From the conceptual metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson that metaphor is not merelya linguistic device used figuratively in poems and literature but a conceptual process thatplays an important role in cognition[1], it can be learned that language is the externalmanifestation of conceptual metaphor.
In recent years, in addition to verbal representation of conceptual metaphors, metaphorresearch in other modalities were carried out, for example, the leading scholar of multimodalmetaphors, Forceville[2], first put pictorial metaphor into the framework of cognitivelinguistics, and then research on metaphor has extended to many different fields, includingmetaphors in political cartoons[17], TV commercials[18], films[19] and editorial cartoons[20].Lagerwerf, Van, and Korenberg proposed that pictorial metaphors were based on theconnection of two different objects, the essence of which was to “express the present thing(target) with another thing (source)”[21]. Concerning a pictorial metaphor, it was important todecide which was the target and which was the source, and this identification was related tomany factors. Forceville analyzed the phenomenon of pictorial metaphor in print advertising,proposing a three-step model of pictorial metaphor analysis, including the identification oftwo images, determining which image as the target and which as the source, as well asjudging transferred features[6]. This process was closely related to the reversibility of pictorialmetaphors (see Fig. 2.1).
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2.2 Theories Related to Pictorial Metaphors
Advertising pictorial metaphor, as an emerging research field of pictorial metaphor, hasdrawn wide attention. Three theories are the most widely used, notably, the multimodalmetaphor theory, structure- mapping theory, and the conceptual blending theory.
2.2.1 Multimodal Metaphor Theory
Xie[47]and Forceville[48] made a distinguished difference between mono-modal metaphorsand multimodal metaphors. In a multimodal metaphor the source and target domain wererepresented exclusively in different modes. According to Forceville[6], in a pictorial metaphor,when an expected visual element could be replaced with an unexpected visual element, therewas not necessarily a “pre-exist or conventional link” between the two elements. Based onthis idea, Rosa put forward a three-dimensional model for comprehending a pictorialmetaphor[49], the first step is to perceive the pictorial context, which depicts the basic contextthat the viewer will be working with, then to comprehend the linguistic message which willhelp the viewer recognize the intended meaning, and the third step is to refer to the worldknowledge which enriches the information put together by applying a wider context imposedby the pictorial metaphor. The three dimensional model emphasizes the influencing factors inthe processing of pictorial metaphors.
2.2.2 Structure- Mapping Theory
Structure- mapping theory, proposed by Gentner in 1988[13], claims that the informationfor metaphor comprehension is much richer and more complex than the knowledgerepresentation assumed in the previous analog model. In particular, knowledge of complexmetaphorical situations usually involves the features of individual object and the relationshipsbetween the two objects.
3. Experiment One: Reversibility and Aptness................................20
3.1 Pretests.........................20
3.1.1 Aptness and Familiarity................................20
3.1.2 Feature Generation Task....................................21
4. Experiment Two: Reversibility and (A)symmetry....................... 29
4.1 Pretests....................................29
4.2 Participants and Materials........................29
5. Experiment Three: Reversibility and Verbal Features..............................34
5.1 Pretests.............................34
5.2 Participants and Materials.............................34
6. Discussion
6.1 Existence of Reversibility in Pictorial Metaphors
Hyp
