英国脱欧漫画中的多模态隐喻研究开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

a study of multimodal metaphor in political cartoons: illustrated by the brexit comics政治漫画中的多模态隐喻研究以英国脱欧漫画为例1. introductionmetaphors are pervasive in our daily life. they are not only one of the traditional rhetorical skills, but also important cognitive methods for people to perceive the world. therefore, it has drawn the attention of many researchers. in the 1980s, lakoff and johnson put forward the conceptual metaphor theory (cmt) which is a revolutionary idea in the history of metaphor research. cmt holds that metaphors are conceptual in nature and are not confined to language alone. indeed, metaphors can be expressed in various modes (image, word, gesture, etc.). in other words, metaphors can occur multi-modally. based on this impressive finding, a group of researchers, represented by charles forceville, have extended the study of multimodal metaphor to different genres, such as print advertisement (forceville 1996), political cartoons (el refaie 2009), animation (eerden 2009), film (rohdin 2009) and so on.among a series of genres, political cartoons offer a good opportunity to study multimodal metaphors because they contain typical instance of multimodal metaphors, especially visual and verbal modes. moreover, political cartoons have distinctive styles, conventions, and communicative purposes (el refaie 2009). usually, they depict social events and political figures in a creative or humorous manner, whose interpretation requires viewers to take into account the social and cultural background. taking several prototypical brexit-related cartoons as examples, this thesis aims to study how multimodal metaphors are generated in these cartoons and explore their political connotations in view of the social-cultural background.this thesis consists of five chapters. chapter one is the introduction part, which illustrates the research background, research purpose and the overall structure. chapter two focuses on the review of literature, containing the historical background of brexit, theoretical framework cmt and multimodal metaphor, and relevant previous studies. chapter three introduces the methodology adopted and questions focused on. research results are shown in chapter four. the last chapter is the concluding section, which provides the major findings, limitations and suggestions for further study.2. literature review2.1 historical background of brexitbrexit is an abbreviation for british exit, referring to the uks decision to leave the european union in a june 23, 2016 referendum. this acronym may derive from grexit, which is related to the issue that greece exited from the eurozone. literally, brexit means britain exits from the european union (eu). since britain, exit and eu are the key words in this definition, when people create some metaphors to reflect this event, these three words are most often conceptualized as various objects.actually, brexit is a more complex process than a purely political event. it represents that britain will change its relationship with the eu on trade, security and migration.on january 23, 2013, david cameron, former british prime minister, first mentioned the brexit referendum. he promised to renegotiate with the eu and hold the referendum before 2017. otherwise, with the rise of euroscepticism emotion, conservative voters may support anti-eu independence party.in june 2016, the referendum to leave eu was held. the result was that 52% of voters supported the brexit and 48% opposed. the debate of remainers and leavers was not over.theresa may succeeded cameron as prime minister she devoted herself to realizing the withdrawal of the united kingdom from the eu in a smooth and peaceful way as soon as possible. in july, 2019 boris johnson took theresa mays seat and continued to negotiate with the eu about the exit. till january 30, 2020, the eu officially approved of the british withdrawal. the concept brexit, from its first appearance to the final realization, covers a range of implications in political, cultural, economic, and emotional areas. hence, it is rather difficult and complicated to depit the brexit pictorially. political cartoon is a unique and vivid way to display reality from different aspects through various mechanisms, metaphors in particular. 2.2 theoretical framework: cmt and multimodal metaphorconceptual metaphor theory (cmt) is advanced by lakoff and johnson (1980) in their seminal monograph metaphors we live by. metaphors are defined as understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (lakoff and johnson 1980:5). they are reflected in our daily life by a wide range of expressions. for instance, you are wasting my time and i spend an hour reading books are two instances of the the conceptual metaphor time is money (lakoff and johnson 1980:456). in the cmt system, metaphors are presented as a set of mappings between two related concepts or domains, namely, the source domain and the target domain. kvecses (2010) refers mapping to the systematic correspondences between the source and the target domains. in a metaphorical process, the structure and features of the source (more concrete) are mapped onto the structure and features of the target (less concrete). the innovative notions of cmt boost the development of cognitive linguistics. this theory endorses that metaphors are one of cognitive approaches and they can be realized by not just linguistic symbols but other semiotic resources. this has attracted researchers attention to metaphors in nonverbal forms. it becomes increasingly popular to study metaphors cued in not a single modality, but two or more modalities at the same time, which leads to the so-called multimodal metaphor. monomodal metaphors and multimodal metaphors are defined respectively as metaphors whose target and source are exclusively or predominantly rendered in one mode and metaphors whose target and source are each represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes (forceville 2006:383-384). provisionally, forceville also makes a list of modes that can be used to create multimodal metaphors. these include spoken language, written language, visuals, music, sounds, gestures etc. however, the division of different modes is still controversial and needs to be refined. a general definition of multimodal metaphors is more widely used in china: metaphors function through the synergy of two or more semiotic systems or modes (zhao 2013:).2.3 review of previous studies2.3.1 studies of multimodal metaphors abroadwith the success of cmt, the central notion that metaphor is primary of thought of action (lakoff and johnson 1980:153) has led to two research lines. one refers to the function of gestures in conveying metaphors in spoken language. alan cienki and cornelia mller are representatives of this area. they claim that humans gestures can create or even differ from conceptual metaphors. (cienki and mller 2008).another line focuses on metaphors involving visual elements. forceville (1996) develops visual metaphor theory in pictorial metaphor in advertising and lays the foundation for multimodal metaphor studies. in addition to billboard advertising, political cartoons and films are also genres of studying multimodal metaphors. el refaie (2009) explores metaphor in political cartoons from the perspective of audience responses. rohdin (2009) discusses multimodal metaphor in classical film theory from the 1920s to the 1950s. hefinds that multimodal metaphor are abundant in films and many metaphors in classical film theory can be concluded in man is animal.among various combinations of semiotic resources, the interaction of verbal and visual elements is most frequently discussed (tasi stamenkovi 2015). sometimes, images are dominant in metaphors because the core meaning lies in visual components. the visual elements suffice to convey the underlying meaning. also, metaphors in which words are core parts also exist. more often, words and images are compatible and complimentary to make metaphors more vivid. in political cartoons, ridiculous images bring viewers strong visual conflicts and captioned words provide some explanation to the content. meanwhile, the main content of political discourses usually portrays political events or politicians in a critical or ironic way. the genre causes people to think of negative meanings with interplay of metaphor and sarcasm (musolff 2017).2.3.2 studies of multimodal metaphors at homein china, zeng li (2004) firstly focuses on non-verbal metaphors in advertisements. this study is the first try to study multimodal metaphors in advertisements. zeng considers the roles the conflicts of meanings and similarity in the working mechanism of verbal-visual metaphor. next, more and more scholars set about analysis of multimodal in political cartoons. their studies can be divided into several strands. the first strand pertains to constructing the meaning and framing of specific comics through multimodal metaphtonymy theory. pan yanyan (2009) reveals the cultural connotations of multimodal metaphors in two political comics. the second strand is to infer the interaction of multimodal metaphtonymy and try to construct blending models. zhao xiufeng and feng dezheng (2017) analyze the interplay of multimodal metaphors and metonymies in the construction of chinas image in the economist. they find most source domains mapping china show certain negative attributes which do harm to chinas image.2.3.3 previous studies of brexit-related metaphors studies of metaphors in political discourse are plenty both abroad and at home. nevertheless, research of multimodal metaphors in brexit-related political cartoons is still little. in china, yan xiaoxiao（2017）studies metaphorical scenarios and frames in brexit cartoons from a perspective of conceptual blending. she finds that four main scenarios (including life scenario, journey scenario, conflict scenario and game scenario) and six frames (conflict frame, human interest frame, responsibility frame, morality frame etc.), but the frequency of the same scenario or frame used in cartoons shows differences before and after the referendum. zhu lingxuan (2019) analyzes the ideology from headlines of the brexit news by adopting the theoretical framework of cmt and critical metaphor analysis (musolff 2016). in her research, negative metaphors account for the largest proportion and this means negative emotion plays a dominant role in peoples attitude towards brexit.in foreign countries, morozova (2017) studies monomodal and multimodal instantiations of conceptual metaphors of brexit. the results of this study show that metaphoric representations of brexit may represent different attitudes towards this event: proponents describe it as a promising action while opponents depict it as uncertain process. musolff (2017) examines the interplay of metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse about britains place at the heart of europe.this research shows that this metaphor used in public discourse has two kinds: affirmative, positive use and deriding, ridiculing use. charteris-black (2019) employs critical metaphor analysis approach to the metaphors in brexit debates. in his book metaphors of brexit: no cherries on the cake, he demonstrates how brexit-related metaphors are motivated by different ideologies.for decades, researchers have studied metaphors in political cartoons from cognitive perspective. most of them study metaphors and metonymies, the conceptual blending mechanism and discourse features in political cartoons. they are accustomed to concentrating on the discourses themselves. gradually some scholars have investigated the underlying political, social or cultural elements in political cartoons. but the attention on those elements is not enough and more attempts are needed. references charteris-black, j. (2019). metaphors of brexit: no cherries on the cake? basingstoke: palgrave macmillan.eerden, e. (2009). anger in asterix: the metaphorical representation of anger in comics and animated films. in c. forceville e. urios-aparisi. (eds.) multimodal metaphor (pp.243-264). berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter.el refaie, e. (2009). metaphors in political cartoons: exploring audience responses. in c. forceville e. urios-aparisi. (eds.) multimodal metaphor (pp.173-196). berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter.forceville, c. (1996). pictorial metaphor in advertising. london/new york: routledge.forceville, c. (2006). nonverbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist frame-work: agendas for research. in g. kristiansen., m. achard., r. dirven., f. ruiz de mendoza. (eds.), cognitive linguistics: current applications and future perspectives (pp. 379-402). berlin: mouton de gruyter.forceville, c., urios-aparisi, e. (eds.) (2009). multimodal metaphor. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter.．kvecses, z. (2010). metaphor: a practical introduction. (2nd ed.). oxford: oxford university press.lakoff, g., johnson, m. (1980a). conceptual metaphor in everyday language. the journal of philosophy, 77(8), 453-486.lakoff, g., johnson, m. (1980b). metaphors we live by. chicago, il: university of chicago press.morozova, o. (2017). monomodal and multimodal instantiations of conceptual metaphors of brexit. in lege artis. language yesterday, today, tomorrow. the journal of university of ss cyril and methodius in trnava, 2(2), 250-283. musolff, a. (2017). metaphor, irony and sarcasm in public discourse. journal of pragmatics, 109, 95-104.rohdin, m. (2009). multimodal metaphor in classical film theory from the 1920s to the 1950s. in c. forceville e. urios-aparisi. (eds.) multimodal metaphor (pp.403-428). berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter.tasi, m., stamenkovi, d. (2015). the interplay of words and images in expressing multimodal metaphors in comics. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 212, 117-122.潘艳艳（2011），政治漫画中的多模态隐喻及身份构建，《外语研究》，35（1）：11-15。

阎潇潇（2017），英国脱欧政治漫画中的隐喻场景和框架分析概念整合视角，硕士论文。

北京，中国石油大学。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

MethodologyThe main purposes of this study are twofold. Firstly, it intends to study how multimodal metaphors are generated in these cartoons. Secondly, it will explore politically relevant connotations of these metaphors with the help of social-cultural background.The data for analysis come from the Internet. Several typical comics will be chosen: Multimodal (verbal-visual) metaphors must be included in these comics. In other words, these comics must involve at least two semiotic resources, word and image. To be more specific, viewers can feel obvious visual conflicts and identify at least one mapping of feature from the source domain to the target domain. In other words, the relation of A is B can be labeled. After selecting the appropriate comics, I will analyze and make detailed explanation to those metaphors. The questions to be addressed in this thesis are as follows: (1) How are these metaphors constructed? What is the interplay of verbal and visual elements?(2) What are the source and target domains in these metaphors? What features are transferred from the source domains to the target domains? (3) What political connotations do these metaphors reveal about Brexit?