Visual and Multimodal Metaphor

Visual metaphor presents or invites a figurative relationship through an image. Multimodal metaphor involves more than one communicative mode, such as image, written language, speech, gesture, music or sound. The modes may reinforce each other, supply different parts of a comparison, or create tension between what is seen and what is said.

Studying these forms requires attention to the actual artefact. Translating an advertisement, diagram or film into a sentence can be useful, but that paraphrase is an analytical representation rather than a complete replacement for the original experience.

What makes an image metaphorical?

An image can depict a literal object, stand conventionally for something, or invite comparison across domains. A drawing of a bridge in a civil engineering report might simply represent a bridge. The same drawing between two groups labelled “research” and “practice” may organise their relationship metaphorically.

The interpretation depends on placement, labels, genre and audience knowledge. Not every evocative picture is a metaphor, and not every use of an icon requires a cross domain comparison. Metaphor, Metonymy, Simile, Analogy and Symbol helps distinguish several possibilities.

A worked example: the library lighthouse

Imagine a poster showing a library building with a lighthouse beam sweeping over a dark sea. The caption reads “Find your bearings”. This is a constructed teaching example, not a description of an existing campaign.

Element	Contribution to a possible interpretation
Library building	Identifies the service being promoted
Lighthouse beam	Suggests guidance and orientation
Dark sea	Supplies a setting of uncertainty or difficult navigation
Caption	Directs attention towards finding a position or course

The comparison could invite viewers to treat research as navigation and the library as a source of orientation. It does not necessarily claim that librarians choose every reader's destination. That additional inference would need support from the wider campaign.

Removing the caption might broaden the available readings. Replacing it with “A warning to every reader” would alter the invitation substantially. This shows why image and language should be examined together rather than assigned independent meanings and mechanically added up.

More than one way to combine modes

A visual comparison can place two objects side by side, merge their features into a hybrid, substitute one for another, or create a setting in which an unexpected object takes a familiar role. In an animation, the relationship can emerge gradually. Sound may supply a source domain that is never pictured, such as machinery noises accompanying an account of bureaucratic routines.

These are descriptive possibilities for analysis, not an exhaustive taxonomy. Different theories classify visual metaphors differently. The important practical requirement is to explain which observable features support the proposed relation.

Evidence from science communication

Ureña Gómez-Moreno examines pictures and documentary clips in biology, considering how visual, auditory and verbal material contributes to figurative meaning. His corpus includes scientific publications and popular science material selected to illustrate the communicative potential of these modes.^[1]

The analysis shows why a biology documentary cannot always be understood through its transcript alone. Music, editing and visual emphasis can help cast an encounter as conflict or drama. A selected interpretive corpus, however, does not by itself measure how often all documentaries use a device or establish that every viewer learns more from it.

Interpretation and audience evidence

Three claims should remain separate: a designer intended a metaphor; an analyst can justify that interpretation; an audience actually understood or was influenced by it. A production interview, close analysis and audience experiment provide different evidence for those claims.

For the invented library poster, a viewer might report navigation, safety, surveillance or simply attractive lighting. Such responses would help test assumptions about the design. Disagreement can reveal differences in cultural familiarity or attention rather than one uniquely correct response being missed.

Writing an accessible analysis

Describe the relevant visual arrangement before interpreting it. Identify colours, positions and movements only when they contribute to the argument. Give a timestamp for a film sequence and enough source information to locate the edition or version. Separate the original caption from any explanatory wording added by the analyst.

An accessible text description should preserve the relationship being discussed, not merely list objects. “A library is depicted as a lighthouse guiding a boat” communicates more of the proposed comparison than “building, light, boat”. Nevertheless, the description should indicate where metaphorical interpretation enters.

Related pages

References

↑ José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno (2020), “Non-verbal and multimodal metaphors bring biology into the picture”, in Anke Beger and Thomas H. Smith, editors, How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science, pp. 175–208. Chapter DOI.

[urena-1] José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno (2020), “Non-verbal and multimodal metaphors bring biology into the picture”, in Anke Beger and Thomas H. Smith, editors, How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science, pp. 175–208. Chapter DOI.

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