Cognitive Linguistic Representation in the Public Service Advertisements: Focused on the Public Service Advertisement ‘Child Safety-Driver is the Guardian’

Abstract

This study is the result of analyzing how the advertising language are transmitted through metaphors, metonyms, and the blended space. The public service advertisement ‘Children’s Safety- Drivers and Guardians’ is related to the Min-sik Law, focusing on prevention of traffic accidents and safety awareness education for children. This advertisement emphasizes the safety awareness of drivers in the Children Protection Zones with the concept of ‘drivers are guardians’ and also emphasizes the reinforcement of safety education for children. In the process of conceptualizing all drivers on the road as guardians, the metonymy was appropriately used, and various aspects of advertisements made in the blended space in the Children Protection Zones, which properly blended the protective space called school and the driver’s space called the road, was utilized. This advertisement, which sets the driver as a guardian on the road, achieved the purpose of the public service advertisement to emphasize safety awareness in the Children Protection Zones, but it did not show the controversial parts of the Min-sik Law, such as responsibility and punishment for traffic accidents. In other words, while emphasizing the safety awareness of drivers and educations on traffic safety awareness for children to prevent accidents, the responsibility and punishment after accidents behind the public service advertisements could not be directly addressed. This requires the addition of conceptual elements in the blended space of the ‘driver’ mental space and the ‘guardian’ mental space.