2022/01/01 by Lorena Pérez Hernández, David Huguet Varea · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Psychology · #Digital Communication and Language #Discourse Analysis in Language Studies #Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
paper · doi:10.25267/pragmalinguistica.2022.i30.15
openalex publication_date 2022/01/01 · openalex created_date 2023/01/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Primary metaphors are focal points for the present-day global advertising industry (Ortiz, 2010, 2011; Pérez-Hernández, 2013a, 2013b, 2014, 2019; Pérez-Sobrino, 2017). Nevertheless, there is little research on how they operate in relation to the nature of different products/services. This paper aims to provide (1) insights into the pervasiveness and functioning of primary metaphors in printed advertisements; and (2) a thorough analysis on their productivity in relation to the nature (material vs. immaterial) of the target product. The analysis of a corpus of 300 printed ads reveals that primary metaphors largely outnumber resemblance metaphors in the advertisements under scrutiny. It provides a detailed inventory of the source and target domains involved, and a description of the interaction patterns between primary metaphors and the product/service. The analysis of the data unveils a higher frequency of occurrence of primary metaphor mappings in relation to tangible products and elucidates reasons for this attested trend.