Trump’s image in a political cartoon: analysis of expressive potential
This study is an attempt to describe the expressive means used in American political cartoons covering the most prominent events before and during Donald Trump’s presidency. Political cartoon as a type of political text is widely adopted in political communication with the aim to manipulate people’s minds. The results of the study show the functioning of verbal units at all language levels and nonverbal means (visual metaphors and symbols) that help cartoonists show the Trump’s presidency in a humorous way and shape public opinion about the 45th president of the United States. The graphical means comprising capitalization, font and red colour captivate the reader’s attention by emphasizing the key issues in the cartoons. Phonetic means which are sound effects and sound repetitions stress Trump’s emotional condition, underlying his immediate reactions to any criticism. The lexical means such as comparison and antithesis draw the parallel between Trump and other political actors stating Trump’s role in American politics as a leader. Syntactic techniques (exclamatory, interrogative, and rhetorical sentences) point at Trump’s problem solving skills, and his original ideas. Symbols, hidden in the cartoons, contain extra linguistic information that is necessary for understanding the cartoonist’s message. Visual metaphors transmit the information through easily recognized vivid images and comparisons.
Seredina, E. V. and Dekhnich, O. V. (2022). Trump’s image in a political cartoon: analysis of expressive potential, Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 8 (2), 96-107. DOI: 10.18413/2313-8912-2022-8-2-0-7
While nobody left any comments to this publication.
You can be first.
Aliefendioglu, H. and Yetin, A. (2011). Don't take it personally, it's just a joke: The masculine media discourse of jokes and cartoons on the Cyprus issue, Women'sStudies International Forum, 34 (2), 101-111. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2010.08.002 (In English)
Al-Masri, H. (2016). Jordanian editorial cartoons: A multimodal approach to the cartoons of Emad Hajjaj, Language & Communication, 50, 45-58. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.09.005(In English)
Charteris-Black, J. (2017). Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority, Bloomsbury, London, UK. (In English)
Chilton, P. and Schaffner, C. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice, Routledge, London, UK. (In English)
Dijk, T. A. (2004). Discourse and power, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, USA. (In English)
Dugalich, N. M. (2018). Political cartoon as a genre of political discourse, RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics, 9 (1), 158-172. http://doi.org/10.22363/2313-2299-2018-9-1-158-172 (In English)
Dunmire, P. L. (2019). America’s most precious resource: The future in American national identity and foreign policy, Futures, 112. http://doi.org/10.1016/J.FUTURES.2019.06.007(In English)
Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power, Longman, London, UK. (In English)
Gabets, A. and Gené, A. (2016). Pragmalinguistic features of American presidents’ inaugural addresses of the last century (1913-2013), Journal of Language and Education, 2 (3), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.17323/2411-7390-2016-2-3-22-31(In English)
García, T. M. (2018). Donald J. Trump: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Estudios Institucionales, 5 (8), 47-73. http://doi.org//10.5944/eeii.vol.5.n.8.2018.21778 (In English)
Karnyushina, V. and Makhina, A. (2017). Lexical and grammatical means of distancing strategy performed in American political discourse, Journal of Language and Education, 3 (1), 85-101. https://doi.org/10.17323/2411-7390-2017-3-1-85-101(In English)
Khir, A. N. (2012). A semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns, Language Value, 4 (1), 97-117. http://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.6 (In English)
Kreis, R. S. (2017). The “Tweet Politics” of President Trump, Journal of Language and Politics, 16, 607-618. http://doi.org/10.1075/JLP.17032.KRE(In English)
Kwon, I. (2019). Conceptual mappings in political cartoons: A comparative study of the case of nuclear crises in US–North Korean relations, Journal of Pragmatics, 143, 10-27. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.01.021(In English)
Oluremi, T. A. (2019). Pragmeme of Political Humour in Selected Nigerian Political Cartoons, Journal of Language and Education, 5 (4), 66-80. https://doi.org/10.17323/jle.2019.9682(In English)
Randour, F., Perrez, J. and Reuchamps, M. (2020). Twenty years of research on political discourse: A systematic review and directions for future research, Discourse & Society, 31, 428–443. http://doi.org//10.1177/0957926520903526 (In English)
Ross, A. S. and Caldwell, D. (2020). ‘Going negative’: An APPRAISAL analysis of the rhetoric of Donald Trump on Twitter, Language & Communication, 70, 13-27. http://doi.org//10.1016/j.langcom.2019.09.003 (In English)
Saul, A. and Chase, W. R. (2019). Conversation analysis at the ‘middle region’ of public life: Greetings and the interactional construction of Donald Trump's political persona, Language & Communication, 69, 67-83. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2019.08.001(In English)
Sheigal, E. I. (2000). Semiotika politicheskogo diskursa [Semiotics of Political Discourse], Dc. Sc. Thesis, Volgograd State Pedagogical University, Volgograd, Russia. (In Russian)
Tsakona, V. (2009). Language and image interaction in cartoons: Towards a multimodal theory of humor, Journal of Pragmatics, 41 (6), 1171-1188. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.12.003 (In English)
Vorkachev, S. G. (2021). Semiotics of symbol according to the data of the Russian scientific discourse, Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 7 (3), 3-14. http://doi.org/10.18413/2313-8912-2021-7-3-0-1 (In Russian)
Wang, Y. and Liu, H. (2017). Is Trump always rambling like a fourth-grade student? An analysis of stylistic features of Donald Trump’s political discourse during the 2016 election, Discourse & Society, 29, 299-323. http://doi.org//10.1177/0957926517734659(In English)
Wodak, R. (1997). Yazyk. Diskurs. Politika [Language. Discourse. Policy], Peremena, Volgograd, Russia. (In Russian)
Wright, A. J. (2002). See you in the funny papers: Anesthesia in cartoons and comics, International Congress Series, 1242, 547-551. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0531-5131(02)00785-9(In English)
Zhao, Y., Wu, T. and Zhang, H. (2020). A Typical Politician vs. a Lunatic Businessman: Different Language Styles of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, International Journal of English Linguistics, 10, 26. http://doi.org//10.5539/ijel.v10n2p26(In English)
Zhikhareva, N. A. and Yakovleva, E. P. (2021). Stereotypes as means of influencing mass consciousness in political discourse, Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 7 (2), 31-40. http://doi.org/10.18413/2313-8912-2021-7-2-0-4(In English)