Charles Forceville Research Articles

Metaphorical Meaning of Texts Integrated in the Multimodal Political Cartoons of Corruption in The Daily Nation Newspaper

The language of cartoons is not as direct as the language of news reporting in that it is characterized by satirical and metaphorical pictures; and codified and connotative wordings which makes it socially appropriate and relevant to inform, educate and entertain the general public. Cartoons are used to satirize and lampoon socio-political abuses like corruption. In Kenya, corruption poses one of the greatest challenges facing the Kenyan government and reports on corruption scandals in the media are the order of the day. The present research studied the unique nature of the language of cartoons with focus on portrayal of corruption. The specific objective was to establish the metaphorical meaning of texts integrated in the multimodal political cartoons of corruption in The Daily Nation Newspaper. The research was guided by the tenets of the pictorial metaphor model founded by Charles Forceville (2006) within the conceptual metaphor theory. The study was limited to multimodal political cartoons depicting corruption in The Daily Nation Newspaper in 2018 and 2019, a period characterized by mega corruption scandals in Kenya. The study adopted the analytical research design. The study population comprised 14 multimodal political cartoons with metaphoric expressions in The Daily Nation Newspaper in 2018 and 2019. Random purposive sampling technique was used to select the required cartoons and the sample size was dictated by saturation sampling. A total of 14 metaphorical expressions were purposively sampled from the 14 political cartoons. The data was then coded and analyzed qualitatively into themes of the respective conceptual metaphors. The findings were that the conceptual metaphors of corruption in The Daily Nation Newspaper are investigating corruption is turning a stone to reveal what is underneath, coruption is dirty money, corruption is stench, bribery is purchase, corruption is war, corruption is robbery, strategising is warming up, corruption is a movie, ......

Relevance and Political Discourse: Cognitive Grammar Meets Relevance Theory

The paper seeks to account, in terms of the Cognitive Grammar (CG) approach, for what Relevance theorists call epistemic vigilance, a metarepresentational human ability, often adopted by the addressee in his/her attempts to detect and evaluate (potentially) fake messages. In this way, we wish to explore the possibility of rapprochement between Cognitive Linguistics and Relevance Theory. In our attempt to incorporate epistemic vigilance into the Cognitive Grammar format, we propose to set up a cognitive space called a Relevance Schema (RS), a special “module” associated with Ronald Langacker’s Current Discourse Space (CDS). We claim that epistemic vigilance is instrumental in deriving “an implicational character” of the “true”, intended message that emerges in the blended space as a result of the clash between the explicatures’ meaning and the addressee’s understanding of a “state of affairs”. In Section 2, we discuss Charles Forceville’s Relevance-theoretic account of a political poster featuring Barack Obama. This is followed by a presentation in Section 3 of Ronald Langacker’s theory of CDS. Finally, Section 4 develops an analysis of the front-page issue of the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the related article devoted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Sino–US trade war in political cartoons: A synthesis of semiotic, cognitive, and cultural perspectives

Abstract Economic globalization has resulted in more frequent trading frictions, some of which have escalated into trade wars such as the one between China and the US. Drawing on the same corpus built by Zhang and Forceville (Zhang, Cun & Charles Forceville. 2020. Metaphor and metonymy in Chinese and American political cartoons (2018–2019) about the Sino–US trade conflict. Pragmatics and Cognition 27(2). 476–501), and complementing insights of that paper, this paper investigates how the Sino–US trade war is metaphorically and metonymically constructed in 129 Chinese and American political cartoons respectively from a synthesized perspective. Based on comparative analyses, cross-cultural similarity and uniqueness in the semiotic, cognitive, and cultural aspects can be concluded as follows: (a) at the expression level, the shared dominant mode configuration pattern of metaphor and metonymy requires extra-textual knowledge to identify the target domain/concept while the source domain/vehicle concept is pinpointed through pictorial resources; (b) at the cognition level, “us” and “them” are distinctively evaluated by using the metonymy BODILY REACTION FOR EMOTION, cultural symbols, and the Great Chain metaphor. The Chinese cartoons converge on disapproving of “them” while the American cartoons converge on disapproving of “us” and diverge on conceptualizing “them”; (c) a variety of cross-cultural default scenarios are employed in the Chinese cartoons whereas the American cartoons utilize non-default scenarios influenced by only American cultures. Both aim for persuasiveness by employing emotionally charged source domains/vehicle concepts, but to different audiences.

“Visual Metaphor” and “Metonymy” as the Reflection of Creative Thought in Art: An Analysis on Graphic Designer Yossi Lemel’s Poster Designs on the Coronavirus (Covid-19) from Charles Forceville’s Perspective

Works designed with visual metaphors and metonymies (posters, photographs, paintings, etc.) are considered to be strong in creativity and effective in meaning construction. This study analyzes selected poster designs of one of the most famous graphic designers of the world, Yossi Lemel, on the coronavirus (Covid-19). The scope of the study is limited to visual metaphors and metonymies. Based on the similarities between concepts, metaphors and metonymies are the most important signs in visual semiotics analyses. Symbols, codes, myths, and visual oxymorons are other signs that should be studied; however, limiting the study to metaphors and metonymies that are grounded on similarities, it is aimed to discuss the topic in detail. The purpose of the study is to put forth how the concepts formed in our minds are visualized by using metaphors and metonymies and to reveal the aesthetics these signs bring into visual designs. Finding and using metaphors is an important creativity activity that makes the receiver read the meaning easily from a different point. These are important elements of semiotics that build up works with strong creativity. It is this creative language that makes Lemel’s social and political posters important.

Book Review: A question of definitions: foundations for multimodality: A response to Charles Forceville’s review

Book Review: A question of definitions: foundations for multimodality: A response to Charles Forceville’s review

Eco-friendly advertising: A study of pictorial metaphors in environmental advertisements

According to Cognitive Linguistics, metaphors are an essential cognitive tool to conceptualise certain domains of experience (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Following this conception, it can be seen how advertising campaigns use metaphors with the aim of making advertisements more attractive. In this line, this paper deals with the use of metaphors in environmental banners which aim at stopping climate change. The main aim of this study is to identify and analyse the underlying conceptual metaphors that help conceptualisers construe and reason about a collected set of environmental advertisements. This analysis is based on the conceptions related to conceptual metaphor (Evans and Green 2006; Kovecses 2002; Lakoff and Johnson 1980), as well as the ideas postulated by Charles Forceville (1996) on ‘pictorial metaphors’. Hence, six advertisements which use pictorial metaphors have been selected from a collection named Visual Metaphors in Advertising, available at the webpage www.pinterest.es. These advertisements have been analysed taking into account: the type of pictorial metaphor that they employ, the main conceptual metaphor embedded in each of them, the identification of its source and target domain and how part of the conceptual structure from the source domain is attributed to the target domain. By doing so, it is intended to show how eminent advertising corporations use this cognitive tool to make their creations more appealing to their potential viewers. The aforementioned analysis reveals that different types of pictorial metaphors are employed in contemporary advertising campaigns.

Dress and Metaphors of Mobility in British Visual Culture

Abstract This essay traces the presence of mobility metaphors in the sartorial practices of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Britain. While fashion is frequently deemed ephemeral and changeful, it is also often theorised with reference to the concept of mobility, either physical or metaphorical. In fact, it seems that it is in the realm of fashion that the notions of motion, mobility, change and transition all become linked through visual representation. Based on Cognitive Metaphor Theory as well as insightful research on visual metaphors by Charles Forceville, one may argue that the concept of mobility is mapped onto garments and attire, resulting in change of fashions, as it was the case with the twentieth-century development of women’s tennis wear. At the same time, oppositional styles adopted by a subculture such as Teddy Boys are frequently theorised as metaphorically communicating class mobility and hence viewed as expressing a protest against British class structure. A more recent example of a close relationship between mobility, migration and fashion can be found in the British debate over the Muslim veil, in which Muslim women’s choice not to wear a veil becomes a metaphor of their cultural mobility and readiness to embrace the British way of life.

Review of Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres, edited by Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville (2017). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 301 pp.

Abstract The papers collected in the reviewed volume question the hegemony of the verbal in argumentation theory, focusing on different modes of arguing, ranging from the audio and visual to the gestural, across a variety of media genres. The volume aims at presenting the ways in which the different modes structure argumentation and coherently interact in multimodal text.

Pictorial body metaphors in Japanese advertising

This article explores the use of the body metaphor as a core communicative tool in times of economic crisis and national indebtedness, and the ways in which it thwarts political dialogue. It first traces the body metaphor in the manga version of Hitler’sMein Kampf, following Andreas Musolff’s theory of the ‘body politic’ in Nazi Germany. It then argues that the economic resurrection, or ‘miracles’, in postwar Germany and Japan replaced the discourse of the body nation with that of the body economy. Charles Forceville has shown how advertising uses pictorial metaphors to depict commodities and emphasise their qualities. My analysis of Japanese commercials reveals that their metaphors work to ‘incorporate’ consumers through the act of oral consumption, merging them with the commodities. An ‘oral fixation’ is presumed, rendering the relationship between the body economy and the consumer as one between mother and infant. Advertising functions as the wrapping, or ‘skin’, of this body economy, encouraging us to suckle at the mother’s breasts and at the same time to inject unlimited amounts of money into her veins.

Pictorial (multimodal) metaphor in printed advertising

The theoretical basis of the article is the methodology of pictorial/visual metaphor research presented in Charles Forceville's work Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising (2006) and multimodal metaphor research proposed in his book Multimodal Metaphor (2009). Both verbal and non-verbal metaphors are investigated combining interaction theory proposed by Max Black and the principles of conceptual metaphor analysis formulated in cognitive linguistics. In a metaphor, the primary and the secondary subjects are considered equal to the target and the source domains distinguished by cognitive linguists and the result of their interaction (the properties of the secondary subject (source domain) are mapped onto the primary subject (target domain)) is a conceptual metaphor. The target domain in advertising is an item or service being promoted, while the source domain is an object whose properties are attributed to the item or the service being advertised.In the discourse of advertising metaphor is realised by verbal and non-verbal forms of communications: written language, spoken language, image, music, sound, gestures. If the target and source domains in a conceptual metaphor are expressed by means of one of the indicated forms, it is treated as a monomodal metaphor, whereas if they are expressed by more than one of them, it is regarded as a multimodal metaphor. Since in the case of pictorial metaphor one of the components is expressed verbally and the other – by means of an image, it is treated as one of the varieties of multimodal metaphor.In Lithuanian printed advertising, pictorial metaphor is used to express various concepts. In the article the following examples of conceptual metaphors are analysed: JUICE IS SUN, CAR IS ANIMAL, TILE ADHESIVE IS BINDWEED, VODKA IS A NATION/PERSON. The research has revealed that in a metaphor both the source and the target domain can be expressed using pictorial and verbal means and sometimes using both of them. As a result, both verbal and pictorial means are equally important in metaphor as their interaction makes an advertisement more persuasive and effective.

Cinematic Carcerality: Prison Metaphors in Film

P UNTIL NOW, CINEMATIC PRISON METAPHORS HAVE BEEN NEGLECTED by both metaphor and film studies. By focusing on these ignored types of metaphor, this article fills a crucial gap in the critical understanding of metaphor. The first part of this article develops a taxonomy of prison and film metaphors. The first taxonomy (of prison metaphors) is based on the categories developed by Monika Fludernik and discriminates between metaphors of imprisonment that use the prison as tenor (PRISON IS X) and proper prison metaphors that use the prison as vehicle (X IS PRISON). The second list (of film metaphors) relies on Charles Forceville’s analyses of pictorial metaphors in advertisements and is intended as an alternative to already existing studies. The following discussion of prison metaphors in film demonstrates the heuristic value of these taxonomies with regard to the recipient’s quest for meaning. In other words, because the analyses of metaphors in this article are geared toward semantic significance, they serve as starting points for new interpretations of a number of films. More specifically, the use of certain prison metaphors centrally correlates with the ideological underpinnings 1 of the films that use them. For example, representations of the prison as a womb or a matrix of spiritual rebirth may be used to legitimize the prison, while portrayals of the prison in terms of hell or a tomb may serve to critique the prison. On the other hand, prison metaphors that describe a segment of the world outside prison in terms of imprisonment frequently correlate with social criticism and are used to shed a critical light on a certain aspect of society (e.g., class) by demonstrating how restrained people may be even outside the walls of the prison.

The puzzle of metaphor and voice in arts‐based social research

This paper provides a discussion on the utilisation of metaphor and dialogics as conceptual frameworks which can be applied to visual and literary forms of data as analytical tools and as an approach to reflection on professional practice. Drawing upon the work of writers such as Max Black, Charles Forceville, Paul Ricouer and Mikhail Bakhtin to construct an approach to this process, an example of visual and literary data is used to explore how these ideas can be illustrated in their use. The author argues that whilst metaphor and dialogics are essentially opposed conceptually, they can be used separately, alongside one another, or synthesised as a method for deepening and multiplying the possibilities for knowledge and understanding within visual and literary forms of data.

Book Reviews

Book reviews: Allen, Graham, Intertextuality (reviewed by Mari-Ann Berg); Cook, Guy, Language Play, Language Learning (reviewed by Charles Forceville); Pilkington, Adrian, Poetic Effects: A Relevance Theory Perspective (reviewed by Charles Forceville); Davis, H.G., Words: An Integrational Approach (reviewed by Paul Meara)

Limits of the Literal: Five Recent Books About Metaphor

Charles Forceville. Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising.Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding.Andrew Ortony (ed.). Metaphor and Thought. (2nd edition)Gerard Steen. Understanding Metaphor in Literature: an Empirical Approach.Roger M. White. The Structure of Metaphor