1.3 Methodology 

This study adopts a combination of qualitative data collection and quantitative data collection. First of all, the researcher will study 3 video clips, one is about warnings of drugs, one is about environment protection, and the attention will be mainly focused on the third one about the harm of smoking. The third video clip is of about five minutes from the internet publically available. Secondly, the paper shall discuss the expression of potential dangers in the creation of main figures. Thirdly, during the analysis of this video, the whole clip shall be pided into 3 parts for specific discussion about the potential danger in smoking. Those 3 parts are, firstly, the initial destruction from 1’10” to 1’20”, secondly, the gradual destruction from 1’30” to 2’12”, and the final complete destruction from 2’13” to 4’45”. Finally, we shall reflect the conclusions drawn from the third video to the other two videos to testify whether they have the features and functions which are in common with the characteristics of the third one.  

The video tells such a story within limited time. The hero, a boss of some company was caught up with tobacco addiction, and eventually lost all his savings. When he was looking for a last cigarette, a man dressed in whole black with a horrible appearance appeared in front of him --the god of death, giving him a pack of cigarettes. After a period of hesitation, the temptation of cigarettes eventually overcoming the terror of death, the boss accepted the invitation offered by the god of death and started to smoke again. Then the process of nicotine’s invasion into the body, which is also the process of human’s body being damaged, is vividly expressed in a cartoon-like way to the audience. This invasion is also the key part of this paper because this video shows the dangers and “cunning“ of nicotine in an unexpected way in which the nicotine makes organs become lazy, idle and ignorant of their duties through the way of selling ice cream to each body cell, finally destroying the health of human. And the hero was also sent into hospital for treatment because of serious damage of health caused by cigarettes. After the surgery, in front of the bed, the god of death in a black garment showed up once again and threw out another pack of cigarettes—a last hay on the camel, to the patient. And once again, the patient reached out his hand for the cigarettes when the video is abruptly ended. The story is featured with an open ending, leaving enough space for audience’ imagination.

2 Literature Review

The paper will discuss the metaphorical expressions of warnings from a multimodal perspective, so a general review of these three concepts will be introduced in the following passages.

2.1 Warnings and metaphorical cognition

Ying LingYun mentioned in her language comparison in the visual metaphorical study of English and Chinese warnings, that “warnings are presented to the audience mainly in a straightforward visualized written form”. So far “warnings have chiefly chosen the visual means as a main medium of expression”. It aims to realize a leap from vision to the thinking space in language cognition with the combination of image, color and language. (Ying Lingyun, 2010:126-129).

Visual metaphors are well embodied in the visual art expression, namely the means of color, composition, image, modeling, and layout design. Moreover, it’s also reflected in the use of language patterns. Metaphor, integrated with both language and cognition phenomena, is a cognitive experience as well as a phenomenon. People, with their own organs as the cognitive subject, their own cognitive experience as the reference, gain new cognitive experience and form new cognitive concepts through a mirror-like reflection of the past. Just as Lakoff and Johnson argued in Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003) that “metaphor is omnipresent in our daily life”. They think that the essence of metaphor is “to understand and experience one certain kind of thing through a different kind of thing”. In their opinions, metaphor is “not only a kind of language phenomenon but also a human cognitive phenomenon”. Metaphor not only belongs to the linguistic area and it is also about the human mind. The processes of human thought are metaphorical to a great degree, because the conceptual system we rely on for thought and action is metaphorical in nature. 文献综述