4.1  metaphorical expressions of potential dangers in the main figures 7

4.1.1  The metaphorical warnings in clothes 7

4.1.2  The metaphorical warnings in colors 9

4.2  metaphorical expressions of smoking as a narrative process 12

4.2.1  The metaphorical expression of the key plot 12

4.2.3  The metaphorical warnings of music 16

Conclusion 20

Acknowledgements 22

Bibliography 23

1. Introduction

1.1 Research topic

The rapid development of modern science and technology has brought about the appearance of new ways of entertainment, including TV, films and advertisements, etc, The multimodal study has been advanced into a new period of progress. However, in the whole research field of multimodality, the multimodal warnings, compared to other types of text, mainly focus on a mono-modal level, which is disproportionate to its important role—a tool for social management.  

Taking all these factors into consideration, the researcher will select three short video clips for study and then choose one to have detailed discussions. And that video is about the harm of smoking. With an analysis of the metaphorical expressions of warnings in the context of video, this study will explore how the video clip conveys warnings and persuasions through modes like color, clothes, relevant plots and music to the mass of smokers more effectively. Thus, the topic of this research is to discuss how the warning message in one specific video clip is conveyed—smoking is harmful to people’s health from a metaphorical angle.

1.2 Rationale for this study 

Warning refers to " disclosure of the speaker about the adverse or harmful events or status in the future to the hearer, and this kind of information disclosure is made when the both sides cannot clearly be sure about whether the danger will take place" (Searle,1969:67). It appears in every corner of our lives, and reminds us of the potential dangers, making us behave ourselves so as not to cause more loss and damage. Usually, the warnings we see are always in the form of words or pictures, such as the prohibitive warnings, including "No parking here" "No smoking", as well as other mild and kind warnings, like "For the happiness of your family, please don't drive after drinking" or " One small step backwards, a giant leap for the civilization" and other warnings in the form of pictures.

Along with the rapid development of modern society, people are no longer satisfied with the expression in the single style of words, and this is the reason why multimodal researches have been put forward. However, compared to those of other text (film, TV, etc.), study of warnings is still confined in the field of mono-modal text expression and greatly lags behind, which is very unsuitable to the important part played by warnings. 

The current widely spread mono-modal warnings have a lot of disadvantages, of which the most obvious one is the vocabulary, essentially similar to the "complex code" raised by B.Bernstein (1971：21-23), is too abstract for the general audience who rely on the "simple code" as their mainstream communication way to accept and pay enough attention to, therefore, under such circumstances, the multimodal warnings arise at its historic moment, conveying information in the form of images, sound, or the video. 论文网

With the help of relevant theories of warnings and metaphor, this paper will make a specific analysis about the way how the warning message is expressed to the target audience in multimodal context.