A Comparative Analysis Of Multimodal Metaphor In Chinese And English Toothpaste Advertisements From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

As a linguistic phenomenon which is strongly associated with lives of human beings,metaphor draws Chinese and foreign scholars’ attention all the time.To begin with,it is generally believed that metaphor is merely a rhetorical device and it appears frequently in literature in order to live up to the expectation of rhetorical or communicative purpose.Nevertheless,in the complicated social practice,it is far from enough to interpret metaphor only from the level of text.Later on,people’understanding of metaphor is further deepened and the study of metaphor from the perspective of cognition came into being.Therefore,metaphor is no longer just a rhetorical device.Instead,metaphor exists in our thought and action.This is to say,metaphor is the thinking way of human beings.In addition,metaphor is essentially trying to help people understand and experience our world.Nowadays,we are living in a highly developing information era.And we are living in a society that is gradually becoming multimodal.That indicates that words are no longer the only means of conveying information.There are some other means to convey information.Image,gesture,color,music,line,together with spatial arrangement all can express meaning.Accordingly,multimodal metaphor is considered as a kind of brand-new metaphor and it is the thing that catches Chinese and foreign scholars’ attention in a short time.By engaging diverse sensory systems,the interaction between different modes makes the metaphorical meaning more profound and vivid.As a communication tool,various advertisements can be seen everywhere in life,and it refers to every walk of life.Advertising has become an indispensable part of life,in other words,advertising is one of the characteristics of the information age.Due to the purpose and timeliness of advertising,this makes advertising a highly and effective way to convey information.Because advertisements must deliver more information to the audiences within a limited time,it is inevitable that the advertisement designers need to use a variety of different elements to effectively display product information,including images,colors,text,sound,etc.It is precisely because of the diversity of advertising that advertising is multimodal.At the same time,advertising is also a better genre choice for studying multimodal metaphors.In this thesis,50 crest toothpaste advertisements are selected and analyzed.The 25 Chinese crest toothpaste advertisements are collected from Bilibili and the 25 English crest toothpaste advertisements are collected from You Tube.In addition,this thesis applies conceptual blending theory which is proposed by Fauconnier and Turner to the analysis of multimodal metaphors appeared in those 50 crest toothpaste advertisements.After the collected materials are analyzed,this thesis tries to figure out the similarities and differences between Chinese crest toothpaste advertisements and English crest toothpaste advertisements.A comparative analysis of multimodal metaphors that appear in Chinese and English toothpaste advertisements reveals that some similarities and differences exist between the two versions.Similarities:(1)Both Chinese and English crest toothpaste advertisements are inclined to use four modes to express metaphorical meaning,namely,color,image,sound and verbal semiotics.(2)The selection of source domains overlaps in both Chinese and English toothpaste advertisements.The two versions both use people,shield together with technology as the source domain of crest toothpaste which is regarded as the target domain.(3)Single-scope network model of conceptual blending is employed most frequently in multimodal metaphors in both Chinese and English crest toothpaste advertisements.(4)In terms of input spaces of multimodal metaphors,toothpaste advertisement designers are apt to select the mode of sound to represent the input space Ⅰ and tend to use sound and image to represent the input spaceⅡ in both Chinese and English crest toothpaste advertisements.Differences:(1)English crest toothpaste advertisements prefer to choose sound to express metaphorical meanings.But Chinese toothpaste advertisements prefer to use sound and image to express metaphorical meanings.(2)English toothpaste advertisements tend to select animate things as the source domains,but Chinese toothpaste advertisements don’t have the preference between animate things and inanimate.(3)English toothpaste advertisements tend to employ both single-scope network and double-scope network in multimodal metaphors to express metaphorical meaning.However,double-scope network is less employed in Chinese multimodal metaphors.