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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
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Guan, Shaoyang & Yuhua Sun
2023. Multimodal metaphor and metonymy in political cartoons as a means of country image construction. Russian Journal of Linguistics 27:2 ► pp. 444 ff. DOI logo

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