A Study Of Multimodal Metaphor Construction On The Front Covers Of The Economist

A multimodal metaphor can be defined as “metaphor whose target and source domains are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modalities”(Forceville,2009: 24).It is the further development of cognitive metaphor theory with two big characteristics: dynamism and interactivity.With multimodality,metaphor is represented with interest on the one hand,dynamic and cultural characteristics are achieved in the production and interpretation of metaphor,with abstract mental process fully revealed on the other hand.Based on the previous studies,this thesis chooses the magazine covers as the corpus and Conceptual Integration Model of Multimodal Metaphor proposed by Zhao Xiufeng as the framework to provide a new research aspect for both multimodal metaphor and magazine covers.This paper intends to investigate the representative style as well as the dynamic meaning construction of multimodal metaphor on the front covers of The Economist under the framework of Conceptual Integration Model of Multimodal Metaphor proposed by Zhao(2013),mainly to solve the following questions:1)How many representative types are presented on magazine covers of The Economist?2)How the meanings of multimodal metaphor are constructed on magazine front covers?3)What are the contributions that Conceptual Integration Model of Multimodal Metaphor made to the research and development of multimodal metaphor?This paper has selected 122 magazine covers from January 1st,2007 to Dec.1st,2016 as research object to discuss the representing modality of multimodal metaphor on magazine front covers,and to reveal the dynamic meaning construction process by taking the pragmatic elements into consideration.The major findings are listedbelow:1)The representing types of metaphor in the front covers of The Economist are divided into six types: Image(source)– Text(target)Alignment,Text(source)-Image(target)Alignment,Image and Text(source)-Implicit(target)Alignment,Image(source)-Image and Text(target)Alignment,Image(source)-Image(target)Alignment,and Image and Text(source)-Image and Text(target)Alignment.The most commonly-used representing type of multimodal metaphor on the front covers is Image and Text(source)-Image and Text(target)Alignment.Besides,Image(source)– Text(target)Alignment and Text(source)-Image(target)Alignment are also wildly used by the cover designer to express his opinion and standpoints.2)The metaphorical meanings is presented under four blending networks:Simple Network;Mirror Network;Single-scope Network and Double-scope Network.In addition,a large proportion of metaphorical meaning is construed under Single-scope network.Despite different meaning construction networks,the pragmatic elements are of great importance to the interpretation of multimodal metaphor.3)Since the Conceptual Integration Model of Multimodal Metaphor is put forward based on CBT,thus it can not only present representing types of multimodal metaphor,but also show the dynamic process of context-related meaning construction.