A wave of metaphors: image and visual metaphors in cartoons from a cognitive-discursive perspective

This paper aligns with a field of research that deals with the use of multimodal metaphors from a cognitive-discursive perspective. In this context, we aim to investigate the role played by images in the instantiation of cross-domain mappings in a particular genre. Specifically, we describe and analyze the cognitive-discursive nature and functioning of visual metaphors in political and social cartoons. This paper first explores the concepts of image schemas, image metaphors, and visual metaphors, as well as the notion of metaphoricity in discourse. We then carry out the analysis of multimodal metaphors in a corpus of editorial cartoons that depict the Covid-19 pandemic, and other related issues within social and political contexts. Some of our findings suggest that cartoons often evoke multilayered off-line frames, image metaphors and conceptual metaphors in order to enhance the persuasive power of their semiotic arrangement, especially by inviting their audience to actively participate in meaning-construction processes

Malay Editorial Cartoons in the 1930s: Humour and Sarcasm in Visualising the Other

This article defines Malay identity through their portrayal of the Malay Other - the Arabs, Indian Muslims and the Europeans. The Arabs and Peranakan Arabs were identified as foreigners in disguise, the Europeans colonisers as harbingers of modernity. From this perspective not much have been written, using editorial cartoons in Malaysia. This article then focuses on the depiction by the Malay of what constitutes the foreigner (and the West). The medium of the cartoon was a recent innovation in Malay-language newspapers, having first appeared in the first issue of Warta Jenaka a weekly pictorial newspaper on 7 September of 1936. This article surveys three major periodicals in the 1930s including that of Warta Ahad and Utusan Zaman in their construction of ambivalence toward colonialism and Western influence. These were the inter-war years. The periodicals capture Malay sentiments couched in humor and sarcasm ranging from the proximate culture of the Arabs to British or European notions of race, modernity and progress. It is cognizant of the colonial condition and the milieu and the inherent character of the Malay press, serving as instruments of criticism and satire. The visual ethno- nationalistic discourse is observed with regard to the trajectory of modernity brought into Malay awareness during the period.

READING BEYOND THE STROKES: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF EDITORIAL CARTOONS ON A CAMPUS NEWSPAPER OF A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES

Editorial cartoons have an unchallenged history as a unique and important artefact in both political and cultural discourses. In journalism, they offer varied insights and may eventually alter beliefs and opinions, influence politics, trigger discussions, and give life to ideas. This paper investigates the signs and meanings of editorial cartoons published in a campus newspaper of a tertiary school in the Philippines. It anchors on Chandler’s semiotic concepts in analyzing the editorial cartoons that incorporate both the Saussurean dyadic concept of signs, signifier and signified, and the Peircean triadic concept of signs as symbolic indexical, and iconic. It also considers Leymore’s idea of the figure and ground, which identifies the primary, secondary, and tertiary signifiers based on their importance or impact on editorial cartoons. Analysis shows that editorial cartoons contain all types of signifiers, primary, secondary, and tertiary, which work together to effectively convey the intended meanings to its target readers. These signifiers also possess certain characteristics as being symbolic, indexical, and iconic and they blend together to enrich the editorial cartoons’ intended meanings. Furthermore, these editorial cartoons illustrate the newspaper’s perceptions as well as its stand on various issues and concerns relating or affecting the students and the whole academic community. Although these editorial cartoons are only published in the campus newspaper, they do not only deal with important local issues and concerns but in the national and global spheres as well.

Let there be . . . visual optimal innovations: making visual meaning through Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam

This article addresses visual optimal innovations such as memes, advertising images and editorial cartoons which take Michelangelo’s fresco The Creation of Adam as input, and rework it so that novel meaning is created that takes the meaning of the input as base. The authors focus on the cognitive and structural aspects of these kinds of visual stimulus. They argue that visual optimal innovations are aesthetically rewarding owing to how they invite meaning construction, and they further demonstrate that these aspects of visual communication are encoded in human memory to make up entries in a ‘visual lexicon’. The main questions addressed are: What graphic procedures are employed to create such stimuli, and how are they structured? How are existing and novel meanings evoked by visual optimal innovations, and how are they aligned? How are visual optimal innovations processed and interpreted? And, finally, how is all this knowledge – structural and conceptual – cognitively represented?

Folly in the Fourth Estate: Editorial Cartoons and Conflicting Values in Global Media Culture

The editorial cartoon is a touchstone for matters of free expression in the journalistic tradition. Since their early inception in the politically charged engravings of 18th-century pictorial satirist William Hogarth to the present day, editorial cartoons have shone forth as signifiers of comic irreverence and mockery in the face of governmental authority and in the more generalized cultural politics of the times. In democratic nations they have been cast as a pillar of the fourth estate. Nevertheless, they—and the cartoonists, critics, commentators, and citizens who champion them—have also long stood out as relatively easy targets for concerns about where the lines of issues such libel, slander, defamation, and especially blasphemy should be drawn. This goes for Western-style democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. In other words, the editorial cartoon stands at a critical nexus of meaning and public judgment. At issue from one vantage is what it means to promote the disclosure of folly as the foolish conduct of public officials and the stupidity of institutions that are thereby worthy as objects of ridicule. From another vantage, there is the matter of what it is to deplore the comicality in journalistic opinion-making that goes too far. To approach editorial cartoons from the standpoints of free expression and press freedoms is to verge on conflicting values of civil liberty in and around the so-called right to offend. This was true in the age of Hogarth. It was true in the days of famed French printmaker and caricaturist Honoré Daumier, who was imprisoned for six months from 1832 until 1833 after portraying Emperor Louis-Philippe in the L Caricature. It is also particularly true today in a global media age wherein editorial cartoons, whether or not they are syndicated by official newspapers, can traverse geographic and other boundaries with relative ease and efficiency. Furthermore, the 21st century has seen numerous cartoon controversies vis-à-vis what many commentators have referred to as “cartoon wars,” leading to everything from high-profile firings of cartoonists (including in the United States) through bans and imprisonments of artists in Middle Eastern countries to the 2015 shootings of cartoon artists at the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Indeed, if the threshold of the free press is the killed cartoon, the limit point of the freedom of expression is the killed cartoonist. Hence the importance of looking beyond any one editorial cartoon or cartoonist in order to contemplate the comic spirit in certain historical moments so as to discover the social, political, and cultural standards of judgment being applied to the carte blanche of journalism and the comic license of those using graphic caricatures to freely editorialize their takes on the world—or not.

Negative accounting stereotype: Enron cartoons

A sample of editorial cartoons published following the wave of accounting scandals in the United States culminating in the collapse of Enron and the demise of the auditors Arthur Andersen LLP was examined to explore the portrayal of accounting, accountants and auditors. The nature and importance of the cartoons was also investigated. While the examination revealed what cartoonists had to say about accounting, accountants and auditing, the purpose was to ascertain the stereotypes conveyed. The cartoonists working from established preconceptions of accounting and accountants redefined and reshaped accounting stereotypes. They replaced the dull but honest image with a negative one, the fraudulent accountant. However, the image of the male accountant survived. As social critics, the cartoonists focused on the consequences on employees and stockholders but neglected to address the consequences for business institutions.

Spikey blobs with evil grins: understanding portrayals of the coronavirus in South African newspaper cartoons in relation to the public communication of science

This study explores how South African newspaper cartoonists portrayed the novel coronavirus during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show how these cartoons respond to the socio-economic and cultural contexts in the country. Our analysis of how cartoonists represent the novel coronavirus explain how they create meaning (and may influence public sentiments) using colour, morphological characteristics and anthropomorphism as visual rhetorical tools. From a total population of 497 COVID-19-related cartoons published in 15 print and online newspapers from 1 January to 31 May 2020, almost a quarter (24%; n=120) included an illustration of the coronavirus. Viruses were typically coloured green or red and attributed with human characteristics (most often evil-looking facial expressions) and with exaggerated, spikey stalks surrounding the virus body. Anthropomorphism was present in more than half of the 120 cartoons where the virus was illustrated (58%; n=70), while fear was the dominant emotional tone of the cartoons. Based on our analysis, we argue that editorial cartoons provide a useful source to help us understand the broader discursive context within which public communication of science operates during a pandemic.