Brand Image Construction of Food Corporate: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Multimodal Metaphor in English Video Advertising during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The past two years has witnessed the wide spread of COVID-19 which has triggered conspicuous changes in business around the world. As an important marketing communication between the sellers and the buyers, advertising has also been affected by the pandemic. Multimodal metaphor in advertising has attracted interest of many researchers as more modes of expressions appear in advertising. In this study, the author attempts to investigate multimodal metaphor in English video advertising during the COVID-19 pandemic, endeavoring to explore the functions of multimodal metaphor in constructing brand image of food corporates within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor and Multimodal Metaphor. By examining the construction process of multimodal metaphors, the interactions of multimodal metaphor and metonymy, the image schema and the intended massage in these advertisements, several findings are suggested. Firstly, multimodal metaphor is used to promote product or service by highlighting their attributes of evading potential risks of the pandemic. Secondly, the mainly used modes in these advertisings to construct meaning are visual and aural. The referring process of product/service is realized by multimodal metonymies; the transferring process of information from the advertiser to the audience is realized by image schemas. Thirdly, the brand images are constructed mainly by soft attributes. The company image and user image are built explicitly, while the product/service image is built implicitly .