A Multimodal Metaphor Theory-based Study Of Theme Construction Of Air Pollution Comics

Environmental protection comics,as a typical type of graphic interaction,transmit environmental awareness to the public through the form of comics,affect the audience's thinking and regulate the audience's behavior.Multimodal metaphor is widely used in comics because of its conceptualization and function of softening complex and acute social problems.In addition,in recent years,China's air pollution is serious,and smog has seriously affected the air quality of our country and even posed a threat to national health,which has become one of the main topics of domestic environmental protection comics.However,at present,the related studies of multimodal metaphor in comics focus on the cognitive mechanism of metaphor and pay little attention to the cultural mode and rhetorical device of multimodal metaphor.Therefore,based on the theory of multimodal metaphor,this paper studied the expression form of the theme construction of comics from the type of multimodal metaphor representation,the rhetorical function of personification patterns on comic theme,and the cultural and narrative nature of comic theme from the metaphor scenario.The purpose of this study is to explain the theme construction characteristics of air pollution comics from the two aspects of form and meaning,to provide reference to construct and interpret the social function of the comics.In this study,98 air pollution comics published by Xinmanwang in 2013-2019were collected as research objects,and the representation of multimodal metaphor,personification patterns and metaphor scenario were identified,transcribed,discussed,classified and analyzed.Three research questions were answered:1.What're the types of multimodal metaphors in air pollution comics?2.What are the types of personification in air pollution comics?What is the effect on theme construction?3.What are the types of metaphor scenario in air pollution comics?Which type is the most frequent and what is the effect on theme construction?The study results were as follows:Firstly,the multimodal metaphors in air pollution comics can be divided into three categories according to the mapping relationship:cross-modal mapping metaphor,mono-modal mapping metaphor,and multimodal mapping metaphor,among which the S_P-T_V metaphor?pictorial source-verbal target metaphors?,S_P-T_P-V_C metaphor?pictorial source-pictorial target-words as complementary metaphors?and S_?-T_P/V metaphor?implicit source-pictorial or verbal target metaphors?are the most frequently used.Secondly,air pollution comics use a lot of personification patterns,including inter-mode personification and intra-mode personification,which are divided into mono-mode personification and bi-modes personification.And the personification pattern that is most frequently is pictorial personification.The usage of personification foregrounds some elements of the comics and triggers the anthropomorphism of the audience so as to shorten the distance between the comics and the readers.Thirdly,there are a lot of metaphor scenarios,including war scenarios,competition scenarios,life scenarios and journey scenarios.Some of the scenarios are shared by different cultures,while some of them have strong Chinese cultural color.The results of this study show that the comic creators often use S_P-T_V metaphor to construct comics.Through pictorial personification and other personification patterns as rhetoric means,smog is constructed into the evil image or the beast of war,while the environment and environmental protection departments are constructed into the weak image.Moreover,through metaphor scenarios such as war scenario,the relationship between air governance and air degradation is constructed and transmitted.It also provides a narrative framework for readers to understand the complex social problems and evaluate their attitudes.