Multimodality, film, and cinematic metaphor: an evaluation of Müller and Kappelhoff (2018)

Müller and Kappelhoff’s Cinematic Metaphor: Experience – Affectivity – Temporality (2018) is the fruit of a collaboration in the Languages and Emotion project, further developed in the Cinepoetics Center for Advanced Film Studies, both based at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. It proposes a new framework for analyzing metaphor in film that is based on dissatisfaction with (1) Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory; (2) cognitivist-oriented applications and adaptations of this theory in the field of multimodality, specifically as operating in film (e.g., Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009; Forceville 2006, 2016, 2017; Rohdin 2009; Fahlenbrach 2010, 2016; Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2012, 2015; Ortiz 2011, 2015); and (3) cognitive film scholarship (e.g., Bordwell 1985, 2013; Smith 1995; Plantinga 2009, 2013; Grodal 2009).

Given the status of the authors of this monograph, its serious criticism of the aforementioned theories and approaches deserves an equally serious response. This paper can be considered as an extended review of Cinematic Metaphor.