Pictorial Metaphor and Metonymy in Citizen Cartoons within the Cognitive Approach; A Case Study on Book and Book-reading

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of pictorial metaphors in creating and conveying the message of citizen cartoons. For this purpose, in the form of a case study, seven cartoons on the topic of "booksand book-reading" related to 2019 were extracted from several Persian-language websites and have been analyzed based onConceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999; Lakoff, 1993) and Multimodal Metaphor Theory (Forceville, 1996, 2008, 2009). The main objectives of researchare what conceptual metaphors and pictorial metaphors have been used to express the concept of book-reading (or studying) and what their source domainsare. The results show that metaphors of ‘study is journey’, ‘study is agriculture’, ‘study is finding treasure’, ‘study is health (or life)’, ‘study is purification of mind’, ‘study is raining’ and ‘study is Light’are the underlying conceptual metaphors in the studied cartoons. In all these conceptual metaphors, the target domain (i.e. the study) is represented visually by the image of the book. The interaction between metaphor and metonymy plays a key role in the formation of pictorial metaphors and transmission of cartoon messages.