Abstract
With the development of technology and the extension to multimodality in linguistics, technology tools get more applied to linguistic study. It is recognized that metaphor should not be trapped in language, but expanded to various mode. Based on the multimedia corpus built by the multimedia annotator software ELAN which gives rise to a more detailed interpretation, this article attempts to explore mysteries in multimodal metaphor in Chinese ecological educational advertisements: what are prominent metaphors characterize this typical advertisement, how modes collaborate in multimodal metaphor, and how meaning creation is processed in multi-mode way. It is classified that four kinds of metaphors are prominently represented, that is, ontological metaphor, color metaphor, money metaphor, and BIG IS SIGNIFICANT. Various modes collaborate simultaneously to construct meaning, and it is suggested that in various modes, there exists differentiation between priority and the others. The more information a mode carries, the more significant it is in collaborations. The most efficient way of TV educational advertisements to convey meaning is visualization, so most of the time the visual mode acts as the priority in assistance with the others. Through simultaneous cueing -- saliently representing target and source domain simultaneously, and perceptual resemblance--the resemblance experienced through visual perception or auditory sense triggers similarity of the source and the target domain, meaning is created and conveyed to audiences.
Highlights
Metaphor, traditionally viewed as one figure of speech, is proved a powerful cognitive tool for our conceptualization of the world, and is “not just in language but in thought and action, and our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” [1]
Research of multimodal metaphor in advertisements mostly focuses on one certain video stream or audio, such as the demonstration of the nonverbal and multimodal manifestations of metaphors and metonymies by taking shots on the video, while few research is built on the base of multimodal corpus, which is of retrieval capability and accurately represents details based on the time line
As the definition of multimodal metaphor comes down to the mapping from the source domain to the target domain, ELAN helps find out the target domain and source domain, and how they are represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes
Summary
Traditionally viewed as one figure of speech, is proved a powerful cognitive tool for our conceptualization of the world, and is “not just in language but in thought and action, and our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” [1]. The problem of environment still concerns all human beings, so Chinese government has paid much attention to environmental protection, including the publication of ecological educational advertisements. The corpus consists of thirteen ecological public service advertisements screened on CCTV, four hundred and sixty-five seconds totally. The questions, which this thesis is supposed to resolve, are concerned about multimodal metaphors and modes. As it is shown, from mono-modal to multimodal metaphor, the most significant factor is mode, which differs the ways of metaphorical representations from the traditional one. Educational Advertisements discussions on collaborations of modes, meaning creation in multimodal metaphor is discussed as a significant part
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