That’s So Meta: How Metaphor and Metonym Differentially Elicit Mental Imagery, Memory, and Emotion

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: At the Intersection of Cognition, Emotion, and Message

Abstract

One common goal of written language is to inspire the imagination. This is especially true of advertising copy, which serves to create or extend the positive mental associations that people make with a product. Previous research has explored numerous ways of structuring text to elicit a particular interpretation or mental image. The goal of this study is to explore how two different specific rhetorical figures, metaphor and metonymy affect mental imagery, memory, and emotional responses in readers of advertising copy.

Authors

• Kevin Wise, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Lan Wang, Jinshan College of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry U