The problem of iconicity has been a recurring theme in linguistic inquiry into the nature of the linguistic sign. The property of iconicity includes not only the narrow category of sound symbolism, but also the broad categories of isomorphism and metaphor. This paper surveys recent research, and offers a classification of diagrammatic and metaphorical iconicity in language. Problems of structur...

Argument by multimodal metaphor usually plays a vital role of persuasion daily. In this paper, we analyse the argumentation of Lin Dan Commercial (LDC), an anti-corruption advertisement broadcasted on China Central Television, with conceptual metaphor theory and multimodal metaphor, in order to carry out an evaluation of the reasonableness and effectiveness of the argument. On practice, this re...

In this paper, we investigated the process of interestingness cognition in metaphor comprehension. We did this from the point of view that the interestingness of a metaphor (e.g., “life is like a gamble”) is related to its interpretative diversity. Two studies were conducted to assess this phenomenon: Study 1 (interpretation-production) and Study 2 (interpretationpresentation study). In Study 1...

The concept of social capital is widely used in the social sciences and has, to an extent, been applied to the lives and social networks of older lesbian, gay and bisexual (hereafter LGB) adults. Developing existing research, this paper argues that while not without its problems, the concept of social capital enriches our understanding of these networks, whilst simultaneously deconstructing the...

Metaphors are pervasive in both mass communication and interpersonal exchanges and can play an important role in persuasion. Metaphor serves multiple functions in persuasive communication, and the effect of metaphor on persuasion is potentially mediated by multiple psychological process mechanisms. Nevertheless, we propose that past and future research in this area can be organized or grouped i...