Laura Hidalgo Downing

Recontextualizing social practices and globalization: Multimodal metaphor and fictional storytelling in printed and internet ads

This article presents a study of ongoing global and local changing practices by exploring the interaction between multimodal metaphor and narrative in advertising discourse. Thus, we make use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Integration Theory to compare how social changes and continuities are represented and re-contextualized in advertising discourse, across time, genres and cultures. Changes in time and across genres are addressed through the analysis of printed ads from 2000-2002 and internet ads from 2001-2009. Second, we compare the interaction between transformation and magic metaphors and storytelling frames in both genres and periods. Finally, we pay particular attention to the variation in a global brand campaign (Coca-Cola) in three different cultures, thus revealing competing changes in global and local social practices.

Reading R. Coover's ‘Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl’: an empirical study on reference and story interpretation

The aim of the present article is to present an empirical study carried out with a small group of Spanish university students of the English Studies degree programme on the reading of the short story ‘Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl’, by Robert Coover. The objective of the study is to explore the way in which students assign reference to the personal pronouns you, she and he in key sections of the story. Reference assignment is crucial not only for the understanding of the characters who are present in given scenes of the story, but also for the understanding of the story as a whole. The empirical analysis is based on the theoretical assumption that reference is a cognitive-textual process which requires an analysis of the process of reading as changeable and dynamic. Thus, the present analysis focuses on the way in which different students modify their assumptions about the relations between characters in the story depending on how they have assigned reference to the personal pronouns. This reveals that t...The aim of the present article is to present an empirical study carried out with a small group of Spanish university students of the English Studies degree programme on the reading of the short story ‘Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl’, by Robert Coover. The objective of the study is to explore the way in which students assign reference to the personal pronouns you, she and he in key sections of the story. Reference assignment is crucial not only for the understanding of the characters who are present in given scenes of the story, but also for the understanding of the story as a whole. The empirical analysis is based on the theoretical assumption that reference is a cognitive-textual process which requires an analysis of the process of reading as changeable and dynamic. Thus, the present analysis focuses on the way in which different students modify their assumptions about the relations between characters in the story depending on how they have assigned reference to the personal pronouns. This reveals that the interpretation of the story itself arises as a dynamic, ongoing process, rather than as a finished product once the story is read as a whole.