Metaphorical Realization of Ideology in Political Caricatures: the Role of Pictorial Metaphors in Critical Discourse Analysis

This paper analyzes the realization of ideology in political caricatures based on two approaches of Cognitive Semantics and Critical Discourse Analysis. In this research, among Iranian caricatures of 1391-92 years criticizing USA's war policies, six caricatures were selected and divided into two pictorial and verbo-pictorial groups. The data were analyzed on the basis of multi-modal metaphor theory of Forceville (1994), and the claims of Musolf (2012) on the role of conceptual metaphors in CDA. The questions were how ideological metaphors are represented in two verbo-pictorial modes of Caricatures, and how these conceptual metaphors are used as a useful tool in achieving the ideological goals of CDA. The results illustrate that the concept of FREEDOM, PEACE, SECURITY, and HEALTH are conceptualized through the opposite concept of WAR. In the first group of caricature, the symbols of Freedom and Peace were used in the pictures and the mapping of war semantic elements on these target domains were evoked by two techniques of fusion and unexpected filling of a schema. In the second group of caricatures, in which personification of USA help expressing the metaphors of the pictures, the same techniques were used in the mapping of targets and the source domain of WAR. Moreover, the anchoring role of written message in the baloonics expresses the meaning relations between targets and source concept. Finally, the uses of metaphor have great roles in the creation of political irony and in the creating, reveling and expressing the political ideological relations a caricaturist wants to do.