Metaphoric coherence in popular science webtoons

Abstract

Digital media have changed science dissemination genres into multimodal ones, enhancing research accessibility and popularizing scientific knowledge among the general public. This paper examines popular science webtoons (PSWs) designed to adapt to mobile devices, with verbal and visual semiotic resources interplaying to make scientific knowledge easily understandable for lay readers. This study presents a cognitive and multimodal analysis of 40 PSWs to explore the construction mechanism of metaphoric coherence. Our findings revealed a recurrent use of metaphors that establish a deep link between language and systematic scientific comprehension, and mirror people’s cognitive processes of conceptualizing science. Our findings also found that two metaphoric text-image relations and five metaphoric coherence types are applied in PSWs, offering insights into the need for diverse communication modes to create resonant multimodal narratives that underscore the transformative effect of metaphors in bridging the gap between scientific concepts and non-expert readers. This study paves the way for further research to refine discursive techniques and semiotic modes for future science communication, and provides implications for academia attempting to convey their scientific findings to lay readers.