Conceptual complexes in multimodal advertising

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 generalizations. 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 develop 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 facilitates the development of the frame; (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 as cues for the activation of metaphorical frameworks.