本文是一篇语言学论文，尽管视觉隐喻是当今广告中常用的工具之一，但该领域的研究工作与多模态研究和广告实践的发展并不相称，“A是B”“A像B”和“A和B”。但据我们所知，关于这些句法结构对视觉隐喻融合结构的描述和概念化的影响，目前所知还不够充分。因此，本研究旨在通过在线问卷调查和行为实验，探讨融合结构视觉隐喻的句法结构对概念表征的影响。
1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Advertising,playing an increasingly essential role in the modern world with theinformation promotion,has penetrated all fields of human life.Over the years,verbalexpressions are no longer the only means to convey information,while images have graduallybecome the indispensable carrier of message dissemination.This phenomenon has led to lessattention being paid to verbal elements but instead more to visual in advertisements[1],withadvertisers who,in order to cope with the rising market competition,tend to promote thequality of their advertisements by leaving the interpretation open to inpiduals[2].In such acase,rhetoric figures as an advertising style are enjoying a popularity in advertisements forthe implicit depiction that can provoke more elaboration,more positive attitudes and enhanceattention and advertisements recall[3-7].What’s more,compared with verbal rhetoric,visualrhetoric have a more effective influence on the cognitive responses of viewers,in that it canlead them through a deep thoughtful processing for meaning acquisition and strong change ofviewer’s beliefs[8].Among these rhetorics,visual metaphors,comparing two images that maybe completely different to show one is like the other[9],have been widely used in modernadvertising.Moreover,it is commonly recognized that it plays a facilitating role in producingmore elaboration and more favorable attitudes towards the advertisements,and resulting inviewers’positive responses[10-13].
What has been argued long is that,in essence,metaphor is conceptual rather thanlinguistic[14].Because of the pervasiveness of metaphor in many fields of cognition,linguists,philosophers of language,psychologists and now neuroscientists have attempted to explainthe nature of metaphor and its underlying cognitive mechanisms by proposing varioustheories.Most empirical studies in this area used stimuli of verbal metaphors,and therefore,little is known about how visual metaphors are conceptually processed,partly due to themultidisciplinary and multi-modality complexity relative to verbal metaphor studies[15].Inrecent years,the rising usage of visual metaphor in advertisements has encouraged a growingstream of research on visual metaphor in the advertising context,regarding perception,memory,recognition and comprehension.A few of them have proposed that thecomprehension of metaphor is essentially a multi-modal process[16-17],and verbalization isneeded for comprehending visual metaphors[18].Along this research line,some studies haveused verbalization method to study the processing of visual metaphors theoretically andexperimentally[18-20].
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1.2 Research Objectives
Academic research has shown growing interest in the use of visual metaphors inadvertising.Visual metaphor is a kind of non-verbal metaphor,an extension of metaphor onthe level of visual perception.Up until now,an open question in this research field is whethercomprehending a non-verbal metaphor implies that viewers“mentally”verbalize themetaphor[21].Despite the difficulty in testing it empirically,some scholars suggestedverbalization should be necessary for comprehending visual metaphors[18].
According to Forceville,conceptualizing the non-verbal or multi-modal metaphors needto formulate them into the prototypically verbalized form“A is B”[22].While with regard tothe fusion-structured visual metaphors(source and target artificially fused into one hybridentity)[23],except the syntactic structure“A is B”,other studies proposed that it could be alsoverbalized in the syntactic structure“A is like B”and“A with B”[24-27].Surprisingly,fusion-structured visual metaphors can be verbalized in these three syntactic structures,but toour knowledge,the existing studies provide no evidence for the varied effect when thesesyntactic structures are used to verbalize and conceptualize fusion-structured visualmetaphors.
As such,the present study aims to empirically identify,among three syntactic structuresin Chinese(A是B,A像B,A和B),which one is the most effective in reflecting theconceptual representation of fusion-structured visual metaphors in advertising.
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2 Literature Review
2.1 Theories Related to Metaphor Comprehension
Metaphor comprehension is a relatively complex process that needs to be realizedthrough a complex interaction of the lexical meanings of target and source[28].Previousstudies in the cognitive field have proposed various theories and models for metaphorcomprehension based on the relationship between the target and source of the metaphor,attempting to explain the psychological processing between the target and source to achievethe comprehensibility of metaphor utterances[29].
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2.1.1 Comparison Theory
The comparison view was firstly proposed by Aristotle in the philosophical literature[30].As he said,“The simile is a metaphor differing only by the addition of one word(like),andthey express almost the same figurative meaning”,suggesting that there are few differencesbetween metaphor and its corresponding simile[30].According to this theory,the metaphorexpression“My wife is a tiger”is functionally equivalent to the counterpart simile“My wifeis like a tiger”.
The comparison theory is based on two key concepts,one is transfer and the other issimilarity[20].Transfer means that attributions are assigned from one term to the other,whilesimilarity refers to similarities shared between the target and source in a metaphor[20].As such,metaphor and simile are comparison statements,both of which should be understood bycomparing the two items for the identification of common features[31].Simile is an explicitcomparison statement with the comparative words“like”or“as”,while metaphor is relativelyimplicit[30][32].
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2.2 Studies of Visual Metaphor in Advertising
Forceville held the view that metaphors occur on the level of cognition,manifested onverbal level as well as on visual and possibly on other communication levels[24].Therefore,the verbal expression should not be the only external representation of conceptual metaphors,as other non-verbal manifestations,such as pictures,sounds,and gestures,can also conveymetaphorical meanings[24].Later,he distinguished the visual metaphors,the manifestation ofmetaphorical concepts in picture,into mono-modal metaphors and multi-modal metaphors[22].
2.2.1 Visual Metaphor in Advertising in Mono-modality
In the book Metaphor We Live By,Lakoff and Johnson claimed that metaphor isprimarily a matter of thought and action,and only derivatively a matter of language,with theessence of understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another[14].Theirargument inspired other scholars to explore whether metaphor could be conceptualized inother modes as well.Kennedy found that picture can be manifested literally as well as inmetaphorical forms[58].Furthermore,according to the interaction theory by Max Black[59]andthe conceptual metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson[14],Forceville[24],taking metaphor as acognitive phenomenon,proposed a more inclusive theory of pictorial metaphor,making acontribution to the theoretical development of pictorial metaphors.Later,the pictorialmetaphor,as the manifestation of metaphor in pictures was redefined as visual metaphor[24].Over the time,a substantial number of visual metaphors used in advertising are analyzed inthe light of his theory,indicating that advertising with visual metaphors obviously isadvantageous in advertising comprehension and advertising attitude[3-6][23][60-61],such asattracting attention,increasing interest and enhancing persuasive effect[3][13][60][62-63].
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3 Methodology........................................23
3.1 Online Questionnaire Survey....................................23
3.1.1 Materials...........................24
3.1.2 Respondents............................24
4 Results...........................................27
4.1 Appropriateness Analysis..............................27
4.2 Reaction Time Analysis................................28
4.3 Accuracy Rate Analysis................................30
5 Discussion........................33
5.1 The Effectiveness across Three Syntactic Structures in Representing VM.......33
5.2 The Cognitive Processing Advantage of“A is like B”over“A with B”and“Ais B”.......................33
5 Discussion
5.1 The Effectiveness across Three Syntactic Structures in Representing VM
According to previous studies of visual metaphor,the verbal representations offusion-structured visual metaphors have been hypothesized into three syntactic structures—“A is B”,“A is like B”,“A with B”[24-27].
The tests of within-subject effects carried out in the present experiment showed therewere significant main effects of the conditions between the three syntactic structures onappropriateness in the online questionnaire survey and accuracy rate and reaction time in thebehavioral experiment.
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What’s more,this study confirmed that all the three syntactic structures actually can beused to represent the fusion-structured visual metaphors,but their effects differ on verbalizingand conceptualizing of fusion-structured visual metaphors.
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6 Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
The present study uses an online questionnaire survey and a behavioral experiment toidentify the most effective syntactic structure(verbalization form)in reflecting the conceptualrepresentation of fusion-structured visual metaphors in the context of advertising.Five majorfindings have emerged.
Firstly,the present study proves that the three syntactic structures,A is like B,A with Band A is B,can all verbally represent the fusion-structured visual metaphors,but their effectsare different in verbalizing and conceptualizing the fusion-structured visual metaphors.
Secondly,the syntactic structure“A is like B”is the most effective in reflecting theconceptual representation of fusion-structured visual metaphors in the context of advertising,compared with“A is B”and“A with B”.What’s more,the syntactic structure“A is like B”isnot only the most effective one in verbalizing the fusion-structured visual metaphors but alsoin realizing the best cognitive effect on the conceptual processing of fusion-structured visualmetaphors in advertising.In line with the view that“A is like B”,as the simile form whichfeatures on a comparison statement,our findings demonstrate that the conceptual processingof fusion-structured visual metaphors is more like a comparison processing rather than literalprocessing(A with B)or categorization processing(A is B).
Thirdly,it is found that the effect of the syntactic structure“A with B”is superior to themetaphor form“A is B”.It indicates that although comprehension of visual metaphors needsto be realized by constructing the connection and similarity between two different objects,thesyntactic structure“A is B”,as the basic form of metaphor,seems to be relatively complexand difficult in the conceptual processing of fusion-structured visual metaphors,at least so forChinese.
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