Pictorial Metaphors on Different Levels: Reflections on Creativity and Conventionality
Keywords:
Global warming, Deforestation, Pictorial metaphors, Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Conceptual Blending TheoryAbstract
This analysis examines two illustrations by Pawel Kuczynski on environmental issues in light of the theories of Extended Conceptual Metaphor (Kövecses, 2020), Conceptual Integration (Fauconnier; Turner, 2002), and the approach of monomodal pictorial metaphor (Forceville, 2006, 2008, 2017). The aim is to promote reflections on the adequacy of the contextualist view of metaphor as a framework for describing manifestations of pictorial metaphors at different levels, according to the conceptual structure underlying the conceptualization: mental space, frame, domain-matrix, and image schema. This is an excerpt from a qualitative research project, also characterized as descriptive-exploratory, focused on conceptual processes involved in the construction of meaning in pictorial and multimodal productions about the environment. <sc>The natural environment is virtual reality, Planet Earth is a pressure cooker without a safety valve about to explode</sc>, and <sc>High concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are excess vapor inside a pressure cooker</sc> are contextualized metaphors postulated for the level of mental space. Although the level-based approach is a recent development in metaphor studies, characterized as dynamic and flexible, some challenges have been observed in the application of this model, such as the theoretical and methodological treatment of more creative, less conventional metaphors.
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