| Multimodal discourse refers to the discourse compounded by image, chart, and so onbesides text, and also can be defined as meaningful text that contains more than one symboliccoding.This thesis, taking English political cartoons as the object of study, aims to analyze theeffect of the means of expressions like salience, distance, angle, etc. on interactive meaningconstruction. Questionnaire design and data collection both were conducted on two cartoons inthis paper. According to the theory of visual grammar, qualitative and quantitative methods areadopted.Three findings are obtained in this paper. First, salient elements in multimodal discoursewhich guide readers to think according to the intention of the author are key and cardinal.Second, considering the special feature of meanings illustrated with political cartoons, salientelements are generally criticized and praised, and the feature is amplified by means of saliencetogether with fixation, distance, hue, and size, which makes the author‘s creation accepted andrecognized by readers. Furthermore, the sizes of political cartoons often mean power. Thesalient element establishes the intimate relations with readers by using social distance, eyescontact, and invites readers to participate in the world of images.This study has conducted an analysis of multimodal discourse in English politicalcartoons, and analyzed the political cartoons using visual grammar. This paper aims to enrichthe study of cartoons, enable people‘s image reading, and help people read political cartoonsbetter. |
PDF Full Text Request