A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Beverage Video Advertisements From The Perspective Of Multimodal Metaphor

Forceville & Urios-Aparisi proposed that metaphor is not only rooted in our mind and language,but also influenced by context and non-verbal factors.In advertising,the expression of meaning behind the richness of modality and different scenes fosters the understanding of implicit meaning.Multimodal metaphor theory exactly makes up for the shortcomings and narrowness of conceptual metaphor.Therefore,this paper uses conceptual metaphor theory and multimodal metaphor theory to analyze dynamic videos.At present,multimodal metaphor theory mainly focuses on the interpretation of pure theory and the study of print advertising,while the number of video research is still small,especially most the study on beverage advertising mostly focuses on static research,lack of relevant dynamic research.This paper selects 15 video beverage advertisements of different brands in China and the America respectively.Firstly,it conducts a quantitative research on the relevant corpus,calculates the frequency of relevant advertising themes,metaphor types.The research finds that it mainly involves four metaphor types and many sub-types,comparing the similarities and differences of metaphors between the two countries.Secondly,on the basis of the corpus research,it selects four video advertisements,through the classification of modes and metaphor types to analyze the meaning construction in detail;the third step is to explain the cultural differences between China and America through qualitative analysis,so as to understand the similarities and differences in the metaphorical process between the two countries.The main purpose of this paper is to answer three questions:(1)How does multimodal metaphor reveal the product and its implied meaning.(2)How does multimodal metaphor present promotional meaning.(3)How does multimodal meaning unfold in different cultural backgrounds.The main findings are as follows:(1)Ontological metaphor and structural metaphor are the most ordinary in the advertisements.In the narrative process of dynamic advertising,ontological metaphor is conducive to the promotion through the interpretation of goods and by the way of personification.In addition,structural metaphor includes common experiences in people’s life,such as "LOVE IS JOURNEY","LIFE IS WAR",as well as the sub-metaphor like health metaphor,competition metaphor and so on;(2)The elements in the domain are mainly presented by plants,animals and families in China with direct visual mode as the main factors.In addition,there are verbal mode,non-verbal mode,written mode,sound mode,color mode and other interactive modes.The elements in American advertising mainly include emotion,technology,war and so on.Both the two countries have characters and emotional factors to jointly construct metaphorical expression,which can help us understand the source and target domain which has promoting effect;(3)In the process of metaphorical insinuation,domestic advertisements are mainly presented in an implicit and indirect way,and most of them are emotional expression.Of course,a small number of advertisements directly express products.Foreign advertisements are more direct,usually presenting the useful effect of the product,and they also involve emotional expression,which are quite different from domestic advertisements;(4)After analyzing the cultures of the two countries,it is found that "harmony in difference","harmony in man and nature,the whole","respect for nature" and "emphasis on family" are cherished by Chinese people,so the choice of source domain is usually the nature and family;on the contrary,due to different geographical environment,America pays more attention to the exploration and conquest of nature,the realization of personal value and emotion,so the source domain is usually chosen a competitive scene or a scene of personal emotion.Cultural analysis supported by multimodal metaphor theory is conducive to the exploration and the interpretation of advertising meaning.It is not only helpful for consumers to deeply understand advertising intention,but also helpful for beverage advertising designers to pay attention to cultural factors and promote mutual understanding and communication between enterprises in different cultures.We can find that the presentation of advertisement is the co-work of different metaphors,their cooperation all fosters the dynamic and narrative presentation.