Multimodal Metaphor Construction and Cognitive Analysis in Educational Cartoons

Since Lakoff and Johnson proposed their far-reaching theory of conceptual metaphor, people's interpretation of metaphor has changed from a rhetorical approach to a way of thinking. In recent years, multimodal metaphors have gradually received attention from scholars at home and abroad, and have been applied to different forms of media research such as advertisements, comics, gestures, and films, thus greatly contributing to the advancement of multimodal metaphor theory. Multimodal metaphors provide a new perspective for the construction and understanding of metaphorical meaning. This study draws on 100 educational cartoons published by China News Cartoon Network from 2020-2021. Firstly, multimodal metaphors in the 100 educational cartoons published on China News Cartoon Network are classified into four categories according to Forceville's cognitive-linguistic theoretical framework, and the integration network in the cartoons is classified into four categories from the perspective of conceptual integration. This study analyses multimodal metaphors from both social and cognitive perspectives and explores the cognitive basis of comic metaphors from both formal and meaningful perspectives.