Las viñetas políticas sobre la crisis griega de la deuda: una aproximación pragmática y cognitiva

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the artist-reader communication in political cartoons. We will define cartoons as a multimodal genre in which meaning is derived from a conceptual integration of image and text. We will present the “blending theory” as a useful model to illustrate how the reader reaches a new humorous reality by the connection of different mental “inputs”. We will describe cooperation within the cartoon as a reflection of contextualisation cues, i.e., those elements that the artist uses to create the cartoon and to help the reader interpret his/her work correctly. Finally, we will identify two different components within the political cartoons message: a) the “jest” and b) the “sting” (the critique). These two components and their corresponding pragmatic processes (pragmatic presuppositions and implicatures) interact with the different levels of interpretation and understanding of a cartoon.