Visual metaphor vs

The following is a pre-print version of a chapter that subsequently appeared as: Forceville, Charles (2009). “The role of non-verbal sound and music in multimodal metaphor.” In: Charles Forceville & Eduardo Urios-Aparisi (eds), Multimodal Metaphor (pp. 383-400). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. If you want to quote from it verbatim, please check the published version. ChF, May 2015

The role of non-verbal sound and music in multimodal metaphor.1 Charles Forceville Abstract Any object or phenomenon that evokes clear-cut connotations for a community of users can function as the source domain of a metaphor, since these connotations qualify for mapping on the target domain. The activation of connotations, in turn, presupposes that the source domain is identified by means of one or more modes/modalities. While the linguistic mode, in its written or spoken varieties, has received ample attention, and the visual mode is also now theorized more broadly, non-verbal sound and music as (source)domain-cueing modes/modalities still await exploration. The present chapter demonstrates that sound and music can play a role in multimodal metaphor (1) by cuing a source domain; and/or (2) by triggering mappable connotations of a source domain signaled in another mode. Ten examples of multimodal metaphors involving sound and music from two different genres (advertising and film) are discussed. The chapter ends with hypotheses that invite further testing in theoretical and experimental research. Keywords: non-verbal sound, music, genre, advertising, film

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1.

Introduction

As defined in Forceville (2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b), multimodal metaphors are metaphors whose target and source domains are predominantly or entirely presented in different modes, these modes including minimally visuals, written language, spoken language, non-verbal sound, and music. According to this definition, the “verbo-pictorial metaphors” in Forceville (1996: 148-62) belong to this category, but so do verbal metaphors whose target and source are presented in written and spoken form respectively. The present chapter is an exploration of how non-verbal sound and music can play a role in the construal and interpretation of multimodal metaphor. Its aim is to chart parameters that need to be taken into account in a full-fledged theory of multimodal metaphor by discussing ten case-studies. Specifically, I will focus on (a) the role of sound and music to (help) identify the metaphor’s source domain; (b) the role of sound and music to (help) identify features that can be mapped from source to target. Five examples originate in advertising, with its clearly specifiable genre-convention of attempting to persuade an audience of positive qualities adhering to a certain product, brand, or service; and five are fragments from fiction films, a genre which is supposed – let us say with Horace – to delight, instruct, and move. The analyses are guided by the three questions that need at the very least be capable of being answered for something to count as a metaphor: (1) What are its two domains? (2) What is its target domain, and what its source domain? (3) Which feature or (structured) cluster of features can/must be mapped from source to target? (see Forceville 1996: 108)

2.

Case studies

Example 1 (Hi): MOBILE PHONE IS PIANO. A Dutch commercial from KPN for Hi, a mobile phone service, shows an attractive woman playing an instrument that looks and sounds like a piano, but on closer inspection turns out to be a visual hybrid between a piano and a mobile phone (figure 1). Playing the “piano,” the woman sings the following song fragment: Je bent de liefde van mijn leven/ voor altijd verbonden. You are the love of my life/ connected forever.

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Jij hebt mij vrienden en vrijheid gegeven/ ‘k kan niet meer zonder. You have given me friends and freedom/ I can no longer do without Ik bel en SMS, met heel hart en ziel/ Ik ben volslagen mobiel. I call and SMS, with [my] whole heart and soul/ I am completely mobile. [My translations, here and throughout the chapter, ChF]

Figure 1: An attractive woman “plays” on a mobile phone that is shaped like a piano (still from HI mobile commercial, The Netherlands). The fragment (composed by Sander Baas and Iwan den Boestert) sounds like a hit song of the kind popular in Holland at the time of writing, but was in fact specifically composed for the commercial (see http://www.megamediamagazine.nl/mvtr.php [accessed 16 August 2007] under KPN Telecom “Volslagen Mobiel”). After the last line, a female voice-over says, “Turn completely mobile, too; turn Hi-subscriber. This month as from no more than €10. Look on Hi.nl,” followed by an audiologo (“So Hi …iii!”). It is to be noted that the original Dutch text has (near-)rhymes: “leven/gegeven”; “zonder/ verbonden”; “ziel/mobiel,” contributing to the sense that this is a song. Since both domains (mobile phone and piano) are cued in the visual mode, neither written text, nor spoken text, nor music is necessary for their identification, and hence this specimen is strictly speaking a monomodal metaphor of the pictorial variety. However, non-verbal sound does play a role in the construal and interpretation of the metaphor. In the first place the fact that the text is sung rather than spoken adds emotion to the woman’s appeal to the mobile phone, so that her ode becomes aligned with numerous

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pop songs in which singers romantically address their lovers. Secondly, the music enhances the similarity that is created between mobile phone and piano. The visual homology between striking a piano’s keys and pressing a mobile phone’s buttons is complemented by the effect of this action: singing a song while accompanying oneself on the piano (a source domain action), it is suggested, in the target domain transforms mobile-phoning into a playful, artistic act with aesthetic effects. The commercial’s makers could hardly have spelled out these mappable features verbally on penalty of appearing ridiculous; but as non-verbalized features they strengthen and enrich the MOBILE PHONE IS PIANO metaphor.

Figure 2: A Tuc cookie jumps up and down like a fitnesser. Text: “But Tuc is most of all a lot more tastier” (still from Tuc Commercial, The Netherlands). Example 2 (Tuc): TUC COOKIE IS PERSON DOING FITNESS EXERCISES. A commercial for a salty cookie called “Tuc” shows a Tuc cookie moving from left to right, and going up and down (figure 2). We interpret this movement as self-propelled due to the commands of the male voice-over (“And … left! … Two, three, right! … And up! …. And relax”). This text evokes the domain of doing fitness exercises, but so does the rhythmic beat accompanying the voice-over. Thus the target domain is cued visually alone. If the sound is switched off, and all the verbal cues are (mentally) eliminated, the personification of the cookie might still be inferred by some viewers: after all it seems clear that the cookie jumps to and fro entirely of

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its own accord. However, the specification of the source as not simply a person but as a person doing fitness exercises is cued by the voice-over text as well as by the rhythmic beat. Each of these would suffice alone for this specification, although no doubt their combination facilitates and probably quickens comprehension of the metaphor TUC COOKIE IS PERSON DOING FITNESS EXERCISES. Example 3 (Shell): CARS ARE FISH The images in the commercial are those of beautifully colored, animated fish apparently swimming just above the bottom of the sea (reminiscent of the animation film Finding Nemo, USA 2003). We see a school of fish all stopping in mid-swim (figure 3), then moving on, and a small fish darting away just in time from a swordfish trying to stab it. The sounds we hear are traffic sounds – revving motors, screeching tires, claxons, a siren. The voice-over reinforces the traffic domain: What is the advantage, in everyday traffic, of a gasoline that has been developed in collaboration with the people at Ferrari’s? V-Power is a new gasoline that ensures better performance. Thanks to a better combustion. So that your car can respond faster … when necessary. And where do you find a gasoline that guarantees such a good performance as V-Power? Shell. Where you stop, we go further (my translation, ChF).

Figure 3: Fish halt suddenly as if cars stopping before traffic lights, suggested by street sounds (still from Shell commercial, The Netherlands). The traffic domain is thus cued by both non-verbal sound and spoken language. Once the audience has accessed this domain, some movements of the fish, for instance their completely synchronized stopping and moving,

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can be interpreted as signaling the traffic domain (here: stopping before a traffic light), but these visual cues alone would not suffice to ensure its recognition. Moreover, the sound adds liveliness and precision to the images: for instance, the little fish’s escape from the swordfish is emphasized not just visually by the quick movement, and verbally by the brief pause before “when necessary,” but also by the revving sound. Since speed embodies a quality claimed to be facilitated by the product advertised (V-Power), this is meaningful. In view of the claim that in principle metaphors, irrespective of the modalities they draw on, do not allow for reversal of target and source (Forceville 1995, 2002), it is interesting that in this metaphor its distribution is not immediately clear. In the first instance, before the voiceover is audible, I suspect viewers hypothesize that the fish are, or belong to the domain of, the product promoted. That is, they might at this stage speculate, for instance, that this is a commercial for a zoo, or perhaps an amusement park with an aquarium. At the moment they hear the words “traffic” and “gasoline,” words that strongly connote the realm of cars and driving, the assumption that the fish are to be taken literally is probably discarded. Indeed, it is not until this moment that viewers will reinterpret the fish as the source domain of what is to be construed as a metaphor. I submit that just as inferences made on the basis of the visual track tend to prevail over those made on the basis of the non-verbal soundtrack, inferences on the basis of verbal language override those originating in the visual track. It is thus the verbal track, supported by the traffic sounds, that make viewers postulate the metaphor CARS ARE FISH. The target-status of cars is further reinforced once we hear the name of the brand advertised: Shell – and see one of a series of shells on the sea bottom transform into the Shell logo. Example 4 (Iglo): CORNCOB AND FRENCH BEAN ARE BRIDE AND GROOM. An Iglo instant-meal commercial features a mini-corncob and a French bean, walking together toward an Iglo package (figure 4). Their movements alone already suggest anthropomorphizing, but it is the tune of the Wedding March which metaphorizes the two into bride and bridegroom (and makes us realize that the Iglo package actually resembles a church). A voice-over tells us: In our newest Iglo dish there are mini-corncobs and French beans--a combination of young and crispy. And what should of course never be missing on such a joyful occasion? … Exactly! … And together with

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chicken filet and soy sauce these make up the delicious new Iglo dish (my translation, ChF).

Figure 4: A min-corncob and a French bean walk as a married couple, the Wedding March being audible on the sound track (still from commercial for Iglo meals). At the moment the male voice-over says “exactly” we hear a faint voice say “yes, now!”, followed by a kissing sound, and we see, under cheers and applause, rice showered upon the couple. The metaphor CORNCOB AND FRENCH BEAN ARE BRIDE AND GROOM is cued mainly by the Wedding March tune, since the anthropomorphizing of the two does not suffice to turn them into a wedding couple. If the sound were turned off, most viewers would not access the source domain on the basis of visual cues until the rice shower, if then. Note that despite the reference to a “joyful occasion,” the verbal text alone, too, would not be sufficient to cue WEDDING at all. That is, there is no unambiguous verbal reference to the source domain. Both target and source are cued pictorially, but it is the Wedding March tune that turns the vegetables not just into humans, but into bride and groom – even before we see the rice-shower. Example 5 (Senseo): COFFEE MAKER IS MOTORCYCLE. A Philips coffee maker, Senseo, shows the metallic machine first in a number of extreme close-ups defying recognition. We hear a throbbing motorcycle engine and a fragment of Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild featuring the line “Get the motor running, hit it on the highway” – made famous by the opening sequence of Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, USA 1969). The metaphor COFFEE MAKER IS MOTORCYCLE is further emphasized by concurrently

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showing a finger pushing the coffee maker’s on/off button and sounding a kick-starting motorcycle. The shiny black covering of the coffee machine, moreover, looks like the surface of a motorcycle and the dripping coffee resembles a drop of oil (figure 5). The following lines are superimposed, one after the other, on the images: “designed with a vision … developed with passion … makes of each moment a sensation … that delights all senses.” The metaphor in this commercial is cued at least as much aurally as visually. One mappable feature is clearly the high-tech design, but more importantly the music evokes connotations such as living life in the fast lane, freedom, unconventionality, youth, sixties’ counterculture – a whole range of qualities nostalgically associated with Easy Rider motorbiking that are potentially mapped to making your coffee with a Senseo machine. That these connotations are considered important by the commercial’s maker is confirmed by the written pay-off line at the end of the commercial: “three years old, and already a legend – at least in the kitchen.” Switching off the sound of the commercial presumably eliminates the most important cue for the source domain, Easy Rider motorbike. This commercial, therefore, is best classified as a multimodal metaphor. (I owe this example and part of the analysis to Victor 2004.)

Figure 5: A drop of what looks like oil – an impression reinforced by the accompanying “Born to be Wild” song – is in fact a drop of coffee (still from a commercial for Senseo, The Netherlands) Watching commercials is governed by the strong genre-expectation that some product, service, or brand name is promoted, which enormously facilitates and constrains the preferred interpretation of everything visible

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and audible in them, including the metaphors. In most metaphors in commercials, the product is the target and the source is something else, which means that it is positive features that are mapped from source to target (Forceville 1996: 104). However, it is important not to theorize multimodal metaphor exclusively on the basis of case-studies exemplifying a single genre, since this might lead to a mistaken conception of pictorial and multimodal metaphor’s prototypical characteristics (Forceville’s 2002 criticisms of Carroll’s 1994, 1996 theory of pictorial/ visual metaphor expose this misconception). It is commendable, therefore, to consider specimens from a different genre as well. Metaphors in art are usually not amenable to the kind of clear-cut, singular intentions found in advertising. One crucial artistic convention is that it is, in the words of Siegfried Schmidt (1991), more poly-interpretable (see for discussion of Schmidt’s “fact” versus “aesthetic” and “monovalence” versus “polyvalence” convention Fokkema and Ibsch 2000: Chap. 2 and 5; see also Forceville 1999a). Here are, therefore, five examples of multimodal metaphors from fiction films. (For discussions of multimodal metaphors in the cartoon genre, see El Refaie this volume; Yus this volume; Schilperoord and Maes this volume.) Example 6 (The General): REAL CANNON IS CIRCUS CANNON. Buster Keaton’s brilliant film The General (1927), set during the American Civil War, features Keaton as the train driver Johnnie Gray, whose locomotive is stolen by enemy Northern soldiers. Johnnie gets hold of another locomotive, hitches on to the loc a wagon with a cannon, and singlehandedly goes in pursuit along the same railway track. When he has the Northerners in sight, he loads the cannon (figure 6), ready to fire over the cabin of his own loc. Just before Johnnie fires the cannon, we hear the softand-quick drum on the soundtrack that we recognize as a cliché device to create tensive expectation, while the firing of the canon ball itself is accompanied by a very unrealistic popping sound (the music and sound of the version discussed here is by Konrad Elfers). As such, there is nothing much metaphorical about this, but the conventional drums anticipating the firing will no doubt remind many viewers of a similar situation in circus acts, where a “human cannon ball” is fired. Hence construal of the metaphor REAL CANNON IS CIRCUS CANNON is invited. The mapped features in this case are the connotations evoked by a circus context, such as pleasurable excitement, risk-taking, the idea of watching a performance – and of course the mapping onto real-cannot firing turns Johnnie’s action into slapstick.

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Figure 6: Johnnie (Buster Keaton) loads a cannon, while tensive “circusact-music” is audible (still from Buster Keaton, The General, USA 1927).

Incidentally, the fact that this film predates the sound era (Al Johnson’s The Jazz Singer, 1927, is conventionally credited with being the first sound film), has an interesting consequence from the point of view of metaphors involving music and sound. In the pre-sound era, “the typical program had musical accompaniment. In the more modest presentations, a pianist might play; in vaudeville theatres, the house orchestra provided music” (Thompson and Bordwell 1994: 13). This, then, gave ad-libbing musicians opportunities to create multimodal metaphors involving sound where these may not have been envisaged by the films’ makers.

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Figure 7: The massacre in the college quadrangle (still from If …, Lindsay Anderson, UK 1968). Example 7 (If …): PUBLIC SCHOOL IS ARMY. Lindsay Anderson’s If .... (UK 1968) is a satire on the perverse aspects of British public school life. The verbal and visual references to battle and war, combined with the violence and the expectation of blind discipline in a hierarchical system gives rise to the metaphor PUBLIC SCHOOL IS ARMY – a conceptual metaphor that is reinforced throughout the film. Starting out realistically, the film gradually begins to show bizarre and surrealistic events that, commensurate with the counterfactuality suggested by the title, destabilize the status of the “real.” Indeed, the film increasingly literalizes the metaphor, resulting in a climactic machine-gunning of the established order by a small band of rebels. The very last scene of the film can be construed as a multimodal metaphor in which music provides the source domain. The rebels, led by Mick (the first major role of actor Malcolm MacDowell), are positioned, heavily armed, on the roofs surrounding the college’s quadrangle. Because of a celebration, pupils, staff, parents, and various officials (tellingly: representatives of the royal family, the army, and the church) are gathered in the college chapel, until they are smoked out by the rebels. Outside they are gunned down helplessly (figure 7) until they manage to access a weapon depot in the college (!) and are able to retaliate. During the last images of cross-firing, the same melody is audible that had been sung in the chapel.2 This hymn-like melody metonymically connotes the rituality of a religious service, and given the film’s consistent focus on cruel, ritualized behavior (canings and other humiliating punishments such as cold showers and pupils being hung upside down in a toilet pot), it is possible to construe the multimodal metaphor MASSACRE IS RELIGIOUS RITUAL, potential

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mappable features being the circumstances that in a ritual event everything is anticipated, constitutes the performance of a script, and has profound meaning. Example 8: (The Godfather I): MENTAL STATE IS FAST TRAIN. Michael (Al Pacino) in The Godfather I (Francis Ford Coppola, USA 1972) prepares to take revenge on his family’s enemies, Sollozzo and McCluskey. He has planned for a gun to be hidden in the toilet in the restaurant where they will be having dinner. Since he is not an experienced killer at this stage of his life, this is an emotional moment for Michael. When he returns from the toilet, with the gun, the sound track features a rumbling sound, which becomes identifiable as that of a riding train. The sound is in this scene non-diegetic, that is, it does not emanate from the actual events portrayed at this moment. That this is so is made clear by the fact that the sound is not continuous: it is audible in the shots when we see Michael in the toilet, but not in the shots of Sollozzo and McCluskey left behind at the restaurant table. The sound is thus used to convey Michael’s mental state, suggesting the metaphor MICHAEL’S MENTAL STATE IS FAST TRAIN. Possible mappings are such a train’s unstoppability, the inexorable rhythm of its progress, the circumstance that its noise drowns out other sounds – which in the target domain translate as, say, Michael’s determination or his refusal to reconsider his plan to kill. Lena Chatzigrigoriou (to whom I owe the example and part of the analysis) interprets the scene as follows: “The sound of the shrieking train breaks gradually, overpowering Sollozzo’s voice. This sound tells us that Michael is not listening anymore, he is ready for action” (Chatzigrigroriou 2006: 13). That the sound is a train’s is confirmed in the DVD commentary track by Francis Ford Coppola, who observes that there was an elevator train in the vicinity of the restaurant where the scene was shot, and that it was, in fact, the sound of this train that provided the idea for its usage in the scene. This comment also suggests that we indeed already heard the same train sound earlier, but then diegetically, namely during the car trip to the restaurant. As in the If … scene discussed in example 7, then, the sound used as source domain in the metaphor had been cued realistically in an earlier scene. Even if the analysis is accepted, it is nonetheless clear that presumably few spectators will consciously construe the concept TRAIN as a metaphorical source domain in this highly suspenseful scene. They may, instead, construe the sound more generically as “swelling rumble” or something like that. This leaves intact the claim that the sonic source domain brings to the fore to the audience what Michael thinks – which is

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not directly made visible (although Al Pacino’s facial expression arguably also helps the audience interpret what he is thinking). In Indurkhya’s (1991) terms, this would be an example of a “projective metaphor” (Indurkhya 1991: 16), a type in which a source domain structures a largely unstructured target domain. But the example points up an issue that is particularly pertinent to multimodal metaphors whose source, for whatever reason, is difficult to verbalize unambiguously. Should we say that members of the audience who failed to cue TRAIN, but who did cue, say, SWELLING RUMBLE, and somehow mapped associations adhering to that source to the target MICHAEL’S MENTAL STATE have or that they have not processed the metaphor? Or have they processed different metaphors? (See Bartsch 2002 and some responses to Bartsch in Forceville 2006.) This issue deserves sustained discussion.

Figure 8: Adam as dog, biting the hand of his creator (still from Adam, Peter Lord, UK 1991). Example 9 (Adam and Remember to Keep Holy the Sabbath Day): HUMAN BEING IS DOG. Animation films are rich in metaphors in which sound plays a role. A simple example is the juxtaposition of a human(oid) creature and a recognizable animal sound. Adam (Peter Lord, UK 1991) is a short claymation which playfully refers to the fact that the eponymous hero derives its name from Hebrew “Adamah,” meaning reddish clay. Its Godlike animator keeps ordering Adam about on his miniature planet earth. At one moment Adam, confused what behavior his creator expects of him, goes down on all fours, barks, and snaps at his creator (figure 8), so that for a moment the viewer is invited to entertain the metaphor ADAM IS DOG. A

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similar situation occurs in one of Phil Mulloy’s bleak animations, “Remember to Keep Holy the Sabbath Day” in the Ten Commandments series: Ezekiel Mittenbender kneels down and begins to bark. Note, incidentally, that the metaphor is used for different narrative purposes: in the first case, the metaphor is deployed to indicate the hero’s temporary confusion; in the second, to convey his insanity. Furthermore, while redundant to cue the source domain “animal” (the fact that both Adam and Ezekiel go down on all fours provides sufficient visual cues for that), the barking narrows down the animality to that of a dog – thus potentially activating in the audience a whole range of connotations adhering to DOG – and hence contributes information not available in the image track. Example 10 (Robin Hood): TENT IS TRAIN. In the animation film Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, USA 1973) at one moment a group of creatures in a tent scurries over a plain, only their feet being visible. The phenomenon reminds us of a fast-moving, but unspecified vehicle, but the rhythmic percussion steers us into understanding it as a train – an interpretation that is further supported when, upon the “tent’s” approach of a porch, we hear a train whistle. Without the sound, we might have opted for the metaphor TENT IS VEHICLE, but the sound specifies the vehicle as a TRAIN, and transforms the porch into a TUNNEL. I owe this example to Bensdorp and Vergeer (2004), who discuss many more sound metaphors in animation films.

3.

Discussion and conclusions

While it impossible to make sweeping generalizations on the basis of the examples discussed above, the case studies enable the formulation of observations and hypotheses that can be tested in further research, both theoretical and empirical, pertaining to sound in multimodal metaphor. Whereas language has the means to correlate verbal information with visual, sonic, or musical information via deixis (e.g., “this man” or “the train”), correlations between non-verbal modes depend on well-timed simultaneity. That is, in order to suggest a multimodal metaphor that does not draw on spoken or written language, the identity relationship between target and source must be triggered by making them visible/audible at the same moment. Such identity can, of course, be enhanced by many devices: a sound that is lip-synchronous with a character opening her mouth; visible movements that correspond with sonic rhythms (due to its abundant use in

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mainstream animation this is called “Mickey mousing”); or a montage pattern that has the same rhythm as the accompanying sound or music. The non-verbal and musical sounds that play a role in the metaphor tend to cue its source rather than its target domain. The visual component, that is, cues the literal target under discussion, whereas the sonic component metaphorically transforms this target. The Shell example suggests that the spoken language variety of the sound track, in turn, takes precedence over the visual track in cueing the target rather than the source (the same holds, more spectacularly, for the CMG commercial discussed in Forceville 2003). The sound is seldom alone responsible for the identification of the source domain. Usually, the pictorial and/or verbal information provides hints about the identity of the source domain (see also Forceville 1999b; Eggertsson 2006 and Eggertsson and Forceville this volume). The sound, however, facilitates the identification of the source. In this respect Gibbs’ remark that “even a cursory examination of theories of linguistic interpretation reveals a tremendous diversity in the emphases on the different temporal points at which an utterance or text has supposedly been understood” (1994: 115-116) is no less pertinent for multimodal metaphors than for verbal ones. Time is an important factor here: it is likely that the sound in multimodal metaphors, even if it does not contribute mappable features, aids the speed with which a source domain is identified. This is particularly pertinent in films and commercial advertising, which do not, under normal viewing circumstances, allow for the kind of backtracking that for instance written verbal metaphors permit. In addition, as we have seen, in several examples the soundtrack provides information that steers identification of the source domain on a more specific level, or allows that identification to be made with greater confidence than on the basis of the visual and/or verbal track alone: in the Iglo example, it is the Wedding March that is the first cue that the viewer is not just to see the mini-corncob and the French bean as persons, but as bride and groom. A complete analysis of a multimodal metaphor involving sound – as indeed of any kind of metaphor – requires an assessment whether the source domain cued is diegetic or non-diegetic. If the source domain, or part of it, is diegetic (that is: it belongs to the events in the story world as presented at that moment) or quasi-diegetic, the metaphor is “naturalized” because there is a metonymic link between the source and the target domains. As a consequence, the metaphor is less obtrusive, and possibly less easily identifiable as such than when the source domain is plainly non-

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diegetic. It is noticeable, for instance, that in four of the commercial examples, the source domains are metonymically linked to the target domain, and thus in some quasi-logic “literalized”: in example 1 the piano and its music are not only the source domain for a mobile phone: they also help produce the love song supposedly addressed to the phone. In example 2, the Tuc cookie is not only, metaphorically, a fitnesser; fitnessers also allegedly do well, the voice-over tells us, to eat Tuc cookies because they are so light (i.e., presumably “calories-poor”). In example 3, the underwater world of fish leads naturally to a shot of a number of shells, one of which transforms into the Shell logo. In example 4 the rice showered over the wedding couple is part of the Iglo product promoted. Only in example 5, there is not really a diegetic motivation for the source domain, motorcycling, although the slogan “already a legend” is supposed to bridge the distance between Easy Rider-motorbiking and Senseo-coffeemaking. In the artistic metaphors, too, there is sometimes a degree of naturalization of the source domain. In Lindsay Anderson’s fragment from If …, for instance, the organ music that helps metaphorize, in my reading of it, the final scene of the film, may not be particularly noticeable because the same organ song was used just before in a “literal” context. That is, in the earlier scene it was diegetically motivated music, which in the latter scene has become non-diegetic (but recalls its diegetic use). The same holds true for the fragment from The Godfather, in which the elevator train had been diegetically audible in an earlier scene. The effect, I propose is similar to the effect in the commercials: it reduces the sense of artificiality necessarily associated with the presentation of a source domain that has no realistic motivation whatsoever. Bordwell and Thompson point out that “sound can achieve very strong effects and yet remain quite unnoticeable” (1997: 315). Inasmuch as sound is less consciously registered than images, metaphors with sonic source domains may exercise their persuasive or narrative influence more subtly than, for instance metaphors whose terms are both presented in pictorial terms. Experimental research on multimodal metaphors with a sound dimension in which sound tracks are suppressed or altered (see Chatzigrigoriou 2007) is imperative to gain more insight into the working of sonic metaphors. Not all examples presented here are metaphorical with a high degree of explicitness. As always, the signals used to cue the source domain must be comprehensible by the envisaged audience for a metaphorical construal to be possible in the first place. In fact, one could venture that, because of

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their very nature they never have a verbal “is” to explicitize them, multimodal metaphors tend to be less explicit than purely verbal ones (for more discussion on implicitly versus explicitly signaled metaphors, see Forceville 1999b). Finally, the genre to which a representation belongs steers the possible or most plausible interpretations of any element in it, including metaphor (see Charteris-Black 2004 for corpus analysis of metaphors in genres such as sports news, political manifestoes, and religious texts in the Bible and the Koran; Caballero 2006 for an in-depth examination of metaphor use in architectural building reviews; and Caballero this volume for their use in wine-tasting notes). Systematic investigation of sonic metaphors in different genres (e.g., commercials, art films, horror films, video clips, computer games), or sequences within films (dreams, hallucinations, flashbacks) may reveal patterns specific for such genres or sequences.

Notes 1

2

This chapter is a revised and expanded version of a paper that appeared earlier of Forceville (2004). I am indebted to Eduardo Urios-Aparisi for comments on an earlier draft of this new version. The melody of the song is that associated with J. Threlfall’s “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna,” but the words sung, so far as they can be deciphered, do not fit that hymn’s text. Lindsay Anderson himself wrote about the melody that he “had originally asked Marc Wilkinson to write some music for the final onslaught, where Mick alone on the roof tries to hold at bay the attacking forces of Establishment, but we found when we played with the sound tracks in the cutting room that a simple organ version of the College song, which fortunately I had recorded when we were on location, fitted the sequence much better” (Anderson 1975). Apparently, then, the hymn’s melody was used for a college song, whose text I have not been able to locate. I am indebted to Thomas Elsaesser, Erik Hedling, and Andrew Webber for help in my hunt for clues on the song.

References Anderson, Lindsay 1975 Using music. [Typed draft of article by Anderson in 1975 on the music in his films, Library collection at University of Stirling, UK.] http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/libraries/collections/anderson/music.php

18 Charles Forceville (last accessed 16 August 2007) Bartsch, Renate 2002 Generating polysemy: Metaphor and metonymy. In Metaphor and Metonymy in Comparison and Contrast, René Dirven & Ralf Pörings (eds), 49-74. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bensdorp, Thomas, and Arjan Vergeer 2004 Geluid en de Populaire Animatiefilm: Een Cognitivistisch Onderzoek naar Betekenisvorming. [Sound and the popular animation film: a cognitivist approach to meaning formation.] Master thesis, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Bordwell, David, and Kirstin Thompson 1997 Film Art: An Introduction (5th edition). New York etc.: McGrawHill. Caballero, Rosario 2006 Re-Viewing Space: Architects’ Assessment of Built Space. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Caballero, Rosario This vol. Cutting across the senses: Imagery in winespeak and audiovisual promotion, pp. XXX Carroll, Noel 1994 Visual metaphor. In Aspects of metaphor, Jaakko Hintikka (ed.), 189218. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Carroll, Noel 1996 A note on film metaphor. In: Carroll, Theorizing the moving image., 212-223. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Charteris-Black, Jonathan 2004 Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. London: Palgrave/MacMillan. Chatzigrigoriou, Eleni 2006 Take-home exam pictorial and multimodal metaphor. Manuscript. Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Chatzigrigoriou, Eleni 2007 Trans-Diegetic Sound: In-Between Spaces in Post-Classical Cinema. Research Master thesis, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Eggertsson, Gunnar Théodor 2006 Animal Horror: An Investigation into Animal Rights, Horror Cinema and the Double Standards of Violent Human Behaviour. Master thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Department of Media Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Eggertsson, Gunnar Théodor and Charles Forceville

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