The study takes its point of departure from the firm belief that political cartoons, like many other examples of "visual arguments", amalgamate both visual and verbal expressions to work together in an effort to prompt different responses from the audience. A political caricature is an illustration containing a propaganda message that usually relates to current events or personalities. The main target of this work is to achieve a semiotic analysis of some American political cartoons which depict the Egyptian Revolution of 25 January that took place following a popular uprising that began on Tuesday, 25 January 2011. The main rationale of choosing this idea is apparent in the researcher's desire to examine the most famous stereotypes symbols "signifiers" in some American political cartoons which portray the Egyptian Revolution. The research will try to determine if the social, cultural and even religious background of cartoonists affect their choice of symbols or signifiers or not. The researcher will also work to prove the role of political cartoons in portraying the surrounding circumstances, especially the political ones. This thesis also examines whether the American cartoonists are neutral in their depiction of the Egyptian Revolution, or they depict it as tourists or foreigners regarding their personal experiences only. This work applies two semiotic models in the analysis of the chosen cartoons; Chandler, Kress and Leeuwens’ principles. The major semiotic tools used for the task of analysis are; syntagmatic & paradigmatic strategies, connotation & denotation, rhetorical tropes, modality, and the three visual semiotic meta- functions of Kress and Leeuwen’s; "representational, interpersonal and compositional". |
