The research focuses on analyzing the structural, semantic, functional, and stylistic characteristics of a collection of modern political media cartoons. The corpus was formed through continuous sampling of various electronic resources such as news websites like "The Economist", "Newsweek", "The Week". "Review Journal", and "Los Angeles Daily News". The cartoons are used to accompany, inform, criticize, attract attention, or illustrate the relevant content. The collection also includes separate cartoon sections, which contain thematic sub-sections dedicated to significant social events and are featured in websites like "Politico", "The Mercury News", "US News and World Report", "The Denver Post". Finally, the collection contains cartoons presented in thematic sections structured into webpages like "Cartoon Movement", "Go Comics", "The Daily Cartoonist" and "CARTOONSTOCK", which create images of American politicians.
Through a thorough analysis of American political media cartoons, the author has identified their primary structural and compositional attributes. These include the depiction of characters and objects, which may not resemble their real-life counterparts, yet implicitly convey information. The implicitness of the content is further emphasized by specific facial features such as the nose, chin, hairstyle, and forehead, as well as personal accessories like glasses, watches, and cufflinks, and wardrobe elements like ties, suits, and hats.
After analyzing a corpus of illustrative material, we have identified two types of political media cartoons: non-verbal (68%) and partially verbal (32%).
It has been proven that the meaning of a cartoon is not always a straightforward combination of the meanings of the objects or characters depicted. Sometimes, important meanings are conveyed through the image of objects or creatures that have a hidden meaning. This requires some background knowledge from the viewer to decode. The placement of objects or characters in the image (background or foreground), as well as the proportions of the image elements (the size of individual body parts, some characters or objects compared to others), also play a role in the meaning conveyed. Larger objects or characters may carry more weight, evoke certain associations (a larger nose is lie), or even bring a smile to the viewer's face due to their unusual appearance.
Structural and semantic analysis of political media cartoons has revealed that they have a multimodal nature, comprising both verbal and non-verbal elements. These elements are interdependent and can be classified into three types of correlation: complementary, parallel and zero. Complementary correlation (33%) refers to situations where verbal and non-verbal elements work together in a complementary manner. Parallel correlation (28%) is observed when non-verbal components complement the verbal ones, which can be further explained through captions and ironic statements of characters on certain events. This facilitates the process of understanding the message. Political media cartoons that contain too complex a combination of modes without proper contextual support, or those that do not have any verbal component (or have a minimal one), have a zero correlation (39%).
It has been observed that the simplest non-verbal components of certain symbolic prototypes or objects can perform an exclusively informative function in terms of their structure, composition, and meaning. For instance, political symbols of two competing parties during elections serve as informative tools without evoking any additional associations or carrying any pragmatic load. The primary goal of such cartoons is to draw attention to the participants of the election campaign.
The corpus of illustrative material identifies several functions performed by contemporary American political media cartoons: deictic (29%), attractive (23%), demonstrative (17%), informative (11%), satirical (8%), expressive (6%), and critical (6%).
Political mass media cartoons employ various stylistic devices such as metaphor (27%), metonymy (16%), metaphtonymy (10%), allegory (10%), wordplay (14%) and allusion (23%) to effectively communicate their message. These stylistic devices not only help in conveying the essence of the message accurately, but also add imagery and expression to it, and can express the meaning explicitly or implicitly in a multimodal manner.
The use of multiple stylistic techniques is fascinating but can make it difficult to understand. Therefore, it requires careful planning of the composition, taking into account the socio-cultural context and knowledge of the target audience. Scientifically proven approaches and applied methods in the field of multimodality have shown the effectiveness of chosen tools and have made it possible to clearly form images of American politicians, largely due to non-verbal components such as facial features, accessories, and clothing.
