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A Procedure for Identifying Potential Multimodal Metaphors in TV Commercials

  • Larysa Bobrova

    Larysa Bobrova obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Pennsylvania State University and is now a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Miami University, Oxford, OH. Her research interests include multimodal metaphor as a research tool in promotional discourse and a teaching tool in the second/foreign language context. Her keen interests in this line of research has led to three articles co-authored with James Lantolf. The article Happiness is Drinking Beer: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Multimodal Metaphors in American and Ukrainian Commercials published in the International Journal of Applied Linguistics (2012) reveals cross-cultural variation in the multimodal metaphors employed in the respective promotional cultures. In the articles Metaphor and Pedagogy (CALPER Working Paper Series, PSU, 2012) and Metaphor Instruction in the L2 Spanish Classroom: Theoretical Argument and Pedagogical Program published in the Journal of Spanish Language Teaching (2014), we critically examine the significance of metaphoric knowledge in language learning and teaching.

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Published/Copyright: November 28, 2015

Abstract

In the article, Forceville’s (2006, 2008, 2008a, 2009) proposals regarding the identification criteria for multimodal metaphor are discussed in light of the identification procedure that I designed incorporating the theory of the cognitive schema of an object (Pustejovski, 1995), scene (Biederman, 1981), and event (Radvansky & Zacks, 2011) in conjunction with Whittock’s (1990) and Schilperoord’s (2012, unpublished manuscript) ideas of incongruence created through film techniques. This integrated theoretical framework informs three sequential steps that seek (1) to determine whether a commercial is viewed as potentially metaphorical, (2) to identify cognitively prominent projected features of the phenomena involved in the metaphorical context and to justify them, and from this (3) to formulate a metaphor. Each step is illustrated by examples from American, Russian, and Ukrainian TV commercials for alcoholic beverages. The proposed analytical procedure is user-friendly and flexible. It can be reliably employed to identify multimodal potential metaphors displayed in TV commercials and in other multimodal contexts.

About the author

Larysa Bobrova

Larysa Bobrova obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Pennsylvania State University and is now a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Miami University, Oxford, OH. Her research interests include multimodal metaphor as a research tool in promotional discourse and a teaching tool in the second/foreign language context. Her keen interests in this line of research has led to three articles co-authored with James Lantolf. The article Happiness is Drinking Beer: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Multimodal Metaphors in American and Ukrainian Commercials published in the International Journal of Applied Linguistics (2012) reveals cross-cultural variation in the multimodal metaphors employed in the respective promotional cultures. In the articles Metaphor and Pedagogy (CALPER Working Paper Series, PSU, 2012) and Metaphor Instruction in the L2 Spanish Classroom: Theoretical Argument and Pedagogical Program published in the Journal of Spanish Language Teaching (2014), we critically examine the significance of metaphoric knowledge in language learning and teaching.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to James P. Lantolf, Michael M. Naydan, and Benjamin Sutcliffe for their constructive comments and valuable feedback on this study. I am also very grateful to the two anonymous MC reviewers for helping me improve an earlier version of this article. This study was presented at the 2013 American Association for Applied Linguistics conference.

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Published Online: 2015-11-28
Published in Print: 2015-12-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

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