Understanding pictorial metaphor in comic book covers: A test of the contextual and structural frameworks

Abstract

Conceptual metaphor theory proposes that metaphor is a mental function, rather than solely a literary device. As such, metaphors may be present in any by-product of human cognition, including pictorial art. Crawford and Juricevic previously proposed two heuristic frameworks for the identification and interpretation of metaphor in pictures, which have been shown to be capable of describing how pictorial metaphors are identified and interpreted in the comic book medium. The present study tested artists’ preference for combinations of contextual and structural pictorial information in comic book cover images. We analysed usages of exaggerated size in comic book cover art, as exaggerated size is a pictorial device, which may be used both literally and metaphorically. The goal was to assess how contextual and structural information is combined, and how literal and metaphorical information interacts, both when it is congruent and incongruent. This analysis of the use of exaggerated size in comic book art indicates that artists prefer to produce images that have congruent combinations of literal and metaphoric pictorial information, or the incongruent combination of metaphoric contextual information and literal structural information. Artists do not, however, prefer to produce images that have the incongruent combination of metaphorical structural information and literal contextual information. Taken together with the Corpus Analysis Relevance Theory (CART) argument, this pattern suggests that when processing information, our cognitive systems prefer metaphorical interpretations over literal interpretations and contextual information over structural information.