Metaphorical Expressions Used in Foods Products Advertisements and Their Inferences

Abstract

Metaphors are not only found in everyday use of language, but also in advertisements. The use of metaphorical expressions, specifically conceptual metaphors in advertisements, especially in the slogans, is very common because they can attract attention and they can give positive inferences for the advertisement messages. The metaphorical expressions cannot be interpreted literally, but they must be inferred because they give new meanings to the expressions. The inference can be drawn by mapping the features of source domain on the target domain. Based on this condition, this article investigates metaphorical expressions used in the foods products advertisements through the answer of these two questions: 1) What are the target and source domains of the metaphorical expressions used in the advertisements? 2) What inferences can be extracted from the mapping of the source domains on the target domains?