The purpose of this study is to investigate how viewers who speak different languages interpret cinematographic metaphors in a filmic advertisement. The study is organized in three parts: First, we offer a theoretical model that predicts the offline mental mechanisms that occur while people interpret filmic metaphors, based on an existing model of visual metaphor processing. Second, we evaluate the model in a think-aloud retrospective task. A TV-commercial is projected individually to 30 Spanish, 30 American, and 30 Persian participants, who are then asked to verbalize their thoughts. The commercial was previously segmented, analyzed using FILMIP (Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure), and marked for metaphoricity by two independent analysts. The collected data is then evaluated in two formal content analyses. In the first one, two independent coders classified all the clauses used by the 90 participants in relation to the steps outlined in the theoretical model. In the second analysis, those clauses in which the participants were constructing their metaphorical interpretation of the filmic advertisement were annotated for the type of metaphor they constructed. The general results show that: (1) some mental processes seem to be more prominent in some cultures and not in others, and (2) genre-related knowledge plays a crucial role in constructing filmic metaphors in certain cultures and not in others. With this study, we theoretically formalize and empirically test the types of operations reflected in the language that viewers use to describe how they interpret filmic metaphors, thus advancing the current theory and methods on filmic metaphor interpretation from cognitive, semiotic, and cross-cultural perspectives.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) suggested that we use metaphors to evaluate and communicate in our various environments. Although metaphors encompass a large variety of taxonomies, orientational metaphors are those that rely on spatial position to map concepts into other ones, referring to a relation of valence and verticality. Stated by Kövecses (2010) conceptual metaphors such orientational ones draw ‘upward’ and ‘downward’ spatial positions in which ‘upward’ is usually referred to as having positive connotations, whereby their opposites, ‘downwards’, are understood as negative. This paper seeks to unveil how the orientational metaphor good is up is employed in a filmic narrative of a language learning application for technological devices named Babbel. The present analysis is developed under the application of FILMIP (Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure, Bort-Mir 2019). In the analyzed narrative, the orientational metaphor good is up is represented in the Babbel TV commercial (2018) as a tool for persuading customers that the best way of escalating positions at work is by learning new languages. This analysis demonstrates how orientational metaphors in multimodal media emerge as a convenient device for marketing campaigns in the context of social status improvement.

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With the increasing apogee of the digital world and Internet use by older people, one may wonder how adults understand these virtual spaces. The aim of this article is to see to what extent the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor and the Idealized Cognitive Models (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) may help understand the meaning and structure of a website.In our research we analyze several web pages from the point of view of Cognitive Linguistics in order to know if the virtual world makes sense from different types of metaphors and cognitive domains. As linguists, we get two questions. The first one is whether we are able to understand the Internet, something abstract with which we are not born, and the way we surf websites, transferring meaning through conceptual metaphors from the real world we do know to this new online world. Throughout our analysis we can see what types of metaphors are activated in our mind when visiting a website and in which moment they transfer meaning from the real world.The second question is whether website domains (the addresses of web spaces) are conceptually comparable to the cognitive domains that are activated in our minds when we perceive any concept. This assumption can offer a great contribution to marketers and SEO experts since it offers a new vision on how to make a potential client think what companies want (what mental model must be activated) when reading the address of a website.In short, our brief analysis, which is part of a more thorough and extensive research, provides a theory on how online readers configure the meaning of websites through conceptual metaphors, and it also provides a new framework of study which examines how web domains should be established so that the reader is able to know the theme of the web with just reading its address. ResumenCon el creciente apogeo del mundo digital y el uso de internet por la gente mayor, uno se pregunta cómo comprendemos los adultos estos espacios virtuales. El objetivo de este artículo es ver en qué medida la Teoría de la Metáfora Conceptual y los Modelos Cognitivos Idealizados (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) pueden ayudar a entender el significado y estructura de una web.En nuestra investigación analizamos varias páginas web desde el punto de vista de la Lingüística Cognitiva para saber si el mundo virtual toma sentido con metáforas y dominios cognitivos. Como lingüistas nos hacemos dos preguntas. La primera es si somos capaces de comprender internet, algo abstracto, y el modo en que navegamos por la red, transfiriendo significado del mundo real al mundo online a través de metáforas conceptuales. La segunda pregunta es si los dominios web (las direcciones de las páginas web) son conceptualmente comparables con los dominios cognitivos que se activan en nuestras mentes al percibir cualquier concepto.En resumen, nuestro breve análisis, que es parte de una investigación más extensa, aporta una teoría sobre cómo los lectores digitales configuran el significado de las páginas web a través de metáforas conceptuales, y también aporta...

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