Application of the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor and Metonymy to Iran's Cinema: A Case Study of "the Snow on the Pines"

Abstract

AbstractLinguistic representations of conceptual metaphors have been studied in numerous Iranian and non-Iranian researches; however, few studies have been devoted to visual representations of metaphor. In the present research, based on the theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy as well as multimodal theory of metaphor, the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of the film of "the Snow on the Pines" were studied. To this end, all the scenes and dialogues were analyzed and the metaphors and metonymies, which were directly or indirectly related to the main theme of the film, i.e., infidelity and love, were scrutinized. The findings showed that some metaphors like SADNESS AS DARKNESS and EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AS NUTRIENT were mainly mono-modal and only represented via the visual signs. On the other hand, some metaphors like LOVE AS JOURNEY, CONTROL/POWER AS UP, and LACK OF EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AS SNOW were multimodal and represented by a combination of visual and spoken or visual and written signs. Moreover, in the present film, the metonymies of EFFECT FOR CAUSE and POSSESSED FOR POSSESSOR played a significant role in forming metaphorical conceptualizations.Keywords: Cinema, Conceptual Metaphor, Multimodal Theory of Metaphor, Conceptual Metonymy, Visual Metaphor IntroductionBased on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), human beings understand abstract concepts rest on concrete concepts. In CMT, understanding one conceptual domain (mostly abstract) on the basis of another one (mostly concrete) is called metaphor. The abstract and concrete domains are called target and source, respectively. Forceville (2008) states that one should be able to detect conceptual metaphors in fixed and moving images, sounds, music, etc. if we accept that the foundation of human thought is metaphorical and language is considered as a representation of conceptual metaphors on the basis of CMT. In his view, analyzing non-linguistic representations of conceptual metaphors is a significant step to test most of the assumptions of CMT. Over the last three decades since Lakoff and Johnson (1980), most researches (e.g. Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff and Turner, 1989; Lakoff, 1993; Kövecses, 2000 and 2004; Golshaie et al., 2014; Moloodi, 2015; Seraj and Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, 2018; and Gaeminia et al., 2020) have been devoted to linguistic representations of conceptual metaphors. Interestingly enough, the study of visual and cinematic representations of metaphors has been also increased in the last 3 decades such as Forceville (2008), Forceville and Urios-Aparisi (2009), Kappelhoff and Müller (2011), Ortiz (2011), Huang (2016), Cienki (2018), Giannakou and De Fornel (2019), and Urios-Aparisi (2020). The only Iranian work allotted to the study of linguistic and non-linguistic representations of conceptual metaphors in Iranian Cinema is that of Mozafari (2019), who has investigated the conceptual metaphors in three of Asghar Farhadi's films entitled "A SEPERATION", "ABOUT ELLY", and "THE SALESMAN". In the present research, in addition to analyzing the conceptual metaphors of the mentioned Iranian film, its conceptual metonymies were studied for the first time. Materials and MethodsIn this research, the conceptual metaphors and metonymies of THE SNOW ON THE PINES, which were directly or indirectly related to the main theme of the film (infidelity and love), were scrutinized based on CMT and multimodal theory of metaphor. It is worth mentioning that only visual representations of metaphors were studied in this investigation; in other words, in the metaphor analysis part of the research, mono-modal visual metaphors, as well as multimodal visual-nonvisual metaphors were interpreted. Discussion of Results and ConclusionsThe findings showed that some metaphors like SADNESS AS DARKNESS, EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AS NUTRIENT, LIFE AS MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, and LACK OF LOVE AS DISTANCE were mono-modal and only represented by visual signs; on the other hand, some other metaphors like LOVE AS JOURNEY, LACK OF EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AS SNOW, and CONTROL/POWER AS UP were multimodal and represented by a combination of visual and spoken or visual and written signs. Another finding, which was in line with that of Coëgnarts (2019), was that the target domains of most metaphors were not represented clearly and directly and an analyst had to often determine the target domains based on conceptual metonymies. It meant that a metonymy that made metaphorical target domains obvious was first applied in most cases. In this film, the metonymies of EFFECT FOR CAUSE and POSSESSED FOR POSSESSOR went in this direction and introduced the target domains of LOVE and INFIDELITY.

Keywords

• cinema
• conceptual metaphor
• multimodal theory of metaphor
• conceptual metonymy
• visual metaphor