摘 要

如今，大众媒体和电子科技的发展极大地丰富了人们的交际方式，人们从以语言文字交际转变为以多种模态交际。这种转变同时也导致了隐喻从传统的隐喻转变为多模态隐喻。根据大哲学家亚里士多德在《诗学与修辞学》中提到的概念， 隐喻从两千多年前就被视为是一种修辞工具。然而到了二十世纪，这种论断却频频遭到挑战。Lakoff认为隐喻是人们思想和行动的方式， 并且人类的概念系统也是隐喻的，所以多种模态的隐喻是广泛存在于人们周围的。多模态隐喻的概念也就随着现代社会的发展自然而然地出现了。由于多模态隐喻大大地拓宽了隐喻研究的范围，这一概念的提出被认为是隐喻研究领域的重大突破，隐喻研究的重

点也从静态语篇转向动态语篇。

本文选取《疯狂动物城》这一广受欢迎的迪士尼动画电影作为研究对象，因其包括了丰富的隐喻和多种不同的模态。笔者将采取文献研究法和定性研究法,根据概念隐喻理论来分析电影《疯狂动物城》中的多模态隐喻。概念隐喻理论的运行机制也将用于阐明《疯狂动物城》中多模态隐喻的意义构建。笔者试图通过对《疯狂动物城》进行语篇分析探索多模态隐喻是如何在特定语篇中起作用以及多模态隐喻的运行机制。

通过运用概念隐喻理论来分析电影《疯狂动物城》中的多模态隐喻，笔者试图得出多模态隐喻在电影中作用的普遍规律并探索现有概念隐喻理论在分析电影作品中的不足，为以后的研究提供新思路。

关键词：多模态隐喻；概念隐喻理论；疯狂动物城

Abstract

Nowadays, mass media and digital technology have largely enriched people’s communication approach, which leads to the shift of verbal communication to multimodal communication. The change in communication media leads to the change of metaphor as well. Although metaphor has been regarded as a kind of rhetoric device from two thousand years according to the great philosopher Aristotle’s work Poetics and Rhetoric. This concept was challenged by conceptual metaphor theory in the 20th century. Lakoff believes that metaphor is a way people think and act and human being’s conceptual system is metaphorical. Thus, the metaphor of various modes is pervasively used in our daily life rather than solely in written text as a kind of rhetoric device. Naturally, with the development of modern society, films and TV series lead to the arising of multimodal metaphors. Multimodal metaphor is regarded as a breakthrough for metaphor research because it widens the scope of metaphor study from merely verbal mode to nonverbal mode. The focus of metaphor research turns from static discourse to dynamic discourse as well.

This thesis selects the popular Disney cartoon film Zootopia as the sample because it contains abundant metaphors and covers diverse modes. The image, music, and language play a significant role in the construction of characters and narratives. The author uses the literature research method and qualitative method to analyze the multimodal metaphors based on the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor theory. The mechanism of conceptual metaphor theory is presented to clarify the meaning construction of multimodal metaphors in the cartoon film Zootopia.

Through the case study, the author attempts to answer what is the mechanism of multimodal metaphor and how multimodal metaphors take effect in films.

Key Words: Multimodal metaphor; Conceptual metaphor theory; Zootopia

Contents

Chapter One Introduction 6

1.1. Background of the Research 6

1.2. Objective and Significance 6

1.3. Research Methodology 7

1.4. Layout of the thesis 8

Chapter Two Literature Review 9

2.1. An Overview of Multimodal Metaphor 9

2.1.1 Definitions of Metaphor and Multimodal metaphor 9

2.1.2 Origin of Multimodal Metaphor Research 10

2.2. Previous Studies of Multimodal Metaphor 10

2.2.1. Studies of Multimodal Metaphor Abroad 10

2.2.2. Studies of Multimodal Metaphor At Home 11

2.2.3. Limitations of Previous Studies on Multimodal Metaphor 12

Chapter Three Theoretical Framework 13

3.1. Introduction of Conceptual Metaphor Theory 13

3.1.1 Target Domain and Source Domain 13

3.1.2 Working Mechanism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory 14

3.2. Classification of Conceptual Metaphor 15

3.2.1 Ontological Metaphor 15

3.2.2. Structural Metaphor 16

3.3.3. Orientational Metaphor 16

Chapter Four Case Analysis of Multimodal Metaphors in the Film Zootopia 17

4.1. Introduction of Zootopia 17

4.2. Multimodal Metaphors in Zootopia 18

4.2.1. Multimodal Metaphors between Pictorial Modes and Linguistic Modes 18

4.2.2.Multimodal Metaphors between Pictorial Modes and Sonic Modes 21

Conversation on the Cable Car 21

Chapter Five Conclusion 23

5.1. Major Findings 23

5.2. Limitations and Implications of the Research 23

Acknowledgements 25

Bibliography 26

Chapter One Introduction

The Disney cartoon film Zootopia has gained a high reputation and box office worldwide. This thesis chooses Zootopia as the discourse to study multimodal metaphor as there are plenty of multimodal metaphors in the film. In this chapter, an overview of the research will be introduced including its background, objective and significance, data collection, methodology, and layout of the whole thesis.

Background of the Research

The film Zootopia is regarded as one of the most successful cartoon film in the recent decade. In this film, various animals live together in harmony like human beings in an animals’ world. The film tells a story about how bunny Judy achieving her dream of being a police officer in Zootopia. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory. This thesis takes the cartoon film Zootopia for example to study the mechanism and deep meaning of the multimodal metaphor.

Metaphor, which plays an important role in our daily communication has a quite long history. The development of metaphor can be divided into three stages by two significant breakthroughs, the traditional metaphor, conceptual metaphor, and the multimodal metaphor. In the traditional metaphor theory, metaphor is only about verbal text, and metaphor researches are purely linguistic. However, Lakoff comes up with the idea that “metaphor is a way of thinking and behavior” which brings the metaphor research into a brand new era, the conceptual metaphor. With the conceptual metaphor theory, metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a method to communicate, is in our daily life and our conceptual system.

In recent years, with the thriving of modern technology and mass media, cognitive linguistics focus more on multimodal metaphor which is born out of conceptual metaphor. The multimodal metaphor doesn’t have much novelty compared with the monomodal metaphor except the way of presenting messages. In multimodal metaphors, the target domain and source may both contain various modes such as sound, picture, and gesture. The film, as a vivid instance for the combination of diverse modes can be an ideal object for multimodal metaphor study. Thus the author tries to study multimodal metaphor by the case analysis of the film Zootopia.

1.2. Objective and Significance

The presented study tries to analysis how multimodal metaphors interact with each other and take effect in the chosen text, the film Zootopia with the guidance of the conceptual metaphor theory.

This thesis mainly discusses these following questions: