The Institute of English Studies UW organizes an open lecture titled “Creative pictorial and multimodal metaphor in print advertising and cartoons”  The event will take place on 16^th October.

The lecture will be delivered by Professor Charles Forceville from the University of Amsterdam, Dept. of Media Studies.

Metaphor, according to Lakoff and Johnson, is “primarily a matter of thought and action, and only derivatively a matter of language”. If this is correct, then metaphor should occur in other modes than only the visual mode. And that, indeed, turns out to be the case. Advertising is a genre that, for a variety of reasons, is a genre that is very rich in metaphors. Forceville offers a categorization in four main types of pictorial/verbo-pictorial metaphors in print advertising and billboards.

There is, however, at least one other genre of static word & image texts that is very rich in metaphors: political cartoons. While pictorial and multimodal metaphors by and large “behave” in the same way in the advertising and cartoon genres, there are also interesting differences.

In this presentation, examples from both genres will be shown and discussed, based on Forceville and Bounegru and Forceville. Methodological issued will be addressed as well as avenues for further research.

The lecture will be held on 16th October from 12.00-14.00, in the Institute of English Studies, room 335 at Hoża 69 Street.