Issues of Childhood in Public Service Announcements Discourse: Metaphorical Modeling

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the theme of childhood being a leading topic in a majority of socially focused texts, especially in public service announcements (PSA). Very often, the deep meaning of PSA texts is conveyed through the metaphor. Nowadays we can see that a traditional verbal metaphor is giving its way to more elaborate and complex type – visual metaphor. Thus it becomes vital to research such metaphorical structures, where the transfer is performed using an iconic semiotic system and by correlation of visual metaphor with a verbal one. This transfer of the verbal code into the code of images has a great persuasive potential essential for PSA's effectiveness. It means that all advantages of metaphoric “packing” of the information can be actualized by the verbal code sufficiently enhanced by the visual code. One of the key tasks of the present research is to develop and test a method of analyzing socially oriented polycode metaphorical texts, connected with the issues of childhood, and to check their effectiveness. We detect the tools of constructing visual cognitive metaphor, determine the strategies used, and evaluate the persuasive effect of the visual metaphor used in PSA discourse.