Polycode metaphorization in social advertising of health

The paper is devoted to the metaphorical modeling specifics of social advertising texts on health problems. The cognitive metaphor theory is taken as the basic methodology, based on the conjugation of two conceptual areas: the source domain and the target domain. The material was more than 300 texts of printed and outdoor Russian and foreign social advertising, collected by the method of directed sampling. The polycode essence of the advertising message also determined the study specifics: the article examines the metaphor of different semiotic codes – verbal and visual. As a result of the analysis, two of the most productive metaphorical models were identified – anthropomorphic and artifact models used in the development of advertising messages aimed at combating major social problems. At the same time, it is possible to highlight the obvious leadership of the anthropomorphic metaphor – both verbal and visual. The advertiser’s appeal to typical metaphorical models, in the author’s opinion, is an ambiguous tool of influence: the high frequency of models and slots of a certain type, on the one hand, ensures the correct decoding of the figurative component by the mass addressee, on the other hand, reduces the attractiveness and creativity of the advertising message. Visualization of a template metaphorical model, conversion to other types of models (zoomorphic, sociomorphic, phytomorphic, etc.) are considered as methods of individualization of metaphorized texts of social advertising. Since metaphors of different codes are often used in one advertising message, one of the aspects of the study was related to the analysis of the interaction of a visualized and verbalized metaphor (relations of complementarity, autonomy, duplication). The author pays special attention to the multifunctionality of the polycode metaphor in social advertising texts, examines the main reasons for the high frequency of this tool: semantic capacity, creativity, concretization of abstract categories, persistence, etc.