Conceptual complexes in multimodal advertising
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Several scholars have dealt with the workings of metaphor and metonymy in multimodal advertisements (see Forceville, 2009; Uriós-Aparisi, 2009; or Pérez-Sobrino, 2017, among others). The present study investigates conceptual complexity to broaden the set of analytical categories to be used in multimodal analysis by making use of some of the latest developments on conceptual complexes, or principled combinations of cognitive models (e.g., frames, metaphors, metonymies), as discussed in Ruiz de Mendoza (2017, 2021) to a multimodal context. Work on conceptual complexity in Cognitive Linguistics has taken two main directions. One is provided by Blending Theory, which focuses on accounting for the emergence of new structure not present in the contributing conceptual constructs after selected integration. Another direction studies patterns of conceptual interaction with a view to finding regularities that can be formulated as high-level generalizations. We will adopt this second direction. The main aim of the study is to test these analytical categories and principles of knowledge organization in terms of their communicative impact within a multimodal environment. A subsidiary aim is to further develop the theoretical apparatus underlying this initial work. Analysing a corpus of 62 multimodal advertisements, we found that: (i) the nature of a frame determines its function, i.e., matrix frames are receiving frames, which ‘situationalize’ conceptual structure, whereas donor frames play a focal role; (ii) sometimes there is no frame integration but rather internal development within a given frame, which is possible thanks to the incorporation of an external element that is not integrated, but simply facilitates the development of the frame; (iii) there are also cases in which there is frame composition instead of integration; (iv) metonymy proves to be a licensing factor previous to integration, and (v) high-level non-metaphorical correlations can act as cues for the activation of metaphorical frameworks.
Downloads
Article Details
An open-access CREATIVE COMMONS copyright license is used. Those authors whose works are published by this journal, accept the following terms:
- Authors will retain their copyright and guarantee the Journal the right to first publish their work, which will simultaneously be subject to the Creative Commons Recognition License CC BY SA that allows third parties to share the work, provided that its author and first publication is indicated.
- Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., deposit it in an institutional telematics file or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
- Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work over the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematics files or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can produce interesting exchanges and increase quotes of the published work.
Funding data
-
Agencia Estatal de Investigación
Grant numbers PID2020-118349GB-I00
References
Barbu-Kleitsch, Oana. 2015. «Use of hyperboles in advertising effectiveness». Paper delivered at the International Conference RCIC’ 15. Redefining community in intercultural context. Brasov, 21-22 May 2015.
Bergh, Gunnar. 2005. «Min(d)ing English language data on the Web: what can Google tell us?». ICAME Journal, 29: 25–46. http://korpus.uib.no/icame/ij29/ij29-page25-46.pdf
Bergh, Gunnar and Eros Zanchetta. 2008. «Web linguistics». In Corpus linguistics: An international handbook (pp. 309–327), eds. Anke Ludeling and Merja Kytö. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Coulson, Seana. 1996. The Menendez Brothers Virus: Analogical mapping in Blended Spaces. Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language (pp. 67-83), ed. Adele Goldberg. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI.
Croft, William. 1993. «The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies». Cognitive Linguistics, 4: 335–370. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1993.4.4.335
Fauconnier, Giller and George Lakoff. 2014. On Metaphor and Blending. Cognitive Semiotics, 5(1-2): 393–399.
Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner. 2002. The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Fillmore, Charles J. 1982. «Frame semantics». In Linguistics in the morning calm (pp. 111-138), ed. Linguistic Society of Korea. Seoul: Hanshin.
Fillmore, Charles J. (1985). «Frames and the semantics of understanding». Quaderni di Semantica, 6: 222–255.
Forceville, Charles. 1996. Pictorial metaphor in advertising. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203064252
Forceville, Charles. 2006. «Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: Agendas for research». In Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives (pp. 379–402), eds. Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, René Dirven and Francisco J. Ruiz Mendoza Ibáñez. Berlin. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197761.0.1
Forceville, Charles. 2009. «Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognivist framework: Agendas for research». In Multimodal metaphor (pp. 19-42), eds. Charles Forceville and Eduardo Urios Aparisi. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Forceville, Charles. 2016. «Pictorial and Multimodal Metaphor». In Handbuch Sprache im multimodalen Kontext [The Language in Multimodal Contexts Handbook] Linguistic Knowledge series. (pp. 241-260), eds. Nina-Maria Klug and Hartmut Stöckl. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110296099-011
Goossens, Louis. 1990. «Metaphtonymy. The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in linguistic action». Cognitive Linguistics, 1(4): 323-340.
Grady, Joseph, Todd Oakley and Seana Coulson. 1999. Blending and metaphor. In Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics: Selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (pp. 101–124), eds. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Gerard J. Steen. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Herrero, Javier. 2020. «On Some Pragmatic Effects of Event Metonymies». Metaphor and Symbol, 35(4): 266-284. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2020.1820304
Heusinger, Klaus von and Petra B. Schumacher. 2019. «Discourse prominence: Definition and application». Journal of Pragmatics, 154: 117-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.07.025
Hidalgo, Laura and Blanca Kraljevic. 2011. «Multimodal metonymy and metaphor as complex discourse resources for creativity in ICT advertising discourse». In Metaphor and metonymy revisited beyond the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. Special issue of the Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 9(1): 153-178, eds. Francisco Gonzálvez, Mª Sandra Peña and Lorena Pérez-Hernández. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.9.1.08hid
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2020. An extended view of conceptual metaphor theory. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 18(1): 112-130.
Lakoff, George. 1990. «The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas? ». Cognitive Linguistics, 1(1): 39–74. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1990.1.1.39
Lakoff, George. 1993. «The contemporary theory of metaphor». In Metaphor and thought (2nd ed.) (pp. 202-251), ed. Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173865
Lakoff, George. 2008. The neural theory of metaphor. In Cambridge Handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 17–38), ed. Ray Gibbs. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.
Langacker, Roland Wayne. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume 1. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Miró, Ignasi. 2018. «Combining metaphors: From metaphoric amalgams to binary systems». Australian Journal of Linguistics, 38(1): 81-104. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2018.1393860
Müller, Cornelia and Alan Cienki. 2009. «Words, gestures, and beyond: forms of multimodal metaphor in the use of spoken language». In Multimodal metaphor (pp. 297-328), eds. Charles Forceville and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110215366.5.297
Peña, Mª Sandra. 2019. «How do hyperbolic effects emerge?». In Linguagem e pensamento: Pesquisas, reflexões e práticas (pp. 155-176), eds. Ana Cristina Pelosi and Monica Fontenelle Carneiro. São Luís, Universidade Federal do Maranhão, Brasil: EDUFMA.
Pérez-Sobrino, Paula. 2013. «Metaphor use in advertising: analysis of the interaction between multimodal metaphor and metonymy in a greenwashing advertisement». In Metaphor in Focus: Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor Use (pp. 67-82), eds. Elisabetta Gola and Francesca Ervas. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Pérez-Sobrino, Paula. 2016a. «Multimodal metaphor and metonymy in advertising: A corpus-bases account». Metaphor & Symbol, 31(2): 73-90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2016.1150759
Pérez-Sobrino, Paula. 2016b. «Shockvertising: patterns of conceptual interaction constraining advertising creativity». Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, 65: 257-290. http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/rev_CLAC.2016.v65.51988
Pérez-Sobrino, Paula. 2017. Multimodal Metaphor and Metonymy in Advertising. Figurative Thought and Language, 2. https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.2
Pérez-Sobrino, Paula., Jeannette Littlemore and David Houghton. 2018. «The Role of Figurative Complexity in the Comprehension and Appreciation of Advertisements». Applied Linguistics, 40(6): 957-991. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amy039
Renouf, Antoinette. 2003. «WebCorp: providing a renewable data source for corpus linguists». In Extending the Scope of Corpus-Based Research: New Applications, New Challenges (pp. 39–58), eds. Sylviane Granger and Stephanie Petch-Tyson. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José. 2011. «Metonymy and cognitive operations». In Defining metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics. Towards a consensus view (pp. 103-123), eds. Réka Benczes, Antonio Barcelona and Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.28.06rui
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José. 2017. «Metaphor and Other Cognitive Operations in Interaction: From Basicity to Complexity». In Metaphor: Embodied Cognition and Discourse (pp. 138-159), ed. Beate Hampe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.18026.tho
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José. 2020. «Understanding figures of speech: dependency relations and organizational patterns». Language and Communication, 71: 16–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2019.12.002
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José. 2021. Ten lectures on cognitive modeling. Between grammar and language-based inferencing. (Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics, Vol. 25). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José and Alicia Galera Masegosa. 2014. Cognitive Modeling: A Linguistic Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.45
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José and Alicia Galera Masegosa. 2020. «The metonymic exploitation of descriptive, attitudinal, and regulatory scenarios in making meaning». In Figurative meaning construction in thought and language (pp. 283–308), ed. Annalisa Baicchi. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.9.12rui
Urios-Aparisi, Eduardo. 2009. «Interaction of multimodal metaphor and metonymy in TV commercials: Four case studies». In Multimodal metaphor (pp. 95-118), eds. Charles Forceville and Eduardo Urios Aparisi. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110215366.2.95