Multimodal metaphor patterns in documentaries about plastic pollution

Abstract

—This article addresses the issue of multimodal instantiation of conceptual metaphors in documentaries about plastic pollution: A Plastic Ocean (2016) and Recycling Sham (2019). Theoretically, it departs from conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson1980), extending it with the multimodal (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009) and discursive (Musolff 2006) approaches to metaphor. In agreement with the latest theoretical development in this area (Ping Tang, Kelin Quan, Jianbin Zhu 2020), conceptual metaphor is viewed not as a mere correspondence between two conceptual domains, but as a condensed micronarrative that provides a rich understanding of the target domain. The research demonstrates that multimodal metaphors in the documentaries under scrutiny are capable of forming constellations that carry ideological implications, demonstrating temporal variation.