Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION

The case of France and the US

Résumé

The objective of this article is to study the representations of IMMIGRATION in newspaper cartoons, with a specific focus on MOTION. Our work fits into the field of cognitive linguistics, and more particularly the Conceptual Metaphor Theory expanded to multimodal settings (Lakoff/Johnson 1980; Forceville 2009). The corpus under scrutiny is composed of 28 cartoons selected in American and French newspapers. Through the analysis of the representations of IMMIGRATION MOTION, we observe that the mismatch between the textual and pictorial modes creates cognitive dissonance, which is in turn strengthened by complex networks of metaphors. We notice discrepancies in metaphor interactional patterns between French and American cartoons and their representations of IMMIGRATION: the former favors integration while chaining is more salient in the latter. Regardless of the language (and culture), the depiction of IMMIGRATION is mostly accompanied by metaphors linked to violence (literal or symbolic).