A Multimodal Corpus-based Study On The Textual Functions Of Metaphors In English Documentary Films

Metaphors are the essential foundation organizing our conceptual system.The coherence of metaphoric system and cross mapping between conceptual domains make metaphors play significant role in textual level.Mode,as a systematic sign system linking the specific perception process of five senses,consists of verbal as well as nonverbal semiotics which jointly covey information.Therefore,the manifestations of metaphors ought to take in the form of both mono-modality and multi-modality.Previous studies,at home or abroad,shed light on the motivations of textual functions of metaphors and the touched research corpora mainly covers advertisements,cartoons,and films.However,the detailed analysis on the textual functions achieved by both monomodal and multimodal metaphors in the English documentary film is far from extensively explored.In consequence,the thesis will build multimodal corpus which takes English documentary film as research data to study textual functions of metaphors in the framework of Lakoff's Conceptual Metaphor Theory.And the thesis adopts to quantitative and qualitative methodologies aiming to answers the following three questions:1.What are the distributions of monomodal metaphors and multimodal metaphors in English documentary films?2.What are the textual functions of metaphors achieved by cross-domain mapping in English documentary films?3.What are the textual functions of metaphors achieved metaphorical entailment in English documentary films?After systematic and scientific study,the major findings of this thesis are as follows.First of all,there are generally three types of metaphors,that is verbal metaphors,visual metaphors,and multimodal metaphors.As for verbal metaphors,structural metaphors take up the biggest positions,especially Journey and Migration Metaphor.As for Visual metaphors,Up Orientation Metaphor and transformation of camera angles are prominently applied.As for multimodal metaphors,the most frequently occurred one is ontological metaphors,highlighting Human Metaphor and Container Metaphor.Secondly,due to the cross mapping between conceptual domains,both monomodal and multimodal metaphors can construct cohesive ties ensuring that metaphoric expressions extend in the textual level and generate new information,promoting informativeness and then contributing to the development of information flow.However,verbal metaphors can also provide metaphoric framework in which the text expands gradually.Visual metaphors can vividly express the emotions,present observational viewing angle,and their changes.Multimodal metaphor,because of the combination of various modes,convey more precise and detailed information and mainly applied to represent specific characters and events in the English documentaries.Thirdly,because of metaphoric entailments,both monomodal and multimodal metaphors principally perform coherent functions.To be specific,the share foundations entailed by all types of metaphors jointly guarantee the textual consistence and coherence by means of constructing hierarchical links.Therein,verbal modality crucially achieves semantic coherence and visual modality mostly realizes emotional or interpersonal coherence.The present research studies textual functions of metaphors from the cognitive perspective based on self-built multimodal documentary corpus.Therefore,the thesis possesses both theoretical and practical significance,providing implications for the Conceptual Metaphor Theory,textual analysis and the comprehension of documentary film.