Multimodal Metaphor

Metaphor pervades discourse and may govern how we think and act. But most studies only discuss its verbal varieties. This book examines metaphors drawing on combinations of visuals, language, gestures, sound, and music. Investigated texts include ad

Metaphor and metonymy appeal to us because they evoke mental images in unique but still recognisable ways. The potential for figurative thought exists in everyone, and it pervades our everyday social interactions. In particular, advertising offers countless opportunities to explore the way in which people think creatively through metaphor and metonymy. The thorough analysis of a corpus of 210 authentic printed advertisements shows the central role of multimodal metaphor, metonymy, and their patterns of interaction, at the heart of advertising campaigns. This book is the first in-depth research monograph to bring together qualitative and quantitative evidence of metaphor-metonymy combinations in real multimodal discourse. It combines detailed case study analyses with corpus-based analysis and psycholinguistic enquiry to provide the reader with a prismatic approach to the topic of figurative language in multimodal advertising. Besides its theoretical contribution to the field of multimodal figurative language, this monograph has a wide number of practical applications due to its focus on advertising and the communicative impact of creative messages on consumers. This book will pave the way for further qualitative and quantitative research on the ways in which figurative language shapes multimodal discourse, and how it relates to our everyday creative thinking.

The creative potentiality of metaphor is one of the central themes in research on creativity. The present volume offers a space for the interdisciplinary discussion of the relationship between metaphor and creativity by focusing on (re)contextualization across modes and socio-cultural contexts and on the performative dimension of creative discourse practices. The volume brings together insights from Conceptual Metaphor Theory, (Critical) Discourse approaches to metaphor and Multimodal discourse analysis. Creativity as a process is explored in how it emerges in the flow of experience when talking about or reacting to creative acts such as dance, painting or music, and in subjects’ responses to advertisements in experimental studies. Creativity as product is explored by analyzing the choice, occurrence and patterning of creative metaphors in various types of (multimodal and multisensorial) discourses such as political cartoons, satire, films, children’s storybooks, music and songs, videos, scientific discourse, architectural reviews and the performance of classical Indian rasa.

Metaphor has recently been reconceptualised as a fundamental part of the human conceptual system. It can hence be expressed in language but also in other modalities and media of communication, including gesture and body language, sound and music, and film and visuals. In spite of this theoretical landslide, however, the wide range of nonverbal metaphor and its processing has neither been empirically investigated on the same scale nor with the same rigour as metaphor in language. The overarching goal of this book is to report on the findings of a research program aimed at exploiting the vast cognitive linguistic and psycholinguistic expertise on metaphor in language for a new, behaviourally founded approach to the structure and processes of metaphor in one of these nonverbal manifestations, namely static visuals. The book presents concepts and methods for the identification and analysis of metaphor in document structure as well as new approaches to the study of visual metaphor processing. Its results are intended to further the development of an encompassing and robust cognitive-scientific theory of metaphor by including visual metaphor while also enriching our understanding of the communicative possibilities and effects of visual metaphor in multimodal discourse.

This volume transcends boundaries, captivating multimodality scholars worldwide while offering invaluable non-"Anglo" perspectives through its main focus on Lithuanian public discourse. Discover the interaction between multimodal communication and (sub)cultural influences in political, advertising, and film discourse. This volume is a vade mecum for scholars and students of visual and multimodal stylistics, rhetoric, and creativity across diverse media, professionals specialising in advertisements, commercials, films etc. Discover original insights that encourage intercultural comparative research, emphasising the role of cultural context in multimodality.

The study of metaphor is now firmly established as a central topic within cognitive science and the humanities. This book explores the critical role that conceptual metaphors play in language, thought, cultural and expressive actions. It evaluates the arguments and evidence for and against conceptual metaphors across academic disciplines.

Studies of multimodality have significantly advanced our understanding of the potential of different semiotic resources—verbal, visual, aural, and kinetic—to make meaning and allow people to achieve various social purposes such as persuading, entertaining, and explaining. Yet little is known about the role that individual nonverbal resources and their interaction with language and with each other play in concealing and supporting, or drawing attention to and subverting, social boundaries and inequality, political or commercial agendas. This volume brings together contributions by rominent and emerging scholars that address this gap through the critical analysis of multimodality in popular culture texts and semiotic practices. It connects multimodal analysis to critical discourse analysis, demonstrating the value of different approaches to multimodality for building a better understanding of critical issues of central interest to discourse analysis, semiotics, applied linguistics, education, cultural and media studies.

Over the past few decades, research on metaphor has focused almost exclusively on its verbal and cognitive dimensions. In Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, Charles Forceville argues that metaphor can also occur in pictures and draws on relevant studies from various disciplines to propose a model for the identification, classification, and analysis of 'pictorial metaphors'. By using insights taken from a range of linguistic, artistic and cognitive perspectives for example, interaction and relevance theory, Forceville shows not only how metaphor can occur in pictures, but also provides a framework within which these pictorial metaphors can be analyzed. The theoretical insights are applied to thirty advertisements and billboards of British, French, German and Dutch origin. Apart from substantiating the claim that it makes sense to talk about `pictorial metaphors', the detailed analyses of the advertisements suggest how metaphor theory can be employed as a tool in media studies. Context in its various manifestations plays a key role in the analyses. Furthermore, the results of a small-scale experiment shed light on where general agreement about the meaning of a pictorial metaphor can shade over into other more idiosyncratic but equally valid interpretations. The final chapter sketches the ways in which the insights gained can be used for further research.