Cover not available
Article published In:
Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 13:2 (2023) ► pp.293–315

Metaphors and metonymies in the multimodal discourse of whaling

A cross genre comparative study

| Akita University

Metaphors and metonymies are considered complex phenomena dependent on various factors. This paper looks at genre (as one of the many factors) to verify to what extent the subjective descriptions of a highly controversial and complex social topic such as whaling can be driven by discourse type. The whaling discourse was chosen because antiwhaling activist NGOs’ have had great success with their extensive social campaigns worldwide, while it is a highly controversial and politically charged topic. These unique features resulted in the emergence of advertising and political cartoons. By examining the similarities and differences between metaphors, metonymies, and other meaning-making tropes such as irony and hyperbole, the observed difference concerns both the intention behind the selection of source domains and a preference for favoring certain evaluative metaphorical expressions in one genre as opposed to another to have a distinct impact on its intended audience.

Keywords: multimodality, genre, visual metaphor, visual metonymy, advertisement, political cartoons, hyperbole and irony
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Whaling controversy and the two distinctive genres
  • 3.Corpus
  • 4.Method and identification process
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Metaphors across genres
      • 5.1.1WAR metaphor
      • 5.1.2 journey metaphor
      • 5.1.3 eating metaphor
      • 5.1.4Other distinguished metaphors
    • 5.2Metonymies across two genres
      • 5.2.1Metonymies on the whale, whaling ship, and whaling
      • 5.2.2Other prominent metonymies
    • 5.3Other meaning-making tropes across genre
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.22008.yua
References
Abdel-Raheem, A.
(2018) Metaphoric moral framing and image-text relations in the op-ed genre. Information Design Journal, 24 (1), 42–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bounegru, L., & Forceville, C.
(2011) Metaphors in editorial cartoons representing the global financial crisis. Visual Communication, 10 (2), 209–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burgers, C., Konijn, E. A., & Steen, G. J.
(2016) Figurative Framing: Shaping Public Discourse Through Metaphor, Hyperbole, and Irony: Figurative Framing. Communication Theory, 26 (4), 410–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burgers, C., van Mulken, M., & Schellens, P. J.
(2011) Finding Irony: An Introduction of the Verbal Irony Procedure (VIP). Metaphor and Symbol, 26 (3), 186–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Catalinac, A. L., & Chan, G.
(2005) Japan, the West, and the whaling issue: Understanding the Japanese side. Japan Forum, 17 (1), 133–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J.
(1988) Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Craig, T. Y., & Blankenship, K. L.
(2011) Language and Persuasion: Linguistic Extremity Influences Message Processing and Behavioral Intentions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 30 (3), 290–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, J.
(2011) Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D., & Wichmann, A.
(2003) Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (10–11), 1545–1579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
El Refaie, E. E.
(2009) Multiliteracies: How readers interpret political cartoons. Visual Communication, 8 (2), 181–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2003) Understanding visual metaphor: The example of newspaper cartoons. Visual Communication, 2 (1), 75–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) ‘Our purebred ethnic compatriots’: Irony in newspaper journalism. Journal of Pragmatics, 37 (6), 781–797. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flusberg, S. J., Matlock, T., & Thibodeau, P. H.
(2018) War metaphors in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 33 (1), 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forceville, C.
(2021) Chapter 40. Multimodality. In W. Xu & R. T. John (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 676–687). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Addressing an audience: Time, place, and genre in Peter van Straaten’s calendar cartoons. Humor, 18 (3), 247–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020) Visual and multimodal communication: Applying the relevance principle. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) Chapter 2. Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: Agendas for research. In Forceville, C. & Urios-Aparisi, E. (Eds.), Multimodal Metaphor. Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 19–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jeong, S.
(2008) Visual metaphor in advertising: is the persuasive effect attributable to visual argumentation or metaphorical rhetoric? Journal of Marketing Communications. 14 (1), 59–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M.
(1993) Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics (Paperback ed). Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kashanizadeh, Z., & Forceville, C.
(2020) Visual and multimodal interaction of metaphor and metonymy: A study of Iranian and Dutch print advertisements. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 7 (1), 78–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalland, A.
(1993) Whale Politics and Green Legitimacy: A Critique of the Anti-Whaling Campaign. Anthropology Today, Vol. 9, No 6 (Dec 1993), pp.3–7. [URL]. DOI logo
Kövecses, Z.
(2005) Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(2009) Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf. Cognitive Semiotics, 4 (2), 5–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. L.
(1999) Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic books.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.
(1980) Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lin, T. Y.-Y., & Chiang, W.
(2015) Multimodal Fusion in Analyzing Political Cartoons: Debates on U.S. Beef Imports Into Taiwan. Metaphor and Symbol, 30 (2), 137–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Master Metaphor List
(1991) 1st edn compiled by George Lakoff, Jane Espenson & Adele Goldberg; 2nd edn compiled by George Lakoff, Jane Espenson & Alan Schwartz.Google Scholar
Morishita, J.
(2006) Multiple analysis of the whaling issue: Understanding the dispute by a matrix. Marine Policy, 30 (6), 802–808. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newman, J.
(1997) Eating and drinking as sources of metaphor in English. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(Ed.) (2009) The Linguistics of Eating and Drinking (Vol. 841). John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Sobrino, P.
(2017) Multimodal metaphor and metonymy in advertising. John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) “Shockvertising”: Conceptual interaction patterns as constraints on advertising creativity. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a La Comunicación, 65 1, 257–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pershing, A. J., Christensen, L. B., Record, N. R., Sherwood, G. D., & Stetson, P. B.
(2010) The Impact of Whaling on the Ocean Carbon Cycle: Why Bigger Was Better. PLoS ONE, 5 (8), e12444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Powell, H., Jonathan, H., Sarah, H., & Iain, M.
(2009) “Glossary.“ In Helen Powell, Jonathan Hardy, Sarah Hawkin, and Iain MacRury (eds.), The Advertising Handbook (3rd ed., 218–226). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
R Core Team
(2016) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from: [URL]
Rocci, A., Mazzali-Lurati, S., & Pollaroli, C.
(2018) The argumentative and rhetorical function of multimodal metonymy. Semiotica 2018(220), 123–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rocha, R. C., Clapham, P. J., & Ivashchenko, Y. V.
(2014) Emptying the oceans: A summary of industrial whaling catches in the 20th century. Marine Fisheries Review, 76 (4), 37–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. J., & Galera Masegosa, A.
(2014) Cognitive Modeling: A linguistic perspective (Vol. 451). John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steen, G. J., Dorst, A. G., Herrmann, J. B., Kaal, A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T.
(2010) A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU (Vol. 141). John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tay, D.
(2017) Metaphor construction in online motivational posters. Journal of Pragmatics, 1121, 97–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhang, C., & Forceville, C.
(2020) Metaphor and metonymy in Chinese and American political cartoons (2018–2019) about the Sino-US trade conflict. Pragmatics & Cognition, 27 (2), 474–499. DOI logoGoogle Scholar