The Role of Visual Metaphor in Visual Genres

Abstract

In the last decades metaphor has been a paramount research topic within the Cognitive Metaphor Theory. Although initially linguistic metaphor received most attention, in recent years the research focus has shifted from verbal metaphor to other types of monomodal and multimodal metaphor (Forceville 2009). One research line has been the study of visual metaphor, i.e. metaphor instantiated through image, in specialised language, including political cartooning (e.g. El Refaie 2003), winespeak (e.g. Caballero 2009) and advertising (Forceville 2008). In the present article I examine the evaluative role of visual metaphor in two visual genres – advertising and political cartooning – through a corpus of English, French and Spanish ads and cartoons. It will be argued that while in advertising metaphor enhances the product qualities or presents it as a necessity, thus working as a persuasive tool, in cartooning metaphor shows the author’s critical stance towards a news event.