A Study Of Multimodal Metaphors In Anti-smoking Advertisements

Metaphor is ?not only a figure of speech,but a mode of thought?(Lakoff,1993).It is pervasive in our daily life.As the society and modern technology develop,non-verbal signs play an important role in people‘s life.Therefore,metaphor can manifest itself not only in language but also in other modes of communication,such as music,sounds,pictures,gestures.For this reason,Forceville,together with other researchers,broke through the limitations of purely verbal metaphor and proposed the concept of multimodal metaphor,thus opening up a new orientation of metaphorical study.As a type of Public Service Advertisements,anti-smoking advertisement is an effective means to popularize the danger of smoking and persuade people to stay away from cigarettes.It plays an indispensable role in people‘s daily life.Under the guidance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Multimodal Metaphor Theory,the thesis strives to explore the multimodal metaphors in anti-smoking advertisements.This research adopts qualitative and quantitative methods and focuses on the specific research questions as follows.(1)What are the main types of multimodal metaphorical representations in anti-smoking advertisements?(2)How are the persuasive functions of multimodal metaphors realized in anti-smoking advertisements?By analyzing the collected samples of anti-smoking advertisements,the research results show that:(1)There are mainly five types of multimodal metaphorical representations in graphic anti-smoking advertisements,mainly including S(wp)T(wp),S(wp)T(w),S(p)T(wp),S(w)T(p),and S(wp)T(p);and there are seven types of multimodal metaphorical representations in video anti-smoking advertisements: S(w)T(wp),S(wo)T(wpo),S(wp)T(w),S(w)T(p),S(wp)T(wp),S(wps)T(wps),S(po)T(po).(2)The persuasive functions of multimodal metaphors in anti-smoking advertisements mainly include cognitive persuasion and emotional persuasion.The cognitive persuasion is realized by the following ways.a)Draw more attention to anti-smoking advertisements through the semantic conflicts produced by multimodal metaphors.b)Highlight the negative features of anti-smoking advertisements through partial mappings of multimodal metaphors.c)Create similar cognitive experience through the interaction of the source and target domains of multimodal metaphors in anti-smoking advertisements.The emotional persuasion is mainly achieved through transferring emotional preference via source domain and generating negative emotional experience.