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FORCEVILLE, C (1994) Pictorial Metaphor in Advertisements (Artigo)
FORCEVILLE, C (1994) Pictorial Metaphor in Advertisements (Artigo)
To cite this article: Charles Forceville (1994) Pictorial Metaphor in Advertisements, Metaphor and
Symbolic Activity, 9:1, 1-29, DOI: 10.1207/s15327868ms0901_1
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METAPHOR AND SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY Y ( I ) . 1-79
Copyright O 1994. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Inc.
Metaphor has been first and foremost studied in its verbal variants. As Lakoff
and Johnson (1980) claimed, however, "metaphor is primarily a matter of
thought and only derivatively a matter of language" (p. 153). Presuming this
idea to be correct. this article makes an exploratory contribution to the study
of a different type of metaphor, namely, pictorial metaphor. With reference to
Black's (1962, 1979) interaction theory, several pictorial metaphors in adver-
tisements are considered with the following questions in mind: What are the
two terms of the metaphor and how d o we know? Which of the two terms is
the ("literal") A-term and which is the ("figurative") B-term? And what can be
said about the transfer of properties from B to A? Contextual factors of various
kinds help to answer these questions. A tentative subdivision is made into
metaphors with one pictorially present term and metaphors with two pictorially
present terms.
Because the study of metaphor is rooted in literary criticism and was subse-
quently taken up by philosophers and students of language, it is hardly
surprising that the overwhelming majority of articles and books on the
subject have concentrated on verbal metaphor. As early as 1936, however,
Richards (193611965) noted that "fundamentally [metaphor] is a borrowing
between and intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts.
Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of
language derive therefrom" (p. 94). More recently, this insight was reiterated
by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), who stated that "metaphor is primarily a
matter of thought and only derivatively a matter of language" (p. 153). If
these authors are right, as I think they are, this implies that it is justified and
imperative also to research metaphor in its nonverbal and partly verbal
manifestations.
In this article, my concern is with pictorial metaphor. Interesting work in
Requests for reprints should be sent to Charles Forceville. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
Faculty of Arts. P.O. Box 7161, 1007 MC Amsterdam, Netherlands.
2 FORCEVILLE
this area has been done by the psychologist John Kennedy. Kennedy (1982)
argued in favor of adopting the concept of metaphor in pictures by present-
ing visual counterparts to a number of figures of speech known from rhetoric,
as presented under the heading "technical terms" in Fowler (1926, p. 597).
Sixteen devices, including allegory, anti-climax, catachresis, clicht, and meto-
nymy, are listed by Kennedy and interpreted in terms of Richards's well-
known tenor-vehicle distinction (Richards, 193611965, p. 96). This
distinction, however, is applied in a loose and unconvincing way. There is a
plausible reason for this loose application, because Kennedy's use of the term
metaphor is quite different from that of Richards. Whereas Kennedy takes
metaphor to be an all-inclusive term, somewhat synonymous withJigure of
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speech or trope, Richards uses the term in the far more restricted sense in
which it is commonly used today. Thus, by metaphor, Kennedy either means
something different from Richards or he judges, mistakenly, that the tenor-
vehicle distinction, which Richards himself only applies to metapha in its
restricted sense, can without adaptation be transferred to other tropes. As a
result, Richards's vocabulary is too generally and, hence, imprecisely em-
ployed by Kennedy.
To avoid confusion, let me stress that I consider Kennedy's examples on
the whole to be convincing; it is only his terminology that I find unsatisfac-
tory. Therefore, although I concur with Kennedy (1982) that figures of
representation can "include both language and depiction" (p. 593), and
particularly sympathize with his emphasis on the importance of context in
pictorial metaphors, I think the study of this branch of metaphors would
benefit from a more systematic approach and a stricter application of termi-
nology than the one he provides.
Hence, my intention in this article is to make an exploratory contribu-
tion to a theory providing the mechanisms underlying pictorial metaphor
and to contribute to the development of a vocabulary enabling us to dis-
cuss this type of metaphor. Like Kennedy, I borrow my concepts and ter-
minology from studies in the domain in which metaphor has been most
extensively investigated: language. I do not, however, cast my net as wide
as he does and discuss metaphor in only its narrow sense of that pictorial
element in a picture that is represented in such a way that a viewer of the
picture is forced to understand or experience that element in terms of an-
other element (whether or not visibly present in the picture itself), without
there being a pre-existent or conventional connection between these two
elements. More specifically, I try to formulate answers to the following
questions: What are the two terms of the metaphor and how do we know?
Which of the two terms is the ("literal") A-term and which is the ("figura-
tive") B-term? And what can be said about the transfer of properties from
B to A?
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 3
ASSUMPTIONS
1. Throughout this article, the word metaphor must be taken in the spirit
of Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) description: "The essence of metaphor is
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of directionality. As Miller puts it: "As soon as we consider how authors use
analogies . . . we find that the context imposes a direction, that it is no longer
possible to rearrange freely the order of the terms" (Miller, 1979, p. 215). In
other words, the metaphorical transfer is primarily unidirectional.
5. Not the word but the statement is "the sole contextual milieu within
which the transposition of meaning takes place" (Ricoeur, 197511978, p.
65).
MATERIALS
The pictorial material used for the analyses consists of a number of French,
Dutch, and British advertisements1(reproduced here in black and white). I
opted for advertisements because they usually have a clear-cut purpose, and
this has proved essential to a first exploration of the workings of pictorial
metaphor. My earlier research (Forceville, 1988) revealed that the analysis of
pictorial metaphors in a number of surrealist works of art encounters great
problems in the phase of their interpretation. Unequivocal verbalizations of
the metaphors contained in these artistic representations proved difficult to
realize. This is partly due to the subversive character of surrealist art and is
probably also a consequence of the more general fact that art has no unam-
biguously identifiable purpose. This matter of purpose poses no problem in
the study of advertisements. As Rossiter and Percy (1987, p. 3) stated, "Ad-
vertising and promotion are increasingly being viewed by marketing manag-
ers as highly interrelated yet distinctly specialized means of informing
customers about products and services and persuading them to buy" [italics
added]. This knowledge considerably facilitates the identification and inter-
pretation of signs (and, hence, of metaphors) in advertisements. I am encour-
aged by Barthes, who gives the same reason for focusing on advertisements
in developing his theories:
'See Appendix for the sources of the advertisements presented in this article.
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 5
Three questions immediately arise. First, how do we know that the second
term of the metaphor is tie and not something else? After all, the tie is not
even visible. This becomes clear when we consider the next, reconstructed
picture (Figure 2). Even with the help of the text ("Regardez mes chaus-
sures!"-"Look at my shoes!"), we would not be able to identify the second
term of the metaphor. Indeed, in this picture we cannot even say that what
we have is a metaphor, because there is no (suggestion of a) second term.
Thus, it is thanks to the pictorial context that we can establish which is the
(absent) secondary subject (SS) of the metaphor. Black's creativity theory is
entirely applicable here: The similarity between the two terms is not pre-
existent but-with the aid of this specific context-is created.
A second question is, How do we know the metaphor is "SHOE IS TIE"
rather than "TIE IS SHOE"? This question pertains to the order of the
metaphor's two terms: What is the metaphor's literal A-term, the primary
subject (PS), and what is its figurative B-term, the SS? At first sight, this
problem may seem characteristic of pictorial metaphors, because the ele-
ments in pictures are not linearly perceived. It is this linearity that is such a
great help in the distribution of PS and SS in the case of verbal metaphors.
In the type of verbal metaphors that theorists usually cite, the examples are
often one-line "A IS B" metaphors, in which the first term is invariably the
PS and the second the SS. This might lead us to think that all verbal meta-
phors feature this neat, linear order, with its simple distribution of PS and SS.
This, however, is not always the case. Brooke-Rose (1958, pp. 117- 118), after
remarking that "most equations with the copula put the proper term before
the metaphor" (i.e., metaphoric B-term), gave the following counterexample
from Spenser's Amoretti: "That ship, that tree, and that same beast am I"
(Brooke-Rose, 1958, p. 118). Of course the form of the verb to be employed
here is an additional clue-absent in pictorial metaphors-as to the order of
the terms.
Returning to our pictorial metaphor, we realize that, in the absence of the
information that usually suffices to assess the order of the terms in verbal
metaphor (linearity and grammatical clues), the key device in determining
this order in its pictorial counterpart has to be a different one, namely,
context. Here, context has to be taken in a wider sense than previously
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 7
issues raised, this one is potentially the most controversial. Our example,
however, seems rather clear-cut. Understanding the advertisement to hint
that Clerget shoes are so beautiful that they should be worn as an ornamental
rather than as a functional piece of clothing, I propose the property trans-
ferred can be formulated as "nonfunctional beauty."
Similar reasoning can be applied to Figure 3. As in Figure 1, there is
something odd in this advertisement. Normally, one would expect corn to be
found in a can or a jar, whereas the usual (literal) container for wine is a
wineglass. The sweet corn in the wineglass, then, is a deviation from what is
expected (i.e., fromconvention, from literal use). In the resultingmetaphor, the
second term of the metaphor is wine, which we know because of the pictorial
context (the glass itself and the typical position of the hand holding the
At this stage, it seems useful to introduce some labels that bear on the verbal
component in the advertisements under consideration, and that will facilitate
our discussions of them. Barthes provided some very important and relevant
The text directs the reader among various signifieds of the image, causes him
to avoid some and to accept others; through an often subtle dispatching, it
teleguides him toward a meaning selected in advance. In all these cases of
anchoring, language obviously has a function of elucidation, but such elucida-
tion is selective; it is a matter of a metalanguage applied not to the whole of the
iconic message but only to certain of its signs. (Barthes, 196411986, p. 29)
is "what remains in the image when we (mentally) erase the signs of connota-
tion" (p. 3 1). This is the image in its innocent state, hypothetically seen before
it is charged with the meanings of connotations. Barthes realized that the
connoted and denoted aspects of the image cannot be separated: "we never-
at least never in advertising-encounter a literal image in the pure state" (p.
31). The distinction between the literal message and the symbolic message is
merely operational: It corresponds to the twofold division into signifier and
signified in the worldlverbal sign.
We return now to Figures 1 and 3 and consider how Barthes's concepts
shed more light on the matter of context. We saw earlier how the pictorial
context unambiguously suggested the absent term but does not give decisive
clues as to the order of the terms. At first, we might think it is merely because
they are the visible terms that we understand the sweet corn as wine and the
shoe as tie, instead of the other way around. However, this criterion of plus
or minus visibility is not sufficient for the distribution of PS and SS, as is
convincingly shown by Figure 10. In this advertisement, we see the unex-
pected life buoys instead of the expected tires. We know tires is the other term
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of the metaphor because of the relevant pictorial context of the car. The order
of the terms is inferred from the text, "Dunlop tires" (the advertisement is for
tires, not for life buoys), so that the verbalization of the metaphor is "TIRES
ARE LIFEBUOYS. "The property projected from SS upon PS is "providing
safety." Unlike the previous examples, however, it is here the B-term of the
metaphor instead of the A-term is pictorially rendered. This case proves that
visibility of a term does not automatically lead to its being accorded PS
status.
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 13
SCHEME
Figure PS SS
- Projected Property(ies)
1 Shoe Tie Designed for aesthetic, not
functional, purposes
3 Sweet corn Wine Refinement," "preciousness,"
"having a delicate taste,"
"deserving respectful treat-
ment
4 Machines Chess pieces Internal cooperation ensuring
best results
5 Tube Cushion Providing rest (for the feet)
6 Gas nozzle Gun Being potentially lethal
7 Car Witch Possessing magic powerslpro-
viding rapid transport
8 Ticket Deck chair Holiday 1exoticness
14 FORCEVILLE
Some general remarks must be made. First, although the description of the
properties may sound strained, this unnaturalness merely results from having
to "translate" something into words that emerges from looking at the pic-
tures. Second, it is clear that the description of the property or properties at
stake often is not the only possible one. Other formulations are conceivable,
and it is possible that there are more properties than mentioned here that can
be sensibly projected from B to A. In Barthes's terminology, I have been
looking for the connoted message(s) of the SS that are applicable to the PS.
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As Barthes admitted, "the number of readings of the same lexia (of the same
image) varies according to individuals" (p. 35). What matters is that "varia-
tion in readings is not anarchic, it depends on the different kinds of knowl-
edge invested in the image (practical, national, cultural, aesthetic
knowledge), and these kinds of knowledge can be classified, can join a typol-
ogy" (Barthes, 196411986, p. 35). Although Barthes is talking about the
image as a whole, the same holds true for the one element of the picture I am
talking about-the SS. Because only one element is concerned, the potential
readings are probably even more restricted than in the case of an entire
image.
The metaphors previously considered give rise to fairly satisfactory read-
ings from a theoretical point of view. I have established that, in all but one,
the pictorially present term of the metaphor is the PS; that the PS is, or refers
to, the product advertised; that the absent term is unambiguously suggested
by the pictorial context; that if the pictorial context should leave us in doubt
as to which term is the PS and which is the SS, we need only one element from
the next layer of context (the anchoring text) to resolve this doubt, namely,
a realization of what the product of the ad is; and finally that there is a
projection of nameable properties from the implicative complex of the SS
upon the PS.
heading ("We extract energy from the earth as if it were inexhaustible") and
the awareness that the authority which, in 1976, commissioned this warning
advertisement was the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, suggest not only
that earth is the PS of the metaphor, but also supplies the feature transferred
from the SS candle to the PS earth: "providing an exhaustible amount of
energy."
Figure 12 provides another clear example. Both terms are depicted (the
bricks in their entirety, and the earphones only partially) in the electrical cord
and in the part of the earphones that goes over the man's head. The ear-
phones represent the advertised product and thus occupy the PS position,
leaving the SS position for the bricks. The metaphor, then, is "EARPHONES
ARE BRICKS. The headline, which reads, "Most earphones have one big
"
Previously, I made a distinction between MPls and MP2s, but to what extent
is this a clear-cut division? Let us look once more at Figures 1,3, and 10 and
test whether these MPls could be reverbalized as MP2s, that is, as metaphors
featuring (parts of) both terms. I argue that for "SHOE IS TIE" we have to
take recourse to a strained rendering like "MAN'S TORSO WITH SHOE IS
MAN'S TORSO WITH TIE"; that "SWEET CORN IS WINE" could be
rephrased as "JAR OF SWEET CORN IS GLASS OF WINE"; and that
"TIRES ARE LIFE BUOYS" could be transformed into "WHEELS ARE
LIFE BUOYS. " Because this would mean that now the "man's torso with
shoe," the "jar of sweet corn," and the "wheel" are (partially) present, we
would have to say that the metaphors belong in the MP2 category.
I previously argued that the verbalizations employed in this article are no
more than approximations to render into language what is presented pictori-
ally and that other formulations are therefore conceivable. Here, however,
we are talking about something else than minor variations in the wording
chosen to render the pictorial metaphors in language. The verbalizations
juxtaposed reflect different ways of experiencing the metaphors under consid-
eration. The question is, What belongs to the metaphor, and what belongs to
its context? The question whether one of the pairs previously quoted is a
more adequate verbalization than the other is therefore by no means a trivial
one. If the answer is negative, the entire distinction between MPls and MP2s
is irrelevant, but if we believe that one verbalization is a more appropriate
characterization of what we "see" than another, the distinction holds, and
this tells us something about the ways we channel our perceptions into
categories and concepts.
I cannot adduce decisive evidence, but I argue that in all three cases the
alternatives suggested seem to miss the point of the metaphor. What matters
in the advertisements is the shoe rather than something like "man's torso
with shoe" (it is also significant that there is no simple word or expression to
describe this phenomenon; apparently it does not exist in our culture as a
concept that requires a separate word); the (quality of the) sweet corn rather
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 19
than the way it is packaged; the tire rather than the wheel (the advertiser
advertises tires, not wheels). Therefore, it appears to make sense to stick to
the original verbalizations.
When re-examining the metaphors that were classified as MP2s, we con-
front the fact that these, too, are technically open to conversion, that is,
into MPls. Therefore, the MP2 "EARTH IS CANDLE" could also be
rendered as "UPPER PART OF EARTH IS UPPER PART OF CAN-
DLE," and "EARPHONES ARE BRICKS" as "EAR-COVERING
PARTS OF EARPHONES ARE BRICKS." In the case of the two Indian
headdress advertisements, we might opt for the rephrasings "TICKET IS
UPPER PART OF INDIAN HEADDRESS" and "YELLOW PAGES
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categories can be incorporated into the other. The validity of this hypothesis
is taken for granted in the remainder of the argument.
the metaphor must be high heel is forcefully suggested by the only contextual
pictorial element in the advertisement: the rest of the shoe. Although the key
word Bordeaux in the anchoring text is sufficient to establish that wine is the
product advertised, and hence to assess what is the PS of the metaphor, the
resulting "GLASS OF WINE IS HIGH HEEL" does not make sense until we
have consulted the anchoring text in its entirety: "Marchez aux Bordeaux"
and "La couleur du bon gofit." The second slogan straightforwardly trans-
lates as "the color of good taste," and the first slogan is an exhortation that
could be rendered as "run on Bordeaux wines!", a jocular parallel to, say, a
car running on gas. The text corroborates that the wine refers to the subject
of the advertisement (Bordeaux) and explains the presence of the shoe (mar-
chez). Are there any features projected from SS upon PS here? We could say
that it is the connotation "eleganceu-suggested by the verbal "bon gofit"-
of the "high heel" that is to be projected upon the glass of wine, but if we can
talk about feature transfer in this case, this transfer is not of the straightfor-
ward kind we saw in most of the earlier examples. What seems to be occur-
ring here is the establishment of a rather loose associative chain in which
verbal and pictorial elements are cleverly combined. In any case, the anchor-
ing text is absolutely indispensable to make sense of the pictorial metaphor.
--- - - - - --
1 MAFCHEZ
AUX BORDEAUX.
Consider Figure 16. A tennis player who is recognizably Bjorn Borg holds
an object in his hand that is simultaneously a tennis racket and a fishing net.
Both terms are identified not only by the formal similarities the hybrid object
shares with both tennis racket and fishing net-handle, ending in a more or
less round frame, provided with a mazed structure-but also by the presence
of contextual features belonging to the realms of tennis (Borg, tennis ball,
lines of court) and fishing (fish), respectively. As none of the terms is, or
(directlyrefers to, the product advertised ("Ahoy Hall"), the rule that product
equals PS does not apply. The pictorial context establishes the dominance of
the realm of tennis so that we would be inclined to opt for "TENNIS
RA CKET IS FISHING NET. "
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But let us now take into account the next layer of context, the anchoring
text. The top caption can be translated as "That's only possible in Ahoy,"
Ahoy being a huge hall in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where all kinds of
big events-exhibitions, concerts, shows, and sporting matches-take place.
'The translation of the bottom text is, "Ahoy . . . that's top-class sport, that's
fishing, that's all in one." The terms of the pictorial metaphor-if that is
what it is-do recur in the words top-class sport andjishing. It is interesting
that our assessment of the pictorial dominance of the tennis context, and
possible in Ahoy."
In neither of the two previously discussed cases can we-as in the other
metaphors-formulate a clear-cut property that is transferred from B to A.
In Black's scheme, the projection of elements from the implicative complex
of B upon A is an essential aspect of verbal metaphor. The same holds true
for pictorial metaphor, indeed it is a defining characteristic of metaphor in
general. The conclusion would then have to be that Figures 15 and 16 should
not be labeled metaphors. These advertisements therefore constitute a warn-
ing that a presentation of one object in terms of another should not automati-
cally be processed as a metaphor. Perhaps the description "(verbo-) visual
pun" is more appropriate. A clear-cut division, however, is still difficult to
make. More research will have to be done to distinguish pictorial metaphors
from (verbo-) visual puns and other pictorial tropes.
DISCUSSION
What other observations can be made when we survey this small corpus of
pictorial advertisement metaphors? First, a degree of physical similarity be-
tween PS and SS is often involved. It must be realized, however, that even this
similarity can only to a limited extent be said to be "preexistent." In several
instances, the PSs have been bent, folded, cut, or modified by other tech-
niques in order to create (physical) similarity with the SS. But physical
resemblance is by no means a necessary condition for pictorial metaphors.
For example, there seems to be very little intrinsic physical similarity between
machines and chess pieces (Figure 4) or between a car and a witch (Figure 7).
Therefore, when intrinsic physical similarity is largely or entirely absent,
identification of the terms, of their order, and of the projected feature(s)
depends completely on contextual features.
Second, the role the pictorial metaphors play in the advertisements in
which they appear varies widely. In some cases there is a fairly far-fetched
relation between the metaphor and the message conveyed by the advertise-
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 23
which the anchoring function of the text is not very strong, that is, in which
the textual message reinforces rather than directs or curbs the iconic message,
the pictorial metaphor comes close to being able to stand on its own. Al-
though this would have to be corroborated by more extensive research in-
volving experiments with unprejudiced viewers, I suspect that cases such as
Figures 1 and 3 constitute advertisements that could be understood even
without the anchoring text. Imagine Figures 1 and 3 without any text and
thus without the name of the product. There would appear to be two poten-
tial clues left to establish the order of the terms. In the first place, as we saw,
in many MPls the present term is, or refers to, the product advertised and
hence constitutes the PS. However, as clearly shown in Figure 10, where it is
the absent term that refers to the product advertised-and hence is the
PS-this rule does not work in all cases. But we have a second potential clue.
In most cases, only one of the two possible variants "A IS B" and "B IS A"
makes any sense. In Figures 1 and 3, reversing the terms to "WINE IS
SWEET CORN" and "TIE IS SHOE" would in the present (advertisement)
context make it difficult to find properties that could be transferred from SS
to PS.
Let it be emphasized that the ability to sort out the order of the terms in
Figures 1 and 3 presupposes the realization that the metaphors under consid-
exation are part of an advertisement. After all, a particular pictorial meta-
phor may, when displayed in a pop-art collage rather than in an
aldvertisement, have to be processed with reversed terms. Imagine that we
encounter our metaphor "SHOE IS TIE" as an artistic collage in a series in
which the tie is substituted by a different "alien" object in each collage (e.g.,
a1 broomstick, a candle, a tube). The metaphors would in that case probably
be processed as "TIE IS BROOMSTICK," "TIE IS CANDLE," and "TIE
IS TUBE, " that is, with tie in the PS position.
After surveying the whole corpus of the pictorial metaphors investigated,
we can state that it is immediately (i.e., before consulting the text) clear to the
viewer what the two terms of the metaphor are. In fact, it is only because the
viewer recognizes the terms (whether simultaneously present or not) that they
24 FORCEVILLE
It seems plain enough that we can only recognize that an utterance is a meta-
phor if we know that it should not be taken literally; and this, of course,
requires familiarity with the literal meanings of at least some of the words and
phrases deployed in the utterance.
Novitz (1985, p. 101) proceeds: "Equally obvious is the fact that we cannot
understand or be appropriately affected by a metaphor unless we are ac-
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quainted with the literal meanings of the terms within it." For our purposes,
we would have to reformulate this last phrase as " . . . unless we are ac-
quainted with the way in which the terms are conventionally used." It must
be emphasized once more that, although pictures are certainly more "interna-
tional" than words, understanding the terms of a pictorial metaphor requires
knowledge of the cultural background in which it is embedded. In looking at
Figure 13, young children or people from a radically different culture might
be at a loss because they would be unfamiliar with the concept Indian or else
associate entirely inappropriate (i.e., inappropriate for understanding the
metaphor) connotations with it.
Finally, I briefly discuss two matters that, although important, have re-
ceived insufficient attention. I have talked about the language component in
the advertisements, primarily in its function of "anchoring" the image and
the pictorial metaphor contained in it. On close inspection, however, it
becomes clear that in a number of advertisementsthere is some sort of formal
resemblance between the pictorial metaphor contained in it and some part of
the anchoring text, usually the heading. We can witness this feature for
example in the Air France advertisements (Figures 8, 9, and 13). The recur-
ring slogan in these advertisements is "Air France Vacances, " with an obvi-
ous rhyming pattern. In my analyses, I have argued that in each of the three
advertisements it was the connotation "exoticness", 'choliday'7 from the
SS-whether deck chair, ski, or Indian headdress-that was projected upon
the PS ticket. I also claimed that the ticket metonymically referred to the
airline company issuing them: Air France. We can see now that the meta-
phorical relationship between ticket and its three SSs, in which the ticket is
physically represented in terms of something else, has a verbal parallel in the
slogan's phrasing. That is, the pictorial resemblance between ticket and deck
chair, ski and Indian headdress, respectively, is echoed in the verbal resem-
blance of "Air France Vacances." This phenomenon occurs often but unfor-
tunately not in our examples. One more example must suffice. In Figure 17,
which is an advertisement of a foundation promoting dental care, the word
zoetigheid ("sweetness") is placed above rottigheid ("rottenness," but also
PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN ADVERTISEMENTS 25
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"misery"), paralleling the liquorice above the rotten teeth. This observation
should serve as a reminder that the overall effect of an advertisement as a
whole can depend on considerably more than just the pictorial metaphor it
contains. On the basis of other advertisements (which are not discussed in
this article), the hypothesis might be hazarded that the more an advertise-
ment shows some sort of verbal parallelism to the pictorial metaphor it
contains, the weaker this pictorial metaphor tends to be. The idea is that the
makers of the advertisement are constrained by the formal requirements they
have to meet on the verbal level.
A second matter requiring thought is the distinction between pictorial
metaphor (the MP1 variant) and pictorial symbolism. Note that, here again,
the concept of context seems to be a key notion for distinguishing between
the two. It appears that a symbolic PS is far less context dependent than a
metaphorical PS when it comes to assessing the identity of the absent term.
26 FORCEVILLE
context is excluded, as it is the context that supplies the second term, whereas
MP2s in this respect need no context, because the pictorial metaphor yields
both terms. The division into MPls and MP2s may well reflect our ways of
conceptualizing and "cutting up" the visual world around us in meaningful
units-which, in turn, are reflected in language-and in this sense the divi-
sion into MPls and MP2s may have significant implications.
Experiments with unprejudiced viewers are recommended to test the hy-
potheses in this article. What is particularly interesting and eminently testable
is the relative importance of each of the contextual levels for a viewer asked
to identify and distribute the terms and to assess the properties transferred
from SS to PS. To investigate this, the pictorial metaphors must be presented
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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This article was written as part of Research Project No. 301-180-039, fi-
nanced by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
I thank Elrud Ibsch (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Lachlan Mackenzie
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Peter de Voogd (Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht),
John Kennedy (University of Toronto), and an anonymous reviewer of
Metaphor and Symbolic Activity for their valuable comments on an earlier
version of this article. Furthermore, I am indebted to Marieke Nieuwland
(Nederlandse Vereniging van Erkende Reclame Adviesbureaus, Amsterdam)
and Marie-Lou Florisson (Art Directors Club Nederland, Amsterdam) for
helping me procure the illustrations used in this article.
This manuscript was accepted November 1990.
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APPENDIX
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