ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how abstract concepts are understood in multimodal discourse, using the main insights provided by two case studies of Janusz Kapusta’s verbo-pictorial aphorisms about various aspects of our emotional experience and of life. It is argued that the creative verbo-pictorial metaphors that underlie Janusz Kapusta’s aphorisms are rooted in primary metaphors that form the core of our abstract thought. Metonymic thinking is claimed to be the main tool that allows for a dynamic interpretation of the static composition of Kapusta’s drawings and, in effect, the basis for establishing cohesive ties with the processual concepts that are expressed verbally. Also, the specificity of the genre is shown to play an important role in interpreting the abstract concepts that are the theme of the discussed aphorisms. A revised version of the dynamic metaphor theory is proposed which accommodates the genre-specific interplay of the two modes and the novelty of mappings as factors that may increase the metaphoricity level. As in the case of the poetic use of language, the creative multimodal discourse appears to rely on a wide range of conventional metaphors and metonymies, and it is through the various reworkings of the conventional patterns that a novel understanding of the issues raised emerges, while truly novel metaphors are very rare. Highly iconic and condensed meanings, attention-grabbing effects, and symbolic condensation are considered characteristics of the analysed verbo-pictorial discourse, and the question of empirical testing of such discourse is raised.
