Analysis of the operating mechanism of metaphor in advertising slogans The operating mechanism of metaphor

Abstract Advertising, as the main means of business promotion, is one of the indispensable information receiving media for people in modern life. The subtlety of the use of advertising slogans is often closely related to the metaphorical information contained in it. Whether an advertisement is successful or not depends directly on the audience's acceptance. In the process of the audience coming into contact with an advertisement, their cognitive interpretation of the metaphorical mechanism in the advertising slogan plays a crucial role. By analyzing several Chinese and English advertising slogans, we analyze how these advertisements achieve the purpose of propaganda and "persuasion" through the metaphorical operating mechanism. I believe that this exploratory research will supplement and deepen our understanding of the operating mechanism of metaphor.

Keywords cognitive linguistics; advertising slogan; metaphor; operating mechanism; metaphor elements

Introduction

In modern society, advertising, the "persuasive art" "Art" has become an inseparable part of people's lives. The tool used in persuasion is mainly language. This article refers to advertising titles and advertising slogans as advertising language, which is the research object of this article. A successful advertising creative attracts people visually and audibly. More importantly, its unique language expression can deeply attract the audience and arouse their value recognition or strong consumption motivation. Advertising language strives to "set up a piece of information to serve as an important point and to show a piece of warning." Among the dazzling many advertisements, if an advertisement is to be successful, it is often inseparable from exquisite advertising language. Among them, advertising language that functions through the metaphor mechanism plays a "finishing point" effect in the creation of advertisements. Metaphorical advertising language accounts for a large proportion in modern advertising, mainly because metaphors fit the characteristics of advertising slogans that need to perfectly convey information and attract audiences in a short time and space. Conveying concepts through metaphors, using the variability and flexibility of language expression to enhance the image of advertising, activating the audience's metaphorical cognitive mechanism, allowing the audience to understand unknown things through known things, thereby achieving the persuasive effect of advertising.

1. Overview of metaphor theory

Traditional metaphor theory regards metaphor only as a linguistic phenomenon, while modern metaphor theory not only considers metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon, but more importantly A cognitive activity is a cognitive activity in which humans use their experience in one field to explain or understand experience in another field. It is a way of thinking. In this cognitive process, the cognitive subject maps one conceptual domain to another conceptual domain through reasoning, thereby making the statement metaphorical. In such a reasoning process, the ontology and metaphor in metaphor are juxtaposed and contradictory, and are unified in the process of interaction.

The use of metaphors allows us to understand the characteristics of other things through certain things in a concise and vivid way. Lakoff & Johnson (1980) also believe that metaphors are ubiquitous in daily life, not only in language, but also in thoughts and actions. The everyday conceptual systems in which we think and act are also largely metaphorical in nature. Metaphors have very rich functions, not only having cognitive functions, but also rhetorical functions, linguistic functions, social functions, etc., and most metaphors play multiple functions at the same time.

Metaphor is essentially a tool for humans to understand the world around them (Perceptual) and form concepts. Metaphors in language arise from metaphorical thinking processes and reflect the way the human brain understands the world. We see this a lot in advertising. When people read, listen to, and speak advertising slogans, they are governed by cognitive psychology and associative thinking. They connect newly understood abstract concepts with cognitive things, find similarities between them, and use existing knowledge in their minds to Treat, think about, and express new concepts in advertising slogans. This reflection of the new concept in the advertising slogan is the projection of intention between the two cognitive domains, and is the result of the mapping of the two conceptual domains of ontology and metaphor. Through such "projection", we can achieve the effect of thousands of associations and endless aftertaste, making people unknowingly imprint the characteristics and functions of the product deeply into their hearts, thus creating a desire to buy.

For example, I once saw an advertisement on TV to encourage laid-off workers to re-employ. Although it is a public welfare category, it is still a good example of a metaphor, which is highly persuasive and appealing. The original text of the advertisement is: "This bowl is broken." "If you lose your job, you won't eat?" In this advertisement, "lost your job" is an abstract concept, and "job" is an entity, an extremely common thing in our cognition, which is projected by "broken bowl" It is the concept of "the job is messed up" that makes it easy for the audience to understand the purpose of this advertisement based on their daily experience, so that they can face the fact that they have lost their job and start looking for a new one. This is the persuasive effect conveyed by this public service advertisement through the metaphorical mechanism. We will combine the above theoretical framework to conduct a specific analysis of the working mechanism of metaphor in advertising.

2. The working mechanism of metaphor in advertising

2.1 Similarity

Every riddle has an answer, and every metaphor also has a "metaphorical bottom". The so-called "ground" refers to the similarity between the ontology and the metaphor in metaphor. Similarity refers to the similarity between two things. It is the basis of the interaction process between two conceptual fields in metaphor and the source of the operation of metaphor mechanism. The following two advertisements are a good example of how similarity works in advertising metaphors:

Heilan House - Men's Wardrobe. (Heilan House Clothing Store Brand)

The similarity between the metaphor "wardrobe" and the ontology "clothing store" is that they both have a wide variety of clothing for people to choose from, so "includes a wide variety of clothing" "Clothing" is the metaphor. The role of this metaphor in this brand advertisement is reflected by highlighting this similarity relationship.

Let’s look at a well-known advertising slogan:

——Female: What am I to you?

——Male: You are my Youlemei!

——Female: Huh? It turns out I am milk tea!

——Male: In this way, I can hold you in the palm of my hand. (Youlemei Milk Tea)

In this milk tea advertisement, the metaphor "milk tea" is compared to the hero's "lover" because "lover" and drinking "milk tea" have similar characteristics. Lovers will feel warm, cozy and sweet. Both are based on categories that feel similar. It is precisely because the two have such similar characteristics that such an advertising slogan will not make the audience feel inappropriate when speaking, and it has even become a buzzword on the streets.

2.2 Mapping

As a significant and common cognitive process that connects language and conceptualization, metaphor mainly relies on the two domains of source domain (ontology) and target domain (metaphor). Cross-domain mapping of input spaces. Different conceptual domains can be activated simultaneously, forming cross-domain connections under certain conditions (similarity plays a role), thereby forming new reasoning. For details, please see the following advertisement:

Give me Green World, or give me yesterday (Give me Green World, or give me yesterday). (Green World Cosmetics)

This The slogan is an imitation of the poem "Give me liberty, or give me death. (Give me liberty, or give me death.)" written by Patric Henry, a famous politician and patriotic poet during the American Revolutionary War, in which "yesterday" is used as a metaphor. The youthful and glowing skin of yesteryear. Cosmetic advertisements emphasize "returning youth", "anti-wrinkle", "young skin", etc. Mapping from the target domain representing time of "yesterday" to another conceptual domain, that is, the origin domain of "youth", people associate Green World cosmetics with the young skin of the past, forming a cross-conceptual domain in the cognitive process The connection formed the fantasy reasoning that this brand of cosmetics can return to youth. It should be noted that in this advertisement, only the target domain, that is, the metaphor, is shown, but the source domain, that is, the ontology and the base of the metaphor, is not shown.