A Decompositional Approach to Metaphorical Compound Analysis: The Case of a TV Commercial

Abstract

This article applies a decompositional approach to analyzing the metaphorical structure of a China Central Television (CCTV) Olympics commercial as a multimodal discourse from the perspective of cognitive semantics. The Beijing 2008 Olympics' motto was “One World, One Dream,” which highlights the notion of the world as a “global village.” The commercial converges on this motto with a metaphorical imagery of a bird's nest being built by birds from all over the world. While “bird's nest” is commonly mapped metaphorically onto some target concepts, such as “unity” and “harmony,” the metaphorical imagery is also motivated by the fact that the Beijing National Stadium looks like a bird's nest, and is therefore nicknamed “the Bird's Nest.” It is argued that the commercial is structured by one central metaphor, a metaphorical compound, manifested multimodally through the multimodal discourse: “PEOPLES OF THE WORLD MAKING CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BEIJING OLYMPICS ARE BIRDS FLYING FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES TO BEIJING WITH TWIGS TO BUILD A BIRD'S NEST.” The study applies a decompositional approach to metaphorical compound analysis (DAMCA) based on the distinction between primary and complex metaphors. The analysis shows that the highly specific and complex metaphorical compound is actually built upon a general cognitive foundation comprising the Great Chain and Event Structure Metaphor systems.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author has benefitted a great deal from the insightful comments from the editor, Ray Gibbs, and an anonymous reviewer of Metaphor and Symbol.

Notes

¹See Yu (2011) for a detailed analysis of multimodal manifestations of the Beijing opera metaphor for the Beijing Olympics.

²See also The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (edited by Raymond W. Gibbs) for some new developments of this and other theories, including studies on nonverbal manifestations of metaphor in art (Kennedy, 2008), pictures (Forceville, 2008), gestures (Cienki & Müller, 2008), and music (Zbikowski, 2008).

³A real-life English example came multimodally in a printed ad that I received recently in the mail “about insuring another important asset—your retirement income.” The verbal message of the ad goes, “You insure your nest … So, why not insure your nest egg?” against the static cartoon image of a big bird's nest on a small tree, with three smiling little birds in or around the nest, while a Dalmatian dog seems to be pondering close to the tree with one claw supporting its head. This is also another multimodal example of the “HUMANS ARE ANIMALS” metaphor in the Great Chain Metaphor system.

⁴Note that (5d), “A FEELING IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT,” or simply “A FEELING IS AN OBJECT,” is a primary metaphor on the same par with “A STATE IS A LOCATION.” These two primary metaphors as a pair represent, respectively, the object-dual and location-dual (i.e., the two subsystems, of the Event Structure metaphor system; see Lakoff, 1993; Yu, 1998, Ch. 5).

⁵Just to point out in passing that a possible alternative analysis is to further decompose (7g), “ABSTRACT DIENTITIES ARE PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES,” into two components: (a) “IDENTITIES ARE DIFFERENCES” (a proposition) and (b) “ABSTRACT IS PHYSICAL” (a primary metaphor). However, strictly speaking, the nature of “ABSTRACT IS PHYSICAL,” or sometimes formulated as “NONPHYSICAL IS PHYSICAL,” is just like that of “GENERIC IS SPECIFIC.” In other words, it should be treated, preferably, as a common and productive metaphorical pattern that connects specific concepts as metaphorical mappings, rather than as a metaphor itself. See footnote 1 above, and footnote 1 in Grady (2005, p. 1601). As such, this metaphorical pattern is responsible for the ontological nature of metaphors, by which abstract ideas, experiences, traits, etc. are understood in terms of, say, physical objects and substances. See Lakoff and Johnson (1980, pp. 25–32; 2003, pp. 264–267).

⁶It is interesting to note that the Chinese idiom tianzhuan jiawa, which literally means “to add bricks and tiles,” is a building metaphor, where “bricks and tiles” is mapped onto “(small) contributions” that one can make to a general purpose. “Bricks and tiles” used to build “a house” by people is parallel to “twigs” used to build “a bird's nest” by birds.