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Task 1. Texts to be used: Barthes (1964), Pateman (1983),
Unsworth and Clrigh (2009), Forceville (1996: H. 4). Find a static
(i.e., non-moving) representation that consists of the two
modes/modalities: language and image(s). Include [a link to] the
representation with the task. Discuss this representation, taking
into account the following questions: What are the denotative
aspects and connotative aspects of the various linguistic and
non-
linguistic messages? Would you discuss the relationship between
the messages in the different modes in terms of
anchoring or relaying (Barthes)? If so, how is this achieved? If
you think the relation is one of anchoring, what anchors what? If
neither of these Barthesian concepts apply, why is this so?
In what respects, if any, would an analysis by Unsworth and
Clirigh be different from a Barthesian one?
To what genre does the representation discussed belong? Show,
using Patemans insights, how the genre-attribution both steers and
constrains the potential/possible interpretations. Think of a genre
in which the possible interpretation of this representation would
strongly or marginally change.
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First thing that should be noted when considering the linguistic
messages, is that they are
separated from each other. There are four, possibly five,
instances of linguistic communication
spatially separated on the poster. The first (no hierarchical
order intended) reads Michael
Jackson and denotes a name, in all probability a first and last
name. The second states A
Quercus Book which denotes the concept book and as well as a
publisher's name Quercus.
Unless the word quercus, the Latin family name for oak tree,
makes grammatically sense in
combination with the word book, I take it to be a proper noun.
Over 200 stories for those with no
time to waste conveys the content of the book that is advertised
here. Thus the sentence conveys
that what can be found in the book are 200 stories that
according to the makers or advertisers, are
short and for people with little time on their hands. The fourth
group of linguistic text is featured
on the cover of the advertised book, which consists of a title
Life in Five Seconds and the
repetition of the subtitle Over 200 Stories for Those with No
Time to Waste. As it is a short
and somewhat suggestive title the denotative aspect consists of
a juxtaposition between Life
and five seconds, where life to most people denotes a long
period of time and five seconds a
short period of time, in particular in comparison to Life.
The bare minimum of meaning denoted by the drawn figures are
three vertically standing
persons and one lying down or horizontally floating.
Additionally three horizontal arrows
pointing to the right separate the four drawings. Even the
identification of the gender would
probably entail knowing the iconic sign for man as we find them
in public places, for example a
public toilet. I am not entirely convinced this is a universal
knowledge.
The connotative aspects in this advertisement are difficult to
disentangle. The words
Michael Jackson, if it were to make any kind of sense beyond the
denotative, refers to the pop
star Michael Jackson. As Michael Jackson was a pop star he
enjoyed quite a lot of media
coverage and as a result the connotations that can be elicited
from his persona are boundless.
Thus some connotations are pop star, dancer, singer, alleged
paedophilia, African American,
Neverland Ranch etcetera. As for the pictorial elements some
connotative elements consist of
iconicity, narrative, change, man, toilets, public places, and
probably both advertisement as well
as art.
The relationship between the different modes can be discussed in
terms of both
anchoring and relaying, however this is theoretically only
helpful up to a point (Barthes 28).
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It doesn't explain the reciprocity between image and language.
The words Michael Jackson in
the simplest terms identify the person in the image. And as such
four figures are anchored to
represent only the one person, namely Michael Jackson. The
titles of the book as well as its
subtitle suggest that the arrows should be read as a
progression. As Barthes claims all these
elements are already present in the image, the manner in which
they can be understood are
anchored by the linguistic elements and as such made salient
over others (29). Because the figure
represents a single person the arrows can be explained as an
action, passing of time. Furthermore
Life in five seconds also connotes a narrative, albeit an
abbreviated version. It is precisely of
this anchoring function of language, the way it guides the
interpretation of the arrows as a
sequence that the relaying function of language comes to the
fore (Barthes 30).
One way of understanding the different shading of the iconic
figures is by means of relay.
Although strictly speaking the shading itself, taken as a form
of progression goes from dark to
light, the words Michael Jackson specify this progression from
dark to light. From the
combination of Michael Jackson and the four figures progressing
from light to dark we
understand that it refers to Michael Jackson's skin colour. His
skin colour became increasingly
lighter as his life progressed. This aspect of the advertisement
is difficult to theoretically
disentangle. On the one hand there is strictly speaking a
sequence of figures (if one accepts the
arrows as representing change) that changes from dark to lighter
at each step. Thus Michael
Jackson anchors in the sense that it merely points to this
progression already present in the
image. Yet the iconic status of the image and the graphic nature
of the image utilises the
linguistic message to move beyond what is literally denoted.
Furthermore the words Michael
Jackson do not literally denote a progression from black to
white, this meaning can only be
produced in the combination between text and image and it is
difficult if not impossible to
determine whether the text anchors/relays the image or whether
the image anchors/relays the
linguistic message. Michael Jacksons star persona is riddled
with connotations and whether the
images guide us to select his changing skin colour as the
connotation or whether the term
Michael Jackson helps us recognise that which is depicted as a
persons skin colour changing is
difficult to determine. Barthes does not explicitly acknowledge
such reciprocity.
Unsworth and Clrighs method of analysis would at the least allow
for this reciprocity to
come to the fore. Perhaps it will not solve anything in terms of
hierarchies or firsts, but they
also acknowledge that reciprocity prevents such hierarchies.
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Because of the iconic quality of the images many of the
epistemological commitment
features of the visual mode as described by Unsworth and Clrigh
are cancelled, while the
connotations of the star Michael Jackson assumes the role of the
epistemological commitment
normally associated with the visual mode (153-154). In other
words here there occurs a role
reversal. Even though Michael Jackson and Life in Five Seconds
connote sequential relations,
it is strictly speaking found in the image. There is no need for
the images to visualize the
qualities (shape, colour, texture) of the identified
participant, because to most the words Michael
Jackson are sufficient to do so (Unsworth and Clrigh 156).
Moreover the iconicity of the images
work with minimum of distinctive features that can be understood
as qualifying and visualising
Michael Jackson. The verbal components Michael Jackson and Life
in Five Seconds lack the
verbs that would indicate the semantic relation of process that
Unsworth and Clrigh identify
as part of the linguistic mode of epistemological commitment
(156).
The advertisement seems sparse and simple, implicitly creating a
link between the
advertisement of the book and the genre of the book itself. Here
we find an implicit
acknowledgement of the book's own embedding within a media/image
saturated world, since the
stylistic properties of the books miniature posters aim for
attention, brevity and a quick punch-
line. It is significant that, while advertised as conveying
histories of the world in brief images,
these images can almost exclusively be understood properly when
these histories were already a
part of the audience's cultural schemata. Instead of spreading
new knowledge it can at most
remind us of something anew and perhaps at most expose some
relationships heretofore missed
or unthought of. Its genre as an advertisement is limiting in
that sense.
It is difficult imagining this poster in a different genre. The
graphic and stylistic layout of
the book's content is of the type that can be associated with
the single page/frame advertisement
genre itself. Because of the initial association with the
advertisement genre, the book's
relationship with the advertisement becomes one of
cross-fertilisation or reciprocity. The poster
as it is encountered could be in either a magazine or as a
poster on a billboard. As such the line
Over 200 stories for those with no time to waste directly refers
to people who come across
advertisements such as the one in question, where brevity and
limited space are often applicable,
and extend this connotation to the book itself. Were the
publisher's name left out it stops
becoming branding and this reciprocity is less rigid When it is
used as online video content one
could imagine it carrying connotations of simple web-based
content in keeping with Life in five
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seconds perhaps slightly more removed from the advertising genre
and style. However bearing
in mind that the Internet's genre demarcations are becoming
increasingly blurred.
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TASK 3: Texts to be used: Black 1977, Forceville 1996, chapter
2. Find a real-life, short verbal passage (please include it and
provide a source) containing a metaphor as defined by Black and
Forceville but not already given in an A is B format. Discuss and
reflect on this metaphor, dealing at least with the following
questions:
To what conceptual A is B format can the metaphor be traced? Is
it evident how the A and
B are to be labelled or is there more than one possibility?
What is the target (primary subject, tenor, topic) and what is
the source (secondary subject, vehicle) of the metaphor? How do you
know that this it is not the other way round? Mention elements
(both denotative and connotative) that can be found in the domain
of the target and source, respectively.
Interpret the metaphor in terms of the features/properties that
must/can be mapped from source to target. Are there any mappings
that are potentially controversial between different interpreters?
What role is played by text-internal and text-external context
(think of genre!) in the interpretation of the metaphor? Create a
scheme for the mapping as in Forceville (1996: 11).
Is the metaphor emphatic? resonant? strong? Why (not)?
Create an alternative for your metaphor, retaining the original
target but imagining a novel
source. Discuss it briefly.
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There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could
hear the mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were
winding a spring. We called it the wind-up bird. Kumiko gave it the
name. We didn't know what it was really called or what it looked
like, but that didn't bother the wind-up bird. Every day it would
come to the stand of trees in our neighborhood and wind the spring
of our quiet little world (Murakami 9).
The conceptual format of the metaphor above can be traced to
various forms that differ in
specificity rather than in radical deviation, as I will explain
later. Generally speaking it pertains to
a mechanism metaphor, which describes the target in terms of
mechanical device or process. In
the present example it could thus be traced to WORLD IS
MECHANISM.
The target is as such the world (a very broad concept) and the
source can be further
specified from mechanism to a mechanism that needs winding. The
verb to wind (-up) does not
sit well with the target world and thus it seems this problem
has to be solved in the terms of
experiencing the world in a different capacity than the literal
meaning. As such it becomes clear
that the world is target rather than source. In other words the
focus the salient word or
expression, whose occurrence in the literal frame invests the
utterance with metaphorical
force, is wind the spring as a world does not literally consist
of mechanical parts such as a
spring, not to mention a bird winding it (Black 439).
The caveat in deciding on the conceptual format or identifying
the target and source
subject lies in the given that this excerpt is quoted from a
larger piece of literary work. Although
it is presented as a more or less unified piece of text it
undoubtedly will benefit from an analysis
of the full novel. Particularly since the metaphor employed by
the author is thematic for the
whole novel, while remaining a little obscure nonetheless. Black
argues that as much of the
relevant verbal context or the non-verbal setting should be
quoted for an adequate grasp of the
actual or imputed speaker's meaning, however the conceptual
metaphor it employs is a familiar
one it should therefore be possible to approximate the meaning
that the perceiver in a particular
context understands (Black 437).
The world is of course a very broad concept and perhaps a little
abstract in this instance
and as a result its denotative and connotative elements are
myriad. As Hanna Pulaczewska argues
this metaphor pertains to an extended metaphor whose recipient
domain is not confined to a
particular class of physical phenomena but embraces the whole of
natural phenomena (162).
Moreover Pulaczewska is speaking from the context of scientific
discourse, thus in the case of the
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above example the number of connotations is even greater. This
shows how the employed
metaphor can be both a means of making certain elements in the
target domain salient and
productive of new ways of perceiving the target. Some elements
of the target domain that come
to mind in denotative fashion are globe, round, environment,
earth, people and way of living.
Depending on the context some connotative elements that can be
identified are complexity,
threatened, wars, disasters, unitary system, centre of the
universe or alternatively insignificant
part of the universe and one could go on. In similar vein the
source mechanism has a plethora
of both denotative and connotative meanings. A mechanism can
refer to a machine, or more
specifically the arrangement of connected parts in a machine or
a particular process by which
something is achieved or comes about or when referring to people
and the social it means a
particular way of thinking, being or acting (The Free
Dictionary). Connotatively it can also be
understood as a rigid system, working a long the lines of cause
and effect, and ideological
oppression. However as a clock it denotes a mechanism with a
specific function; keeping time or
telling time. Of course in hindsight the concept of time (and
history) is essential in thinking about
the world, because time is the substance in which the world
revolves.
There are three contextual scales that should be taken into
account. These consist of text-
internal (the passage quoted), text-internal (full novel) and
text-external in the context of genre
and in the context of the authors thematic tropes. As a piece of
fiction a novel always refers to a
diegetic world, which may or may not work and revolve according
to the physical laws of the
actual world of the reader. Because the metaphor in fiction
always refers to an alternate world it
is possible to take some of the projections more literal than we
would normally do. Also while
the conceptual metaphor is old and worn out even, the literary
contexts allows it to be explored
anew within this context of an alternate world. From Haruki
Murakamis oeuvre and in this novel
specifically there are always strange forces abound that affect
cause and effect relations in more
or less convoluted ways. In other words there are actors, both
literally and figuratively, that set
events in motion or change the narrative events that are
palpable in almost a literal sense; as if a
hand sets a mechanism in motion.
The figurative and literal quality of this metaphor is also
captured in the passage itself.
Initially the bird sounds as if it were winding a spring, but at
the end of the passage it would
wind the spring of our little world as if taken literally
(Murakami 9). Schematically the
mappable features would look like the table below:
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Target Source WORLD IS CLOCK
A complex of physical, natural, social -------------- A complex
of connected parts in a machine
and cultural phenomena.
x-------------- Needs winding before movement is possible
------------ Needs winding before movement is possible
x-------------- Time is discontinuous
------------- Time is discontinuous
As can be seen depending on the context, whether the metaphor is
perceived only in this passage,
or whether the metaphor is taken a theme for the whole novel and
a physical force within the
novel, these features are either mappable or not mappable.
With regards to the above argument the metaphor can be regarded
as both weak and
strong. If the metaphor is taken a purely descriptive feature
with the function of creating an
atmosphere and detailed rendering of the world the implications
of the metaphor are small (Black
440). There is no need to dwell on them other than grasping the
nature of the noise the bird
makes. Yet when it is considered as a thematic trope it is a
strong metaphor. Its strength lies
particularly in the manner in which it invites the reader to
reconsider the metaphor-theme
(conceptual metaphor) on which is based, the world as mechanism,
in terms of the tension
between the metaphoric and literal features.
The metaphor connotes the mechanical features of the clock and
this is important. If the
sound of the bird would be likened to the sound of an alarm
clock ringing, it would both
eliminate the mechanics of the clock and the affordance of
manipulation. Although it would still
have a clock as a source it would not hark back to the WORLD IS
MECHANISM conceptual
metaphor and it would arguably become a weak metaphor.
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Task 4. Texts to be used: Black (1977), Forceville (1996: H6)
and Maalej (2001). Find two static (non-moving) representations
that, according to Forcevilles definition, contain a phenomenon
that must/can be construed as a pictorial metaphor. Analyse these,
using the three criteria deemed crucial by Forceville (1996: 108).
To which of the subtypes do your two examples belong? Or do they
show characteristics of more than one subtype? Argue for the
validity of your answer. What role, if any, is played by genre?
Give, in the spirit of Maalej (2001), a real or invented example of
a (sub)cultural situation or context in which the interpretation
deviates from the one you originally provided. How does the new
situation affect the analysis?
http://www.creativeadawards.com/makes-your-horses-purr/
The first representation is an advertisement for motor oil.
Let's start off with identifying the two
terms of the metaphor. The two terms of the conceptual metaphor
can be identified as a horse and
a cat, of which the horse is the target and the cat is the
source. How does one know? Well there
are several steps to take, before one can make this conclusion.
Pictorially there is something not
right with a horse playing with a ball of yarn, which is
something we simply do not associate with
horses, it is however a well-known cultural connotation
associated with the concept cat.
Moreover in order to conclusively infer that the horse is not a
literal horse but rather a metonymy
for an engine it can be argued that the linguistic pay-off as
well as the advertised product are
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required to be present within the same representation. This also
answers the question how the
target and the source are differentiated, namely by the
pictorial and verbal context. The car
engine is signified by a horse, as in colloquial car talk the
engine's power is expressed in the
number of break-horse-power (bhp) and we know this by the
anchoring of the verbal text as well
as the actual product being advertised in the bottom-righthand-
corner (Forceville Pictorial
Metaphor 117).
Thus more specifically the metaphor can be rendered as ENGINE IS
HORSE
BEHAVING LIKE A CAT. The most important feature that is
projected from the source domain
upon the target domain is the ability to purr. It is commonly
accepted that when a cat purrs it is
pleased. As a horse is not known to purr, act of purring is
projected upon the horse and in
extension upon the engine. Once the metonymy is recognised the
purring makes more
conclusively sense. Whilst purring is not something we directly
associate with engines, they do
produce sounds that, when running smoothly, should be
uninterrupted, quiet, and monotonous,
perhaps not unlike a cat that purrs. Connotatively a purring cat
is perceived as a happy cat and
this is projected upon the engine.
With regards to the subtype of the pictorial metaphor the
advertisement, this represents a
metaphor with two pictorially present terms (MP2), in which both
subjects are present pictorially
or metonymically associated with the depiction (Forceville,
Pictorial Metaphor 121). However
there is one issue that remains. Because the ball of yarn only
metonymically refers to cat and the
horse ultimately metonymically refers to car engine it is the
action of the cat that is crucial for the
metaphor. Contextual factors are very important here. Going from
ball of yarn to cat and then
from purring cat to purring horse (engine) will be a great leap
without the verbal context and
advertisement's product that defines the genre for us. Also it
does not show a hybrid single entity
that characterises most MP2s (Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor
138).
Apart from selling a product, what the ad does taken as a whole,
context, verbal context
and pictorial context; it transforms a verbal simile to a
metaphor. Conventionally we would say
that your engine purrs like a cat, yet the pay-off reads makes
your horses purr. The former is
a simile and the latter a metaphor. The pictorial metaphor is
its equivalent, partly because the
horse metonymically suggests engine, partly because of the
absence of the cat. Perhaps assigning
this advertisement to a subtype is difficult. The metaphorical
aspects are separately depicted, but
as the metaphor ultimately represents an action rather than an
action that is mapped from source
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to target, the simile horse is like cat is untenable. Since both
elements are present pictorially a
MP2 comes to mind, but Charles Forceville describes this type of
metaphor as a hybrid metaphor,
which has the general characteristic of having a single gestalt
(Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor
163). There is no sign of single gestalt, the two elements
remain separated, and so the integrated
metaphor is not applicable either. Arguably in transforming a
simile to a metaphor, the
advertisement problematises categorisation, at least within the
categories Forceville has
delineated.
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http://www.creativeadawards.com/dirty-bomb/
Another example pertains to an advertisement commissioned by
Unicef in a campaign to create
awareness for the problem of polluted drinking water and the
deaths of children as a
consequence. It is an example of an integrated metaphor, a type
of MP2 in which a unified
object or gestalt is represented in its entirety in such a
manner that it resembles another object or
gestalt even without contextual clues (Forceville, Metaphor in
Pictures 468). The pictorial
element is water frozen in the action of a splash. To determine
the two aspects of the metaphor it
is important to recognise the shape of the splash. Although it
is not completely dissimilar to a
normal splash it has the shape of the iconic mushroom cloud
associated with an atomic
detonation. I propose that the metaphor found here is WATER IS
ATOMIC BOMB. The verbal
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anchorage offers the solution to which element is the primary
subject and which the secondary
subject. As this advertisement is verbally construed as a
campaign against the pollution of
drinking water and especially against the deaths that the
polluted drinking water causes among
the world's population of children.
Most if not all of the features that can be projected from the
atomic bomb are related to
death. However death by atomic bomb has a number of aspects.
Historically it had caused a large
number of deaths in an instant, yet the number of deaths related
to radiation illness is possibly
even greater. These two aspects are projected from the secondary
subject to the primary subject:
scale and accumulation. Pollution is often regarded as a process
of accumulation and the damage
it causes, is often described as slow violence. Despite the
slowness in which pollution
accumulates the consequences are widespread and severe, thus
describing drinking water
metaphorically as an atomic bomb bypasses the fact that
pollution often goes unnoticed and the
fact that the consequences for the affected population are for
them often unavoidable, as water is
a basic need for human life.
It should be noted that both examples are targeted at a Western
audience. It is conceivable
that in non-Western cultures the power of engines are not
expressed in terms of horse power or
even that balls of yarn and playing cats are not a common
knowledge. Arguably even in the
context of the Western world, the first advertisement benefits
hugely from the verbal pay-off, but
even when makes your horses purr appears in the context of
Mongolia, for example, their
particular relationship with horses could render the
relationship horses and cars antonymic rather
metonymic. Similarly as the water in the second advertisement is
represented as crystal clear,
rather than polluted, it is of the utmost importance that the
mushroom cloud should be recognised
as such. While the mushroom cloud is iconic in our visual
culture, the people strongly affected by
polluted drinking water, as is the case in the communities
living in approximate distance of the
Ganges, its pollution is inconceivable because of the holy
aspects of the Ganges. It is literally
impossible for the Ganges to be polluted for it is a divine
entity. Were this advertisement part of a
campaign targeted at communities surrounding the Ganges, it
would very well be possible that
the mushroom cloud is not recognised or that it is even thought
of as sacrilege.
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Literature Barthes, Roland. Rhetoric of the Image. The
Responsibility of Forms. Ed. Roland Barthes.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. 21-40.
Black, Max. More about Metaphor. Dialectica 31.3-4 (1977).
431-456.
Forceville, Charles. Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London:
Routledge, 1996.
--- Metaphor in Pictures and Multimodal Representations. The
Cambridge Handbook of
Metaphor and Thought. Ed. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. Cambridge: CUP,
2008. 462-482.
Murakami, Haruki. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Trans. Jay Rubin.
New York: Vintage
International, 1998.
Paluczewska, Hanna. Aspects of Metaphor in Physics: Examples and
Case Studies. Tubingen:
Niemeyer, 1999.
Unsworth, Len, and Chris Clrigh. Multimodality and Reading: The
Construction of Meaning
through Image-text Interaction. The Routledge Handbook of
Multimodal Analysis. Eds. Carey
Jewitt. London: Routledge, 2009. 151-163.