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This paper aims at demonstrating that weak communication (overt and covert) can have an important influence on the choice, specification and interpretation of ideological metaphors in advertising. We focus here on a concrete type of ideological metaphor, advertising gender metaphor. We present a description of advertising gender metaphors, subtypes (cases of metaphorical gender, universal gender metaphors and cultural gender metaphors) and crosscategorisation in a case study of 1142 adverts published in British Cosmopolitan (years 1999 and 2000). We next assess “overtness-covertness” in the advertising gender metaphors in our sample. In considering this we also look at the conventional-innovative scale of these metaphors, and examine their discrimination against men and women. The intended value of this paper lies in its examination of both weak overt and covert types of communication in relation both to cognitive and pragmatic theorising of metaphor, and, more generally, to theorising advertising communication.

The pragmatic approach to translation implies the consideration of translation as a useful test case for understanding the role of language in social life. Under this view this article analyses the decision-making stage translators go through in the course of formulating a TT. Henee this article contributes both to enhance the status of translation theory and to explain some of the decisions taken by the Spanish translators of three English Manuals of Economics. In short, we have argued that the use of a 'maximax' strategy for translating English metaphors as Spanish similarity-creating metaphors can be attributed to subjective factors, especially to the translators' cognitive system, their knowledge bases, the task specification, and the text type specific problem space. As a result, we have also claimed that proposals for translating microtextual problems -for example, metaphors -can benefit from the study of the above-mentioned subjective factors since they allovv or inhibit the translators' choices in the decision-making stage of the translation process.

This paper explores how persuasive is the exploitation of image-schematic devices in advertising, more specifically how they are used for introducing sexism. Using a combined axiological-relevance-theoretic approach we have analysed ten advertisements selected from an online corpus, 'The Advertising is Good for You' blog, and its section on 'Sexist Advertising'. Our analyses have proved that image schematic devices are used to introduce sexism in the advertisements under analysis, mostly the image schemas of space, force, multiplicity and attribute, and mostly by means of covert and weakly overt forms of communication. These image schematic devices seem to be not merely representative of universal experience, but crucially tied to specific socio-cultural cognition, as also suggested by Sinha (2002), Kimmel (2005) and Zlatev (2005), and special cognitive effort and effects are involved with understanding them. Yet, although they seem to contradict a formal application of the Principle of Relevance, as they involve additional processing effort, this is often offset by the extra effects like the pleasure in processing the ad and 'getting' the right meaning and value(s). This pleasurable experience is one important way in which advertisements are persuasive (MeyersLevy and Malaviya, 1999).

This research introduces the issue of advertising gender metaphors and their presence in the advertising of British Cosmopolitan, a women's magazine.After providing a theoretical background that interrelates advertising, gender and metaphor, we have focused firstly on advertising metaphors and secondly on gender advertising metaphors, illustrating their presence in the magazine under study. In this paper we have used a sample of 1142 print ads published in 12 issues of British Cosmopolitan in 1999 and 2000 2 . RESUMENEste artículo introduce el tema de las metáforas publicitarias de género y su presencia en la publicidad de una revista femenina concreta, British Cosmopolitan. Tras presentar un marco teórico introductorio sobre la relación entre la publicidad, el género y las metáforas, nos hemos centrado en primer lugar en las metáforas publicitarias y en segundo lugar en las metáforas publicitarias de género, ilustrando su presencia en la revista estudiada. Hemos empleado aquí una muestra de 1142 anuncios publicados en 12 ejemplares de la revista British Cosmopolitan de 1999 y 2000.