MULTIMODAL METAPHOR IN ENGLISH ADVERTISING TEXT

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to establish types of multimodal metaphors in English advertising texts of print media on quantitative and relative criteria using methods of conceptual and implicature analysis. An advertising text is addressed as multimodal (also videoverbal, creolized, polycode etc.), i.e. a polycode construct which consists of verbal and nonverbal signs in printed form, is produced within the advertising discourse and reflects the producer’s intention to influence the recipient’s decision to acquire the advertised product or use the service. The analysis uses cognitive metaphor theory which describes the interaction of two spheres of knowledge – the source and target concepts – based on an ontological characteristic that connects both metaphorical concepts and appears as a concept or a proposition. Through mapping (transferring qualities (characteristics) from one conceptual sphere to another), the recipient’s mind builds a metaphorical proposition of the pat­tern something is like something. Advertising texts activate a chain of implicatures in the recipient’s mind, the final one always expressing a directive illocution of offering that follows the pattern Buy our product! / Use our services! A multimodal metaphor is a conceptual metaphor, i.e. a mental projection of characteristics from one domain to another. It advertising texts, it takes place through the interaction of verbal and nonverbal components. Unlike the monomodal metaphor (verbal or visual), where the target and source concepts lie in the same mode of communication, a multimodal metaphor’s source and target concepts belong to different modes. Analysis of English advertising texts of print media allows classifying the multimodal metaphor on two criteria: quantitative and relative. By the number of metaphoric propositions (quantitative criterion), multimodal metaphors are divided into simple (with one metaphorical sentence) and complex ones (with two or more metaphorical propositions, or complicated by metonymy – a visual metaphtonymy). The relative criterion (relation of language and image) suggests three types: 1) the visual part complements the verbal; 2) the verbal part complements the visual; 3) both parts are self-sufficient. The above types of multimodal metaphor show that modern advertising text is a holistic polycode construct whose verbal components coexist in interaction with nonverbal ones.