Việc sử dụng ẩn dụ ý niệm trong các khẩu hiệu
quảng cáo cho điện thoại di động Nokia,
Samsung, Apple, Blackberry và Sony Ericsson

Phạm Thị Hằng

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Ngô Hữu Hoàng
Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract: This minor thesis on the use of conceptual metaphors in advertising slogans of
Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Blackberry and Sony Ericsson cell phones was undertaken to
provide advertisers with beneficial information when developing a slogan. The research
attempts to answer two questions: How are conceptual metaphors frequently used in five
brands’ cell phone advertising slogans?;What are the subtypes of conceptual metaphors
employed in five brands’ cell phone advertising slogans?. The slogans used in this thesis
are taken from newspapers, TV and the internet. They are first put into each cell phone
brand numbered from 1 to 65 (see APPENDIX), then the analysis based on Lakoff and
Johnson’s theory of conceptual metaphors is done to find out the appearing frequency of
the metaphors in the corpus and each subtype used also. Finally, all the results and
discussion on the frequent choice of metaphor subtypes in the slogans are represented.
The study with a corpus of 65 slogans is still on its infancy and requires further research,
though the copywriters, through this thesis, can develop a useful tool for their
advertisements.

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Quảng cáo; Ẩn dụ ý niệm Content
PART I: INTRODUCTION

Research question 1: Are conceptual metaphors frequently used in five brands’ cell phone
advertising slogans?
Research question 2: What subtypes of conceptual metaphors are employed in five brands’ cell
phone advertising slogans?
3. Scope of the study
Due to the time constraint, the thesis only focuses on five cell phone brands’ slogans
which are world famous ones.The selected slogans of five brands are randomly taken from
newspapers, TV and Internet at the researcher’s ease.A corpus of 65 chosen slogans is not a big
one, so to some extents, the results provided are just selective, not comprehensive.
In this study, the analysis is based on the theory and classification of metaphors given by
Lakoff and Johnson.
4. Method of the study
This research is a combination of primary and secondary research. More specifically, it is
firstly a secondary research in that there is a literature review of metaphors study as well as
metaphors in advertising provided; it is secondly a primary research in that the researcher uses
statistical research method in order to give a description of a language phenomenon occurring in
advertising slogans of five mobile phone brands. In addition, the exploratory research method is
employed with an aim to examining the correlations among three subtypes of conceptual
metaphors namely structural, ontological and orientational metaphors.
5. Design of the study
The study consists of three parts: INTRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT including two
chapters and CONCLUSION. CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

1. Definition of metaphors
An enormous effort has been made in the course of finding a way to define what
metaphor is by many scholars and researchers all around the world. Gibbs (1999:29) even
introduced an ironical statement by Wayne Booth that by the year 2039 “there would be more

HAPPY IS UP. Black also gave a metaphor MAN IS WOLF (Black, 1955:286) which as our
first glance resembles the structure of conceptualization given by Lakoff and Johnson. However,
in his work, Black did not give out two terms target and source domain, instead he called MAN
and WOLF two subjects: the principle subject (MAN) and the subsidiary subject (WOLF), then
he tried to suggest a set of standard believes about wolves that are the common possession of the
members of some speech community from which we note that wolves refer “to something fierce,
carnivorous, treacherous”, hence man “preys upon other animals” and is “fierce, hungry,
engaged in constant struggle, a scavenger” (Black, 1995:287). Black called the similarities
between MAN and WOLF “the commonplaces” and the “corresponding system” (1995:288).
From Black’s analysis of his metaphor, we can see that the notion of conceptual metaphor had
been conceived long ago, before the introduction of Lakoff and Johnson.
To give some ideas of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a
concept to structure an everyday activity, Lakoff and Johnson started with the concept
ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR which is reflected in our
daily language by a wide variety of expressions.
ARGUMENT IS WAR
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on the target.
I demolished his argument.
I’ve never won an argument with him.
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
He shot down all of my arguments.
(Lakoff and Johnson, 2003:5)

3. Classification of conceptual metaphors
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) classified conceptual metaphors into three different kinds,
namely structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. Kovecses
(2010), despite having three other criteria for categorizing conceptual metaphors, had the same

An accumulation of problems.
The solution was within rich.
The joy was seen in his face.
In these examples, by setting an artificial boundary, we can bound the “problems”,
“solution”, and “joy” in a way that we can see it, can touch it.
3.3. Orientational metaphors
As the name suggests, those metaphors are based on the orientation in space, hence a
special relationship is made for a concept. This relationship is normally based on our experiences
of the physical space we possess.
For instance,
Being HAPPY IS HIGH/UP
Being SAD IS LOW/DOWN.
4. Metaphors in advertising slogans
4.1. Definition of an advertising slogan
There is a countless number of definitions given to advertising which all have in common
that advertising is a means of promoting the product, idea or organization on the market with an
aim to giving information and to persuading people of the benefits of the product and inducing
them to take an action, say to buy it, to approve of it, to follow it, etc.
Advertising slogan is defined as “a word or phrase that is easy to remember, used for
example by a political party or in advertising to attract people’s attention or to suggest an idea
quickly” in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2001 (Jana Lapsanska, 2006: 14). However,
Greg Meyers (1997) use the term “slogan” in broader sense – for any catchy phrase. Slogan is
“…the backbone of the whole campaign, helping the other party to memorize the product being
advertised” (Mgr. Jana Pelclová, 2010: 30). In the frame of this thesis, the concept “slogan” will
be understood in a large sense which means slogan is any catchy words or phrases or even
sentences used in an advertising campaign of a product.
4.2. Conceptual metaphors in advertising slogans
The application of metaphors in advertising has aroused close attention of many scholars
and researchers around the world. Lapsanska wrote, “a single metaphor may be worth of a
hundred words of advertising text. It has an interesting value and stimulates the curiosity of the

All these slogans will be first sorted out into categories of brand names, then analyzed to
show whether they use metaphors or not. The next step is to study the metaphors employed in
each slogan so that the researcher can point out to which categories of conceptual metaphors
namely structural, ontological and orientational the slogans belong. In order to achieve that
purpose, the qualitative method is to be used. After that, the quantitative method is adopted with
an aim of figuring out the proportion of three kinds of conceptual metaphors in these selected
slogans. Finally, a description of the results will be presented through the statistics and
interpretation.
2. Results and discussion
2.1. Research question 1: The frequency of the use of conceptual metaphors in cell phone
advertising slogans

Chart 1: The use of metaphors in cell phone advertising slogans.

51/65 metaphors are used in mobile phone advertising slogans. Such a figure is not minor
as metaphor is just one among many types of linguistic means used in advertisements.
In her findings, Lapsanska (2006:76) showed that 99/270 metaphors are used in advertisements
(including personification as one subtype of ontological metaphors), which is equivalent to 37%
while the percentage of metaphors applied in cell phone advertising slogans accounts for 78%,
doubling that of Lapsanska’s result. This reveals that metaphors appear with high frequency in
mobile phone advertisements. Maybe the reason for this had been stated by Kovecses “An
appropriately selected metaphor may work wonders in promoting the sale of an item”. (2002:59).
2.2. Research question 2: Types of conceptual metaphors used in mobile phone advertising
slogans
The use of metaphors in cellphone advertising slogans
78%
22%
use metaphors
not use metaphors


structural metaphors
orientational metaphors
LIFE IS AN OBJECT (Blackberry – Find more life – slogan (53)).
In slogan (7) “Hit a hole-in-one. Hit the right impression”, we can notice two conceptual
metaphors: THE PHONE IS A GOLF CLUB (structural metaphor) which you can use and hit the
ball to the hole, and IMPRESSION IS AN OBJECT (ontological metaphor), so you can hit it.
Slogan (13) “Connect with style” also embeds the ontological metaphor ABSTRACTS
ARE THINGS, specifically STYLE IS AN OBJECT.
“Your life. Enhanced” also offers the ontological metaphor LIFE IS A PRODUCT in
here, A MOBILE PHONE, the audience are expected to draw a message that this mobile is going
to enhance their life or in other words, improve or brighten their life.
Ontological metaphor PROGRESS IS MOTION is applied in slogan (43) “The fastest,
most powerful iPhone yet”.
Ontological metaphors are followed by structural metaphors with a percentage of 29%
which means well more than a quarter of all three subtypes. Among those, the Apple’s slogan
(33) “Touching is believing” is typical for EMOTIONAL INTIMACY IS PHYSICAL
CLOSENESS structural metaphor.
The conceptual metaphor A SOLUTION IS A PRODUCT is also realized in the slogan
“A stylish way to get things done” – Blackberry – slogan (51) or “There’s an app for that. That’s
the iPhone. Solving life’s diplemma one app at time” – Apple – Slogan (45). Moreover,
EMOTIONAL DESIRE IS PHYSICAL HUNGER is also made clear in “Wanna quench your
thirst for fun? Take a sip of Sony Ericsson Mediascape – all your music, video and photos, just
waiting to be enjoyed.” – Sony Ericsson – Slogan (64).
We can see some overlaps in the analysis between ontological and structural metaphors.
For example “A touch of amazing” can be seen as ontological and structural metaphor at the
same time. When we see AMAZING IS AN OBJECT, we are seeing it in an ontological way
that the abstract thing AMAZING do exist so that we can feel the touch of it. When we consider
the structural metaphor EMOTIONAL INTIMACY IS PHYSICAL CLOSENESS, the “touch”
(the source domain) is physically felt as an act of love and care (the target domain), thus
emotional feeling.

Orientational
Nokia
11 (84%)
1 (8%)
1 (8%)
13 (100%)
Samsung
10 (84%)
1 (8%)
1 (8%)
12 (100%)
Apple
7 (70%)
3 (30%)
0 (0%)
10 (100%)
Blackberry
4 (49%)
3 (38%)
2 (13%)
9 (100%)
Sony Ericsson
0 (0%)
7 (100%)
0 (0%)
7 (100%)
Table 2: Proportion of three subtypes of conceptual metaphors used
in each cell phone brand.

As can be seen from the table, ontological metaphors are found mainly in the advertising

Due to the time and knowledge restriction, the researcher only collects a corpus of 65
advertising slogans of five cell phone brands. This is not a big enough corpus for us to make a
generalization of the results to advertising language in all fields.
3. Suggestions for further research
During the time the researcher carries out the thesis, many interesting ideas have emerged
and they could be the suggestions for further research.
The research can be continued as a bigger one with the description of all semantic aspects
employed in mobile phone advertising, not just metaphors. Or maybe a research into translation
of mobile phone advertising slogans from English to Vietnamese under the light of semantic
approach can be put into account. What’s more, a study of metaphors applied in all advertising
slogans world wide can be suggested.
I have worked on this thesis to the best of my ability and effort to yield the best results.
However, due to the time and knowledge limitation, mistakes are unavoidable. Thus, any of your
constructive comments, corrections or suggestions for my better job would be highly
appreciated.

References
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