Publications

Publications include books (monographs), peer-reviewed academic journal articles, impact reports, theses, and news articles.
​Read more about each project in the blog, or select the "read more" or "download" buttons.

Books (monographs)

  • Pérez-Sobrino, P., Littlemore, J., & Ford, S. (2021). Unpacking Creativity: The power of figurative communication in advertising. Padstow, Cornwall: Cambridge University Press. 

Book chapters

  • Houghton, D., Littlemore, J., Ford, S., Harfield, C. & Marder, B. (2022). What drives emotion and physiological arousal in adverts? The critical role of figurative operations, In A. Bagasheva, B. Hristov, & N. Tincheva. Figurativity and Human Ecology. Figurative Language and Thought Series. John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.17.08hou.
  • Ford, S. & Littlemore, J. (2023). Exploring the impact of figurative communication and advertising: Reflections on a collaboration between linguistics researchers and a Midlands-based marketing agency. In H. Price & D. McIntyre. Communicating linguistics: Language, community and public engagement. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003096078-14.

Peer-reviewed academic journal articles

  • Ford, S. & Littlemore, J. (2022, in print). Exploring the impact of figurative communication and advertising: Reflections on a collaboration between linguistics researchers and a Midlands-based marketing agency. In Communicating Linguistics: Language, Community and Public Engagement. Routledge. Preprint available.
  • Ford, S., Littlemore, J., & Houghton, D. (2021). "Got a Spark with Brook?" Engaging consumers in a sexual health campaign through the use of creative (metaphorical) double entendres. Metaphor and Symbol.
  • Pérez-Sobrino, P. & Ford, S. (submitted, revising). What counts as a multimodal metaphor (and metonymy)? Evolution of inter-rater reliability and agreement within and across seven rounds of adverts annotation.
  • Ford, S. & Guan, Y. (submitted, revising). Making cross-cultural meaning: Metaphor and metonymy in education app icons from UK and China.
  • Ford, S. & Fuoli, M. (in preparation). Conceptualising and visualizing (dis)trust in brand logos.

Impact reports
  • Ford, S. (2022). How to produce a culturally sensitive campaign for the NHS booster vaccination for the Pakistani community.​​
  • Ford, S. (2022). Appealing to the West Midlands to take up cycling: Testing concepts for a “Cycling for Everyone” campaign.
  • Ford, S. (2020). Market research for women’s experience of bra fittings and purchases: Royce Lingerie.
  • ​Ford, S. (2019). Findings from a user-experience eye-tracking study of the RightTrack Learning website.
  • Ford, S., Littlemore, J., & Houghton, D. (2018). Findings from a user evaluation study for rebranding housing association Solihull Community Housing.
  • Littlemore, J., Ford, S., & Houghton, D. (2018). The effects of figurative language on consumer attitudes toward an Aspire Channel Swim campaign.

Theses

  • Ford, S. (2019). The Visual Language of Virtual Product Design: The Semiotics of Colour and Shape in Smartphone App Icons. (Master’s by Research dissertation, University of Birmingham, UK, 15th July 2019). Retrieved from: ​https://www.samantha-ford.com/publications
  • Ford, S. (2017). Multimodal metaphor and metonymy and the figurative complexity of mobile phone advertising: A comparison between mobile phone manufacturer and network provider advertisements. (Bachelor's dissertation, University of Birmingham, UK, 5th July 2017). Retrieved from: www.samantha-ford.com/publications

​News Articles

  • Ford, S. (2022). Projects. In The Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (Ed.) RaAM News. Nr. 31, pp. 40-43.
  • Ford, S. (2018). Projects. In The Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (Ed.) RaAM News. Nr. 23, pp. 17.