Although recent linguistic and media-studies' research has increasingly dealt with forms of
imagery beyond language such as in audiovisual formats only little attention has been paid to
the specific media character of audiovisual images. This raises a theoretical as well as
methodological problem: How can processes of figurative meaning making in audiovisual media be
adequately conceptualized and described? The book intends to bridge this research gap with an
analysis of campaign commercials a hitherto largely underexplored object of study in metaphor
and metonymy research. To achieve this goal a transdisciplinary film-analytical and
cognitive-linguistic account of audiovisual figurativity is developed and examined through a
comparative analysis of figurative meaning-making processes in German and Polish campaign
commercials from 2009 and 2011. By setting the inseparable intertwining of language and
cinematic staging sensing and understanding center stage the book provides insight into the
dynamic nature and embodied affective grounds of audiovisual figurativity and challenges the
long-known dichotomies of rational discourse and affective manipulation political message and
media effect.
