Rise of Interest in Studies on Political Cartoons and Their Ideas

Recently, the scientific research in applied linguistics has witnessed an increase interest in the study of political cartoons and depicted ideas from various perspectives such as pragmatic, critical discourse analysis (CDA), semiotics, multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) and visual rhetoric. 

Studies Review on Political Catroons and Depicted Ideas

Many studies on political cartoons centred on their functions and nature. For example, In his study, Striecher examined the function of political cartoons as communicative tool and explored its influence on public opinion. His finding proved that political cartoons have the ability to clearly iform people of an event or news and to comment on social and political issues. He claimed that visual messages facilitate an effective communication. Medhurst and deSousa focused on the rhetorical form of political cartoons. Malawate focused on the importance of political cartoons to newspaper. His study reveals the effectiveness of political cartoons over editorials. Sani investigated the role of political cartoons in setting social agenda through projecting social issues via mass the media. He explained the importance of visual communication in illustrating issues and events. His findings proved that political cartoons serve as a vehicle of setting social agenda. He claimed that cartoons represented an effective medium of communication

Many previous researchers resort to use pragmatic as analytical framework to examine political cartoons. For example, Nonyerem intended to expose the hidding message or information in the funny stories of cartoons through the pragmatic analysis of “leadership” cartoons in selected Nigerian dailies. He findings indicate that the pragmatic reading of cartoons is vital to interpret the real meaning and to project serious messages to the reader. Juprizal, Effendu, Mukhiayar conducted pragmatic analysis of “online political cartoons” and their impact on EFL students, pragmatic competence (PC), authentic vocabulary knowledge (AVK) and language higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). In another study, Al kayed and kitishat investigated the violation of the Grice maxims in Jordanian newspapers’ cartoons. They found out that political cartoons flout the conversational maxims in order to send implied messages and meanings to the readers. Also, Oluremi and Ajepe conducted a pragmatic reading of Nigeria’s 2015 political cartoons published four months before the 2015 elections. His analysis reveals the interaction between the political cartoons and Mey’s 2001 theory of progmeme.

In addition, critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been used as an approach to study political cartoons. For instance, Mazid used the CDA semiotic-discursive aspects to examine the ideological representations in Bush and Bin Laden’s cartoons; to expose the implicit and explicit meanings and to express the hiding informations, strategies and ideologies. Naghy examined media cartoons related to Gaza conflict where she explored the role of political cartoons in controlling people’s mind and their contribution in the process of redirecting people’s ideologies in favor of Palestians. She claimed that the political cartoons have a crucial role in depicting Palestinians as victims while Israel as the devil. Also, Al Hamdi examined the use of political cartoons during popular protests. He focused on the 2011 Tunisia uprisings as a case study. He found out that political cartoons were used to reflect critically the political, economical, and social conditions in Tunisia during the transitory phase.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are only a few examples of such studies about political cartoons and their ideas. Various perspectives for examination has made political cartoons a powerful interdisciplinary research field crossing different research such as sociology, education, communication and psychology.