Metaphor and symbol: SEARCHING FOR ONE'S IDENTITY IS LOOKING FOR A HOME in animation film

The quickly growing discipline of multimodality has hitherto primarily found its inspirational models in semiotics and in Systemic Functional Linguistics. However, Cognitive Linguistics, and specifically its Conceptual Metaphor Theory branch, has over the past years proved a store of knowledge and methods of analysis that can benefit the further advance of the young discipline. In this paper the metaphor searching for one’s identity is looking for a home in animation films is examined. It is shown that (a) analysing this metaphor presupposes understanding "home" as a symbol; (b) animation has medium-specific affordances to implement the metaphor; (c) the metaphor combines embodied and cultural dimensions.
The paper contains screen shots of the five animation films discussed (Hoppity goes to Town/Mr. Bug Goes to Town, Max and Dave Fleischer, USA 1941; Arrietty the Borrower, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Japan 2010; The Village of Idiots, Eugene Fedorenko and Rose Newlove, Canada 1999; The Lost Thing, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann, 2010; La Maison en Petits Cubes/Tsumiki No Ie, Kunio Kato, Japan 2008).