Conceptual complexes in multimodal advertising

  1. Carla Ovejas Ramírez 1
  1. 1 Universidad de La Rioja
    info

    Universidad de La Rioja

    Logroño, España

    ROR https://ror.org/0553yr311

Journal:
Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I

ISSN: 1697-7750

Year of publication: 2023

Issue: 30

Pages: 179-205

Type: Article

DOI: 10.6035/CLR.6977 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I

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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 generaliz ations. 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 de velop 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 fa cilitates the development of the rame; (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 a s cues for the activation of metaphorical frameworks.

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