AUTHOR=Wen Suijun , Zhong Zenan , Chen Shukun 

TITLE=Visual metaphor of sadness in poetry comics: a socio-cognitive perspective

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1264068

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1264068

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Former literature on conceptual metaphor studies has extensively examined verbal metaphors of sadness in different text types and with cultural variations. However, there has been by far limited research on the visual metaphor of sadness. Adopting a socio-cognitive perspective, this study investigates the conceptual metaphor of sadness in the exemplary case of Chinese poetry comics drawn by Cai Zhizhong. The findings reveal that: (1) BEING SAD IS BEING CONFRONTED WITH NATURAL FORCE and BEING SAD IS BEING PHYSICALLY ISOLATED are two most frequently occurring visual metaphors across the panels; (2) all the visual metaphors at play can be explained according to the conceptual metaphor theory; (3) SADNESS IS BITTERSWEET FOOD OR DRINK and BEING SAD IS BEING PHYSICALLY ISOLATED are two additional kinds of sadness metaphors identified; (4) the visual metaphors of sadness with Chinese cultural variations are rooted in mainstream Chinese cultural philosophies in the relevant period of history. This paper, therefore, contributes to the existing line of emotion metaphor studies in conceptual metaphor theory and sheds light on how to identify and analyze visual metaphors in a specific culture.