Representation of idiomatic images in editorial cartoons

This article explores the way figurative idioms are creatively manipulated in political cartoons to shape messages. Editorial cartoons provide the ideal site for creativity as they aim to challenge political power and lampoon political actors employing expressive linguistic and, more importantly, pictorial resources. Being endowed with imagery, figurative idioms serve as useful tools to impact the viewers emotionally. They function as vehicles of persuasion by drawing on features of figurative framing. This article is set in the framework of cognitive semantics, which posits that the actual meanings of figurative idioms and their literal readings are connected, the mental image serving as a bridge between them. Bearing on it, the mental image can have both verbal and pictorial representation in a multimodal text. The sample for this empirical study encompasses editorial cartoons published on The Guardian site in 2020-2023. These graphical texts contain figurative idioms expressed pictorially and/or linguistically. The research aims to reveal the distinctive features of figurative idioms’ creative application in editorial cartoons as a particular genre of visual communication. The study adopts multimodal critical discourse analysis in the examination of synergetic interplay in verbal and pictorial representations of figurative idioms within the frame of a semiotically heterogenious text. The article focuses on modifications that idioms undergo in cartoons to fit a specific context. Such modifications are viewed from the perspective of multimodal creativity as they involve both linguistic and pictorial modes. The study shows that grammatical, lexical and structural alterations of basic idioms are determined by the context and the functional pragmatics of editorial cartoons. Specifically, graphical designers modify conventional idioms to build negative connotations and to create a humorous effect. The findings suggest that in editorial cartoons creative manipulation of figurative idioms aligns with the use of alternative expressive means. Importantly, the research makes visible the employment of pun and paronymy, expressed both verbally and pictorially, to enhance imagery of graphical texts and to generate humour. The study shows that satirical depiction of social actors and events relies on creative recontextualization of intertextual and interdiscursive elements. The approach developed in this study offers new avenues of exploration of idiomatic creativity in different types of semiotically heterogenious texts. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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