Cowboy and misanthrope: a critical (discourse) analysis of Bush and bin Laden cartoons

Discourse and Communication 2 (4):433-457 (2008)
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Abstract

The article investigates the political cartoon construction of two major `players' on the contemporary political stage, and the semio-linguistic and visual rhetorical tools used to achieve this construction, through an analysis of semiotic-discursive aspects of a small corpus of political cartoons in English and Arabic, all about the two `players' — George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden — in the aftermath of 9/11 and within the ongoing `war on terror', followed by a more detailed analysis of two political cartoon texts from the corpus — one in Arabic about Bush and the other in English about bin Laden. A rationale for the combination of semiotics and critical discourse analysis and a discussion of the nature and functions of political cartoon are provided. These are followed by a review of the relevant literature with a focus on political cartoons. The analysis, drawing upon the `dispositive' model and the incongruity theory of humor, addresses the verbal and visual aspects of the cartoons, instances of blending, incongruity and visual metaphors therein. Some major notions in CDA, for example Van Dijk's ideological square and Chilton's legitimation and proximization, are also utilized in examining the sample cartoons. The detailed analysis of the two cartoons elaborates on the salient features and generic aspects of the sample, specifically on incongruity, blending and visual metaphor, toward an understanding of the messages of the cartoons, the tools used to convey these messages and how they contribute to the ongoing war of ideological misrepresentation.

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References found in this work

More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor.George Lakoff & Mark Turner - 1990 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48 (3):260-261.
The literary mind.Mark Turner - 1996 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Legitimation in discourse and communication.Theo Van Leeuwen - 2007 - Discourse and Communication 1 (1):91-112.
Blending basics.Seana Coulson & Todd Oakley - 2001 - Cognitive Linguistics 11 (3-4).
The Aesthetics of Comics.David Carrier & Michael A. Oliker - 2001 - Journal of Aesthetic Education 35 (4):119.

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