Metaphor pervades discourse and may govern how we think and act. But most studies only discuss its verbal varieties. This book examines metaphors drawing on combinations of visuals, language, gestures, sound, and music. Investigated texts include advertising, political cartoons, comics, film, songs, and oral communication. Where appropriate, the influence of genre and cultural factors is thematized.

In this article, based on a critical metaphor analysis, we identify and describe multimodal metaphors involving the human body and its conceptualizations in five auteur films of the 2010s. Studies on the human body in cinema have documented how it changes according to underlying ideologies. Our research focuses on the role of image schemas and metaphors as they embody meanings and sociocultural paradigms. Metaphors also frame how the body is conceptualized according to dominating ideological practices such as (a) commodification, (b) (...) the integration between artificial and organic, (c) dissatisfaction, (d) dynamics of beautification and idealization, and (e) politicization of the human body. We show how metaphors are creative tools to reframe meanings and representations of the body and how the body is a construct refashioned within the cinematic discourses of these films. (shrink)

This article focuses on how the human body and body parts such as the legs, abdomen, and torso are conceptualized in Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's films. The comparative analysis follows a qualitative methodology in which instances of the use of body parts are analyzed within their multimodal, sociocultural, and cinematic contexts. Through camera work and mise-en-scène, the actors' bodies and bodily functions are mapped onto complex cultural, social, and filmic targets within the narrative structure. Ultimately, the author shows how artistic (...) creativity is an activity whose purpose is a reembodiment of the emotion by visual and physical alteration. The new body is an environment onto which traditional views of the body based on folk theories are mapped, and body parts and functions are metonymically highlighted. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of prosody in conversational humor in the HBO series Sex and the City in an exploratory study. Specifically, we examine how pitch and pauses are part of the prosodic bundle that can be used to mark an utterance as humoristic. We find that the use of prosodic resources participates not only in the marking but also the creation of humor. In this regard, we view pitch variation and pauses as having communicative strategies and cognitive benefits. (...) They are part of the performance of humor and participate in the characterization of the personage. The authors suggest the existence of a repertoire of prosodic devices associated to humor and to a particular discourse. (shrink)