INTRODUCTION
Rationale
In the epoch of information explosion, it is inevitable for any of us to bump into advertising words and images Advertising is all around us, though we like it or not, we hear it, see it and feel it albeit on purpose or just by some chance In order for a brand name to go global, a good advertisement of their product is a key matter, no wonder why billions of bugs have been spent on copywriting English, an international language, is used in every single advertisement with an aim of the company going places world wide The utmost aim of the advertisement is to capture our attention
“The whole aim of the copywriters is to get us register their communication either for purposes of immediate action or to make us more favourably disposed in general terms to the advertised product or service […] so copywriters have to find ways to shout at us from the page.” (Goddard, A., 1998: 11) A question may arise that how advertising can impinge on people‟s life so much and it is given a short answer by Fairclough:
Advertising has made many people into consumers, i.e has brought about a change in the way people are, in the sense that it has provided the most coherent and persistent model for consumer needs, values, tastes and behaviour It has done this by addressing people as if they were commonsensically already fully fledged consumers
The general point is that if people are obliged day-in day-out to occupy the subject position of consumer, there is a good chance that they will become consumers […]
Advertising can show people lifestyles (and patterns of spending) which they might not otherwise meet, but also invite them to “join” (1989: 207)
The researcher is captive in advertisements especially those of mobile phones
That is the reason why I took a hook to go ahead with mobile phone advertising slogans
In order to achieve the aim of getting customers noticed, copywriters have contributed a non-stop effort in creating an attractive, memorable, distinct advertising slogan for each brand The methods used in writing advertising slogans range from employing phonological aspect, lexical and morphological aspect, syntactic aspect to semantic aspect More concretely, in phonological aspect, rhyme, homophone, alliteration are often put into consideration while in lexical and morphological aspect, verb phrase, noun phrase, collocation, idiomatic construction, formation of new words and phrases are of great approval What‟s more, when syntactic aspect can be found in sentence types, sentence structure like ellipsis, semantic aspect is often realized through rhetorical devices such as simile, hyperbole, metonymy, polysemy and metaphors The researcher is absolutely engaged in metaphors which have long been a part of my interest This explains the my reason to choose metaphors in advertising
Metaphors are a part and parcel of everyday life in that they appear in nearly all our everyday concepts without our realization of it Lakoff and Johnson give the notion of conceptual metaphors which have explained this all in an easy-understanding way
This attributes to the cause for choosing Lakoff and Johnson‟s theory as a foundation in analyzing the data obtained in the study.
Objectives of the study and the research questions
The study aims to describe a language phenomenon happening in advertising slogans, specifically conceptual metaphors To go further, it targets at five cell phone brands to find out the frequency of conceptual metaphors used in their advertising slogans and the subtypes of conceptual metaphors employed based on the theory of Lakoff and Johnson In other words, the study tries to seek out the answers to two research questions
Research question 1: How are conceptual metaphors frequently used in five brands‟ cell phone advertising slogans?
Research question 2: What are subtypes of conceptual metaphors employed in five brands‟ cell phone advertising slogans?
Scope of the study
Due to the time constraint, the thesis only focuses on five cell phone brands‟ slogans which are world famous ones
The selected slogans of five brands are randomly taken from newspapers, TV and the Internet at the researcher‟s ease
A corpus of 65 chosen slogans is not a big one, so to some extents, the results provided are just selective, not comprehensive
In this study, the analysis is based on the theory and classification of metaphors given by Lakoff and Johnson.
Method of the study
This research is a mixture of qualitative and statistical research Firstly, qualitative research is employed in analyzing the conceptual metaphors as well as the subtypes of conceptual metaphors in each slogan The researcher uses statistical research method in order to give a description of a language phenomenon occurring in advertising slogans of five mobile phone brands in quantitative data In addition, the exploratory research method is employed with an aim to examining the correlations among three subtypes of conceptual metaphors namely structural, ontological and orientational metaphors.
Design of the study
The thesis consists of four chapters: CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION, CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND, CHAPTER III: THE USE OF
METAPHORS IN CELL PHONE AND ADVERTISING SLOGANS and CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION
In INTRODUCTION, the researcher provides the reason for conducting the research Moreover, readers can find out the objectives of the study as well as the research questions for the thesis The scope, method, design of the study and an overview of previous studies are also stated in this chapter
The second chapter named THEORETICAL BACKGROUND will deal with definition of metaphors, conceptual metaphors, the classification of conceptual metaphors Moreover, a definition of advertising slogans, qualities of an effective slogan are also given through which readers can be aware of the role of a slogan to a company
The third chapter entitled THE USE OF METAPHORS IN CELL PHONE ADVERTISING SLOGANS provides the information about the effects of metaphors on audience, conceptual metaphors in advertising slogans and the research procedures in which data collection and data analysis methods are represented Further more, the
“results and discussion” section is a statistical description of metaphors used in advertising slogans of five cell phone brands
The last chapter entitled CONCLUSION represents a recapitulation of the main ideas of the study, the limitations of the study, some suggestions for further research and the implications of the studies.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Definition of metaphors
An enormous effort has been made in the course of finding a way to define what metaphor is by many scholars and researchers all around the world Gibbs (1999:29) even introduces an ironical statement by Wayne Booth that by the year 2039 “there would be more students of metaphor than people” (quoted in Michael White, Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, Vol.10 (2002) 309-315)
Aristotle who is the first to provide a scholarly treatment of metaphors give a somehow detailed definition A metaphor “consists of giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genius to species, or from species to genius, or from species to species, or on the ground of analogy” (quoted in Reck, D 2002:3) I A Richards goes further when he defines metaphors through two terms topic and vehicle in which the latter term is used metaphorically and the relationship between two terms is call ground Kovecses, one of the most significant
Hungarian researchers of metaphors gives out his definition as follows:
In the cognitive linguistic view, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain […] The conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions is to understand another conceptual domain called source domain, while the conceptual domain that is understood this way is the target domain […] Understanding one domain in terms of another involves a set of fixed correspondences (technically called mappings) between a source and a target domain (2002: 4) (quoted in Agnes (2009:20))
All definitions have in common that they speak of two terms related to each other thanks to the similarities they have But they also limit the function of metaphors to embellish or decorate the language
In their work, Lakoff and Johnson (1980:3) said:
Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish – a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language
Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature
By what they have found, Lakoff and Johnson indicate that metaphors not only influence our “linguistic behavior but also our thought processes and our system of value.” (cited in Agnes, 2009: 21)
Conceptual metaphors/ Cognitive metaphors
In order to understand conceptual/ cognitive metaphors, there‟s a need to have an understanding of cognitive linguistics As we all know, language is not only a tool of thought and communication but a spiritual “product” of human beings which has in it the specific cultural distinctions of each nation
Cognitive science began to develop in America in the 60s of 20 th century, along with the new tendency of linguistics namely transformational grammar and later generative grammar advocated by Noam Chomsky Along with the flourishing of cognitive psychology, cognitive linguistics was formed on the foundation of famous researches by Noam Chomsky, Ronald W Langacker, Charles J Fillmore, R
Jackendoff, Gilles Fauconnier Langacker developed the concept profile theory which latter became the center of cognitive linguistics In 1989, international conference on cognitive linguistics was held in Duisburg, Germany In this conference, the
International Cognitive Linguistics Association was established and the cognitive linguistics journal (led by Dirk Geeraerts as chief editor in 1990) was also born
The way of exploring language of transformational – generative linguistic theory and cognitive linguistic theory is different Those supported transformational – generative linguistic theory paid great attention to language knowledge while the representatives of cognitive linguistic theory had their concern in our knowledge about the world and studied how natural language contributed to that knowledge The former studied the linguistic structure depth on the basis of the language directly observed and tried to model them as mathematics formula; however, the latter tended to study the everyday language of human beings on the basis of the language directly observed and the language which cannot be observed like concepts, psychology, senses, cultural ethnic distinctions However, they both had one way in common, that is, both were concerned about spiritual structure which constituted knowledge and their utmost goal was to reach the awareness of human language nature
According to Ly Toan Thang (2005), if there is a need to say briefly what cognitive linguistics is about, it can be defined as follows: “it is a new school of modern linguistics which studies language on the basis of experience and human‟s perception of the objective world as well as the way people perceive and conceptualize things and situations of that objective world.”
Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 4) say that:
“The concept that govern our thought are not just a matter of the intellect They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people Our conceptual system thus play a central role in defining our everyday realities If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do everyday is very much a matter of metaphor”
From their point of view, we can see that metaphors are pervasive in every day life without our realizing about it The only way for us to realize our using of metaphors is to look at language “Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.” (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003: 4)
Because of Lakoff‟s aim to uncover deeply embedded conceptual relations in the mind, for him the ideal metaphorical expressions to analyze are not the widely discussed type of examples in (1), but rather those in (2):
(1) a Juliet is the sun (Shakespeare) b my wife…whose waist is an hourglass (Lakoff and Turner, 1989: 90)
(2) a I‟ll see you at 2 o‟clock b He is in danger c Her anger boiled over d She‟s had to contend with many obstacles in her life, but she has come a long way since her days in the orphanage
The metaphors in (1) are novel creations while the metaphors in (2) are conventionalized linguistic expressions, another aspect of their common everyday character
The literal meaning of “at” in (2a) is locative in nature, but it has been metaphorically extended to apply also to time Likewise, “in” in (2b) has a basic locative meaning, and the use in (2) is a metaphorical extension of this: here, a stage (danger) is conceived as a container that one can be inside of or outside of
For the above relation of metaphors in cognitive linguistics, the researcher decided to choose conceptual/ cognitive metaphors
Lakoff and Johnson introduce the notion of conceptual metaphors in Metaphor we live by (1980) with some famous metaphors like LOVE IS A JOURNEY,
ARGUMENT IS WAR, HAPPY IS UP Black also gives the metaphor MAN IS WOLF (Black, 1955:286) which, as our first glance, resembles the structure of conceptualization given by Lakoff and Johnson However, in his work, Black does not give out two terms target and source domain, instead he calls MAN and WOLF two subjects: the principle subject (MAN) and the subsidiary subject (WOLF), then he tries to suggest a set of standard believes about wolves that are the common possession of the members of some speech community from which we note that wolves refer “to something fierce, carnivorous, treacherous”, hence man “preys upon other animals” and is “fierce, hungry, engaged in constant struggle, a scavenger” (Black, 1995:287)
Black calls the similarities between MAN and WOLF “the commonplaces” and the
“corresponding system” (1995:288) From Black‟s analysis of his metaphor, we can see that the notion of conceptual metaphor had been conceived long ago, before the introduction of Lakoff and Johnson
To give some ideas of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a concept to structure an everyday activity, Lakoff and Johnson started with the concept ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR which is reflected in our daily language by a wide variety of expressions
ARGUMENT IS WAR Your claims are indefensible
He attacked every weak point in my argument
His criticisms were right on the target
I‟ve never won an argument with him
If you use that strategy, he‟ll wipe you out
He shot down all of my arguments
With our knowledge of the physical world, we know how a war is We can fight in the war and at last, we can either win or lose In order to win the battle, we need a good strategy and every shoot should be right on the target There is no physical battle in here but the verbal battle, thus ARGUMENT IS WAR structures the actions we perform in arguing
Croff, W and Cruse, D A (2004) also give a definition of conceptual metaphor:
“a conceptual mapping between two domains The mapping is asymmetrical, however: the metaphorical expression profiles a conceptual structure in the target domain, not the source domain.” The mapping between source and target domains involves two sorts of correspondences, epistemic and ontological The ontological correspondences hold between elements of one domain and elements of the other domain; epistemic correspondences are correspondences between relations holding between elements in one domain and relations between elements in the other domain (this includes, for instance, encyclopedic knowledge about the domain) The phenomenon of correspondence can be illustrated using the example of ANGER IS HEAT OF A FLUID (Lakoff 1987: 387)
Source: HEAT OF FLUID Container
Heat of fluid Heat scale Pressure in container Agitation of boiling fluid Limit of container‟s resistance Explosion
Anger Anger scale Experienced pressure Experienced agitation Limit of person‟s ability to suppress anger Loss of control
When fluid in a container is heated When anger increases beyond a certain beyond a certain limit, pressure increases to point at which container explodes
An explosion is damaging to container and dangerous to bystanders
Explosion can be prevented by applying sufficient force and counterpressure
Controlled release of pressure may occur, which reduces danger of explosion limit, “pressure” increases to point at which person losses control
Loss of control is damaging to person and dangerous to others
Anger can be suppressed by force of will
Anger can be released in a controlled way, or vented harmlessly, thus reducing level
In general, metaphors are conceptual structures, and are not merely linguistic in nature, although they are normally realized linguistically, of course
It‟s undoubtedly true that conceptual metaphors are pervasive in communication and in any single text Take the lyric of the following song as an example:
“…I‟m on the top of the world lookin‟ down on creation And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I‟ve found ever since you‟ve been around Your love‟s put me at the top of the world…”
(“Top of the world” by The Carpenters)
In the above lyric, LOVE has been conceptualized as a concrete thing that “I” can “find” LOVE is also personified as a person who can “put me at the top of the world” The conceptual metaphors LOVE IS A THING and LOVE IS A PERSON is drawn therefrom Moreover the conceptual metaphor HAPPY IS UP allows us to comprehend that the person in the song is in a happy state since “at the top of the world” means UP.
Classification of conceptual metaphors
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) classify conceptual metaphors into three different kinds, namely structural metaphors , orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors Kovecses (2010), despite having three other criteria for categorizing conceptual metaphors, has the same classification as Lakoff and Johnson, regarding cognitive function of metaphors
In this kind of metaphors, “the source domain provides a relatively rich knowledge structure for the target concept” (Kovecses, 2010:37) In other words, the cognitive function of these metaphors is to enable speakers to understand target A by means of the structure of source B This understanding occurs by means of conceptual mappings between elements of A and elements of B
For example, in the metaphor: LOVE IS A JOURNEY, the target domain LOVE is understood via the source domain JOURNEY through a range of mappings
LOVE IS A JOURNEY Look how far we’ve come
We are at the crossroads We‟ll just have to go our separate ways We can‟t turn back now
I don‟t think this relationship is going anywhere
It‟s been a long, bumpy road
This relationship is a dead-end street We‟re just spinning our wheels
Our marriage is on the rocks
We‟ve forgotten off the track
(In the above poem, our knowledge about the elements of A JOURNEY are very clear from which readers can draw an understanding of LOVE.)
- The relationship between lovers corresponds to the means of transportation (the vehicle)
- The means for achieving purposes correspond to routes
- The lovers‟ common goals correspond to their common destination on the journey
- Progress in the relationship corresponds to the forward motion (the relationship is going anywhere)
- The difficulties in the relationship corresponds to the impediments to travel
If love is conceptualized as a journey and vehicle as the relationship, then our understanding about the vehicle can help understand the relationship as Kovecses (2005:7) exemplifies:
If the vehicle breaks down, we have three choices: (1) we get out and try to reach our destination by some other means; (2) we try to fix the vehicle; or (3) we stay in the vehicle and do nothing Correspondingly, if a love relationship does not work, we can (1) leave the relationship; (2) try to make it work; or (3) stay in it (and suffer)
Carol Herron‟s model of language learning and teaching (1982) focuses on the factory metaphor as a way to flag her deep unhappiness with the memorization and mindless repetition involved in audiolingual teaching She indicates five characteristics which match the aspects of factory production from which people can grasp the idea that LEARNING IS (BEING) ON A FACTORY PRODUCTION LINE
Teaching or Learning Characteristic Factory Correspondence
1 “Proficiency in the basic skills”
“an assembly line technique” student error”
3 “Rewarding students…in the classroom”
5 Planned structural drills without much meaning”
“guarantee the product remained flawless and predictable”
“a good factory worker acts on the faith that the supervisor knows why (X happens)”
Table 1:Herron’s Audiolingual Correspondences (Herron, 1982)
From the two above example and analysis, we can see clearly that structural metaphors involve “the structuring of one kind of experience or activity in terms of another kind of experience or activity” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980:197) The set of mappings structures our notion of LOVE and LEARNING in a clear-cut way Without the metaphor, it would be difficult to imagine what our concept of LOVE and LEARNING could be albeit countless definition of LOVE and LEARNING given
This kind of metaphors also appears in Vietnamese poetry and everyday life
“Giá đành trong nguyệt trên mây Hoa sao hoa khéo đọa đầy bấy hoa” (Nguyễn Du)
“Hoa” is a metaphor used to infer a beautiful woman based on our experience of the objective world that “hoa” (flower) is beautiful and weak
Surprisingly, “hoa” in “Truyện Kiều” by Nguyễn Du is also used to denote a man:
“Nàng rằng khoảng vắng đêm trường
Vì hoa nên phải đánh đường tìm hoa” (Nguyễn Du)
In the above sentence, “hoa” is used to denote Kim Trong, an elegant man in Kieu Story Thus, from the perspective of Nguyễn Du, “hoa” (flower) is not only an attribute of women but of men, too
It is necessary to make the concept of ontology well-defined in assistance to understanding ontological metaphors Ontology is traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which “deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences” (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ontology) Kovecses (2010: 38) also reads
“ontology is a branch of philosophy that has to do with the nature of existence”
Ontological metaphors base on our experiences with physical objects, that is
“ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc as entities and substances.”
(Lakoff and Johnson, 2003: 26) By this way, when the target domain is not discrete or bounded, we can still categorize and identify them There are many kinds of ontological metaphors with different purposes one of which being the concept ABSTRACTS ARE THINGS:
The solution was within rich
The joy was seen in his face
In these examples, by setting an artificial boundary, we can bound the
“problems”, “solution”, and “joy” in a way that we can see it, can touch it
Panasonic‟s slogan is “Ideas for life”, which employs an ontological metaphor of IDEAS ARE PRODUCTS/COMMODITIES in that Panasonic‟s products are just the solution for your better life
Another concept is CONTAINER metaphor According to Lakoff and Johnson
(2003), human beings are containers with boundaries and an orientation of inside and outside Let take the lyric of “Goodbye”, the song played by Air Supply as an example:
“I can see the pain living in your eyes
And I know how hard you try…”
From the above citation, it‟s obvious that “your eyes” are the CONTAINER from which “I” can see the tangible thing namely PAIN
Besides, states and emotions also play the role of a CONTAINER
“Well I hope that I don‟t fall in love with you
„Cause falling in love just makes me blue…”
(“Hope I don’t fall in love with you” by Tom Waits)
Personification can be conceived as another type of ontological metaphors In personification, human qualities are given to nonhuman entities Personification is not only common in literature but also omnipresent in everyday discourse We can find a numerous examples of ontological metaphors of this kind:
Love speaks through her words
Actions speak louder than words
The word betray and speak are merely human-attributed; however, through ontological metaphors, those abstracts like love, life or action are addressed with the human capacities
Like the expression of love through “journey” in English, Vietnamese also have their own way of expressing abstract idea, love, through concrete things
“Thuyền về có nhớ bến chăng Bến thì một dạ khăng khăng đợi thuyền”
“Thuyền”, a moving object is used to talk about a man who travels many places and is capable of forgetting the places he has been to By personification, “thuyền” has been given the capability of “missing” and “bến” (the metaphor denoting a woman) the capability of “waiting”
As the name suggests, these metaphors are based on the orientation in space, hence a special relationship is made for a concept This relationship is normally based on our experiences of the physical space we possess
Being HAPPY IS HIGH/UP Being SAD IS LOW/DOWN
Lakoff and Johnson saw the physical state in the fact that someone sad has a bow posture and a happy person is upright Hence the lyric:
“…She‟s up in the good times
She‟s down in the bad.”
(“How can I tell her’ by Lobo) Another possibility could be seen in the fact that heaven standing for happiness is high above us but hell standing for misery is below us, therefore we have:
Another example can bee seen in the song “You raise me up” by Josh Groban:
“…You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up To more than I can be…”
A metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding a concept only by “virtue of its experiential basis.” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 204) MORE IS UP has a very different kind of experiential basis from HAPPY IS UP or CONTROL IS UP presented as follows:
MORE IS UP: seeing the level rise when we add more of a substance
CONTROL IS UP: physical dominance, where the winner in fight typically winds up above the loser, and where parents who are much larger, control infants
Thus, instead of writing MORE IS UP, CONTROL IS UP, we might have the following representation:
This representation would emphasize that the two parts of each metaphor are linked only via an experiential basis and that it is only by means of this basis that the metaphor can serve the purpose of understanding.
Though the conceptual metaphor MORE IS UP meaning MORE IS BETTER and BIGGER IS BETTER is often true universally, it is not always coherent in context- specific situation or culture For example Nissan car slogan says “It‟s time to expect more from a car” from which we can note that MORE IS BETTER We expect that the
Nissan car can provides consumers with better features and functions Nevertheless, the
UK BT Telecom‟s slogan “The cost of calling keeps on falling” denotes that LESS IS BETTER
In English, the notion of TIME is incoherent as follows: a, “In the week ahead of us…” (future) and “That‟s all behind us now…” (past)
→ FUTURE IS IN THE FRONT and PAST IS BEHIND b, “In the following weeks…” (future) and “In the preceding weeks…” (past)
→ FUTURE IS BEHIND and PAST IS IN THE FRONT Albeit this contradiction, the two slogans below denote FUTURE IS IN THE FRONT:
Honda Lead: “Lead to the future”
THE USE OF METAPHORS IN CELL PHONE
Conceptual metaphors in advertising slogans
From a discursive, cognitive and pragmatic point of view, the role of metaphors in advertising cannot almost be underestimated On the one hand, the conceptualization of the advertised items or service is usually expressed by either verbal or non-verbal instances of conceptual metaphors that play the role as a “link between the domain of the advertised item and other domains” (Ungerer, 2000: 321) On the other hand, advertisers make metaphorical utterances to give their audience an invitation to process the utterance In doing so, the audience is made to see resemblances between the advertised product or service and the object or property featured in the metaphor
However, the audience takes part of the responsibility in deriving further assumptions about the object which it associates with the product or service (Tanaka, 1999: 90)
The advertisers design their advertisements as a persuasion to convince their addressees, the audience, to buy their products or, in certain types of advertisings, such as public service, image construction and charity funding advertisements, to convert the audience‟s original ideas or belief on something
However, what kind of techniques can be used to reach the advertisers‟ goals?
According to Cook (2001: 15), among advertisings, two general distinctions can be made One is the so-called hard-sell technique and the other is called the soft-sell technique On the one hand, a hard-sell technique can be seen as a direct sale, which means, such ads rely solely on direct presenting the information of a product, service or idea to their audience The audience of these ads do not have to infer any implications from them On the other hand, a soft-sell relies mainly on the audience‟s mood rather than on exhortation and always asks the audience to draw implications from the ads
Bernstein (1974: 118) proposed another classification of technique that is compatible with the hard-sell and soft-sell distinction aforementioned One is “reason” and the other is “tickle” “Reason ads suggest motives for purchase” and the ways to express such motives are through directly informing the audience For example, detergent A is better buy because it is better than detergent B in terms of the amount of dishes A can wash in comparison with B On the contrary, a tickle ad attracts the audience‟s emotion, humor and mood
In the modern ads, there seems to be a tendency to use the soft-sell/ tickle approach to convey the convincing messages because nowadays, due to the development of technology and prosperity of business, we are bombarded with an enormous numbers of ads and sometimes get annoyed, irritated or bored by the advertisers‟ appeals to buy their products (Brierley 1995, Leech 1996) That is, getting the audience‟s attention is now difficult and a task to be concerned with, so that in order to grasp the audience‟s attention, advertisers enrich their ads with more novelty to impress the audience to gain their highest goal – buy my products or ideas
Due to the fact that soft-sell is used more frequently to invoke the emotions and get attention of the audience, advertisers have to use the limited space to bring about the maximal impact on the addressees This explains why modern advertisings are particularly rich in metaphors and can provide us with a ground to do the research on metaphors and finally explore the hidden cognitive mechanism that is in operation in our conceptual structure (Messaris 1997, Tanaka 1994, Vestergaard and SChroder
The cognitive functions of metaphors can be summarized as four major concepts
First , metaphor is the foundation for constructing humans‟ conceptual structure
Metaphor can be seen as a way of concretizing things and, basically, many concepts that have been stored in our conceptual structure are metaphorical in nature For example, in order to understand the concept of love, we sometimes use the basic metaphorical idea, such as LOVE IS A JOURNEY to facilitate the understanding of the complex and abstract concept, love Second, metaphor serves as a tool to compare our totally different daily experience In other words, we need to understand or interpret certain experiences in terms of other experiences that are much more familiar and easier for us With the help of these familiar experiences, we can form a new attitude toward the new experiences and consequently know how to react to or how to interpret them For example, according to Lakoff and Johnson‟s (1980) analysis of metaphor, we human beings conceptually conceive our experiences in terms of available objects, substances or containers (Kovecses, 2002: 34) Expressions, such as
“Inflation is lowering our standard of living” or “If there is much more inflation, we‟ll never survive” are good illustrations of this statement In both expressions, inflation, the intangible concept, is seen as an entity so that it can be quantified as “much more” in the second expression This type of metaphor is named as ontological metaphor
Apart from this type, we also use structural metaphors in which the source domain contains rich knowledge structures for us to understand the target domain For instance,
“Thanksgiving is coming up on us” is based on the conceptual idea TIME PASSING
IS MOTION OF AN OBJECT The last type is called orientational metaphors An orientational metaphor refers to the metaphor where our basic spatial orientations are used as source domains to understand target domains For examples, expressions like
“speak up” or “lower down your voice” are both based on the upward orientation and downward orientation, respectively The third cognitive function of metaphor is that metaphor cognitively provides us with a new perspective to view things around us and hence gives novel meanings to our daily activity Take “Love is a collaborative work of art” for example Such a statement entails several different meanings in terms of different perspectives we take Due to our different perspectives, the sentence can be interpreted as love is work, love is active, love is an aesthetic experience, love is unique in each instance, or love creates reality Lastly, metaphor functions a logical analogy that is often used to argue, reason and infer
Since metaphors are pervasive in our daily life, the functions it has must have its communicative purposes Gibb (1994) contended that metaphor can have at least three communicative functions First, extremely difficult ideas can be easily expressed through the use of metaphors Consider the metaphorical expression “the thought slipped my mind like a squirrel behind a tree” (Gibb 1994: 124) Swiftness is an extremely abstract idea to explain in literal language, but, the verb “slip” picturesquely explicate such an idea Second, particularly compact meanings are provided through metaphors in communication This means the continuous and rich nature of experience is easier to be captured through metaphors than through literal language For instance,
“your love is my sunshine” expresses a large amount of information of love From the sentence, we can infer that my love is bright, strong, warm, important Last, metaphors may help us capture and experience the vividness of our phenomenological experience
Because metaphors can express compact meanings in communication as mentioned in point 2, these compact meanings, therefore, evoke various “mental images” in the addressees and these images are the vivid communicative intentions about a concept or the speaker‟s experience of it
These above-mentioned cognitive functions of metaphors are essential reasons for advertisers to use metaphors in ads
Products to be advertised vary nowadays In such advertisements as service, charity funding or some image construction, the concept to be promoted or sold is indeed very abstract Metaphors, as a result, uses our familiar experience to understand the abstract concept or idea to be sold In order to have the audience “hooked”, first, the advertisers have to use images to attract their attention Then, the following steps to wake up their interests, motivate their desire to buy or believe, and finally be persuaded to act out their desire to buy the product, should be performed At this moment, metaphors play an essential role for these steps, since metaphor, as it is defined, is to understand an experience or domain A in terms of another domain B Therefore, once the audience is attracted to the ad, the cross-mapping nature of metaphor lengthens the time they spend on the ads In addition, because metaphors cognitively provide a new perspective for an old experience or thing, and sometimes the experience or source domains used to understand the target domains are structurally rich and hence the structure provided might be used to “restructure” the original thought we have This is a crucial point in the use of metaphors in ads in which the main purpose is to influence the audience‟s original thoughts to convince them to realize the advertisers‟ persuasive purpose
1.2 Conceptual metaphors in advertising slogans
The application of metaphors in advertising has aroused close attention of many scholars and researchers around the world Lapsanska writes, “a single metaphor may be worth of a hundred words of advertising text It has an interesting value and stimulates the curiosity of the reader about the product” (2006: 46) Czerpa sees eye to eye with Lapsanska when she notes that metaphors in advertisements are powerful and compelling tool because they not only enrich an add but also extend the meaning of textual/ visual message, creating multi-leveled layers of interpretation (Czerpa, 2006:
Research procedures
A list of 65 cell phone advertising slogans are chosen at random from online newspapers, TV ads and websites
These 65 slogans are classified into 5 cell phone brand names: Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Blackberry and Sony Ericsson
The researcher chose these 5 bands for the reason that they are well-known and prominent in everyday use Further more, the source to collect data is at hand
All these slogans will be first sorted out into categories of brand names, then analyzed to show whether they use metaphors or not The next step is to study the metaphors employed in each slogan so that the researcher can point out to which categories of conceptual metaphors namely structural, ontological and orientational the slogans belong In order to achieve that purpose, the qualitative method is to be used
After that, the quantitative method is adopted with an aim of figuring out the proportion of three kinds of conceptual metaphors in these selected slogans Finally, a description of the results will be presented through the statistics and interpretation.
CONCLUSION
Recapitulation of main ideas
The study aims at describing a linguistic phenomenon namely metaphors in advertising slogans of cell phone advertising slogans; however, due to the time and scope limitation, it is just a snapshot of the use of conceptual metaphors in social communication by an investigation into advertising slogans of just five brands After the representation of data analysis, the findings are revealed as follows:
Firstly, conceptual metaphors is used with high frequency in advertising slogans of Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Blackberry and Sony Ericsson mobile phone brands among other linguistic means
Secondly, ontological metaphors are dominant among conceptual metaphors found in advertising slogans, making a contribution of three quarters Structural metaphors and orientational metaphors follow accordingly
The research has its significance of capturing readers‟ attention of the omnipresence of metaphors in daily life in general and advertising in particular
Moreover, it is a suggestion for copywriters to employ conceptual metaphors more in their copywriting since it has been approved a good means by the development of famous mobile phone brands.
Limitations of the study
Due to the time and knowledge restriction, the researcher only collects a corpus of 65 advertising slogans of five cell phone brands This is not a big enough corpus for us to make a generalization of the results to advertising language in all fields.
Suggestions for further research
During the time the researcher carries out the thesis, many interesting ideas have emerged and they could be the suggestions for further research
The research can be continued as a bigger one with the description of all semantic aspects employed in mobile phone advertising, not just metaphors Or maybe a research into translation of mobile phone advertising slogans from English to Vietnamese under the light of semantic approach can be put into account What‟s more, a study of metaphors applied in all advertising slogans world wide can be suggested
I have worked on this thesis to the best of my ability and effort to yield the best results However, due to the time and knowledge limitation, mistakes are unavoidable
Thus, any of your constructive comments, corrections or suggestions for my better job would be highly appreciated.
Implications
The thesis generally analyzed metaphors with a theory-oriented approach
However, a practice-oriented approach can be employed in the translation of these metaphors from one language to another language For example, the HIGH STATUS
IS UP allows us to understand the “Up your status” advertisement by Samsung cell phones, specifically, it is “to make your status higher”, hence, instead of being translated as “nâng cao địa vị của bạn”, the “up your status can be translated as “nâng tầm đẳng cấp”
Moreover, as above mentioned, the conceptualization of the objective world may change across cultures, the mistranslating is unavoidable The thesis provides readers with the understanding of the underlying message of the advertising slogans so that it can be figuratively transferred to the target language without causing embarrassments caused by the literal meaning like in the case of KFC mentioned
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Number Cell phone brands Advertising slogans
2 Being harmony with the nature (Nokia N74)
3 One model, three stunning outfits (Nokia500)
5 Do you believe in love at first touch?
6 Turn heads, get noticed and stay connected to your world with the innovative Twist
7 Hit a hole-in-one Hit the right impression
8 I am my music Nokia N series See new Hear new Feel new
9 The center of your social universe (Nokia X6 16GB)
10 Get to the good things
14 Designed for the way we live
17 Where the possible begins (Samsung Galaxy Ace)
18 Stroke of brilliance (Samsung Omina)
19 Work hard Play harder (Samsung Convoy)
23 The right thing says everything
24 Download some mobile magic It‟ll make your phone happy
26 The world‟s fastest-moving brand is still on the move
30 No matter how you stay in touch, Samsung connects you in style
31 Designed by humans and inspired by nature (Samsung Galaxy
The internet in your pocket
35 iPhone Apple reinvents the phone