do the metaphors distribute in the four types of networks?(2) How are the meanings of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements constructed based on Conceptual Blending Theory?(3) What are the factors that influence the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements? Through the analysis and discussion based on the Conceptual Blending Theory, we can draw the following conclusion:(1) As a kind of language phenomenon, metaphors are pervasive in Chinese public service advertisement and they mainly belong to mirror, single-scope and double-scope networks, while the simplex networks are rarely used, from which we can discover that a simple form corresponds to a complicated type of conceptual blending network. That is to say, the process of meaning construction of simple language expressions is very complicated.(2) According to Conceptual Blending theory, people construct various mental spaces when speaking and thinking, and they integrate these mental spaces. Finally the blended space comes into being. Metaphors involves cross-space mapping between source domain and target domain. Through mapping, structures of both source domain and target domain are selectively projected to the blended space, where composition, completion and elaboration occur and finally the emergent structure comes into being. Therefore, the meaning of metaphor comes from the emergent structure. In this paper, the application of Conceptual Blending Theory to illustrate the process of the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements confirms its great explanatory power in the interpretation of the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements.(3) According to the analysis of meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements, we can discover that context, cultural background and personal cognitive ability play a vital role in the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisement, and the three factors influence the meaning construction of metaphors in Chinese public service advertisements to some extent.