A Multimodal Corpus-based Comparative Study Of Metaphoric Gestures In Chinese And American Business Interviews

Metaphor has long been regarded as a rhetorical figure of speech,but according to the conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson(1980),metaphor is a cognitive way of human beings.Later,the study of metaphor shift from verbal texts to multimodal discourses when Forceville(2009)has proposed the multi-modal theories.This thesis aims to do a research on multimodal metaphoric gestures in Chinese and American business interviews based on the following question: 1.What are the frequencies of gestural types used in Chinese and American business interviews respectively? What kinds of metaphoric gestures appear in these business interviews? 2.How do the metaphoric gestures match with verbal expressions in Chinese and American business interviews respectively?3.What are the similarities and differences in the multimodal meaning construction of metaphoric gestures between Chinese and American business interviews? What are the factors behind the differences? What are the functions of metaphoric gestures?Based on the conceptual metaphor theories and multimodal metaphor theories,the author has adopted a self-compiled corpus method in this thesis to make a comparative study on the metaphoric gestures in both Chinese and American business interviews,and four typical videos have been selected,two are Chinese interviews and two are American interviews.The quantitative study has been conducted with the help of the multimodal annotation tool ELAN 5.0 and followed by a qualitative analysis.After a detailed analysis,the conclusions are given below:1.There are five gestural types existing in these business interviews and the occurring frequencies from high to low are as follows: beats,deictics,indicates,metaphorics,iconics.The frequencies of metaphoric gestures in Chinese business interviews and American business interviews are 8.2% and 10.3% respectively.There are five types of metaphoric gestures existing in the target business interviews: ontological metaphorics,orientation metaphorics,metonymics and temporal metaphorics;the percentages of these metaphoric gesture types in Chinese business interviews and American business interviews are 51% and 82%,29% and 4%,13% and 12%,6.7% and 2% respectively,which shows that the ontological metaphorics are the most frequently used metaphoric gesture type.2.Metaphoric thought can be expressed by gestures exclusively or along with metaphoric speech,so there are two circumstances to consider: one is metaphoric gestures with metaphoric speeches,and the other is metaphoric gestures with literal speeches,the former circumstances account for more in American business interviews(58%)than in Chinese business interviews(52.5%).Metaphoric gestures can complement the metaphoric expressions or make it more visually,but when metaphoric gestures occur without metaphoric speeches,they can still transmit the complete metaphoric meanings.3.The similarities of multimodal meaning construction of metaphoric gestures in Chinese and American business interviews lie in that they use the metaphoric gestures to conceptualize similar TDs and they share the same multimodal meaning construction process(which is a multimodal mapping from SD(gesticulation)to TD(abstract concepts)based on a conceptual mapping process).The main differences are that the preparation phases of metaphoric gestures and the tendencies of metaphoric gesture construction,which are caused mainly by three factors: the speakers‘ intention,personal habits and cultural differences.The function of metaphoric gestures is universal: from the speakers‘ perspective,it will make the metaphoric meanings expressed by them more vividly and completely;from the observers‘ perspective,it can give hints to the understanding of metaphoric meanings and help draw their attention to the focus of verbal expressions.