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1980:3). They maintainedthat the essence of metaphor is to understand and experience one kind of thing interms of another (1980:5), which skillfully avoids using “language” or “verbal”.Although this claim has reached a consensus among cognitive linguists, otherlinguists, especially Charles Forceville, believe it cannot ignore the fact that languageis just as an external manifestation of conceptual metaphor and other nonverbalsymbols such as pictures, sounds can also express conceptual metaphor. In addition,multimodal metaphor researchers point out that pure linguistic research, to someextent, can not fully explore the rhetorical effect of metaphor. Other than conventionalmetaphor, people can explore novel metaphor to increase aesthetic pleasures orinvoke emotional reactions, which manifests incisively and vividly throughmultimodal metaphor (Zhao Xiufeng 2011). Along this line, since the 1990s the studyof metaphor moves forward from pure linguistic research to the new direction ofmultimodality research.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

This chapter mainly reviews previous studies of multimodal metaphor and PSAat home and abroad respectively. Firstly, some basic concepts are discussed includingmetaphor, mode and monomodal metaphor versus multimodal metaphor. Secondly, itgives an overview of previous studies of multimodal metaphor. Thirdly, the previousstudies on PSAs are summarized.

2.1 Some Basic Concepts
Throughout the history of linguistic research, the theories about metaphor studyare various from ancient time to the new era. It is a widely shared view that the studyof metaphor experiences two historic leaps: one is to move forwards from theclassical study of rhetoric to modern study of metaphor; the other is to move forwardsfrom conceptual metaphor to multimodal metaphor. This part introduces the first leap.Metaphor, etymologically meaning “to carry over”, “has traditionally been basedon the notions ‘similarity’ or ‘comparison’ between the literal and figurative meaningof an expression” (Ungerer and Schmid 2011:115). Classical theory of metaphorconsists of comparison, substitution and interaction view. Aristotle defines metaphor“a rhetorical device, a figure of speech, a tool in language, a device of poeticimagination, a deviant linguistic expression or ‘catachresis’, a matter of words ratherthan of thought or action” (Trans. Butcher 2000:223), which means traditionalmetaphor study considers metaphor as rhetorical device to achieve effects ofcommunication. Therefore, most people think that we can get along perfectly withoutmetaphor. However, Lakoff and Johnson hold the opposite view (1980). Byexplaining a large number of examples, they believe that being pervasive in everydaylife, metaphor exists not only in our language but also in our thought and action. Theyhave also effectively bridged the gap that classical theory neglects the generalizationsgoverning the linguistic expressions. These famous claims are contained in Lakoffand Johnson’s magnum opus, Metaphors We Live By (1980), marking the beginningof research on the cognitive theory of metaphor. In 1987, they published their owninfluential monographs: Johnson’s The Body in the Mind and Lakoff’s Women, Fireand Dangerous Things. In The Body in the Mind, Johnson elaborates two kinds ofcognitive structures of language use and understanding: image schema andmetaphorical structure, and their material basis. In his view,