A media coup d’oeil: the political cartoon discourse between images and imaginaries

Abstract

This paper presents a description of discursive genre called political cartoon, based on the assumptions of the Semiolinguistic Theory of Discourse Analysis (CHARAUDEAU, 2010). In this perspective, these multimodal texts are limited to the clauses of a media communicative contract, whose restrictions lead to the production of a commented event, balanced between a double desire to inform and to capture. On the other hand, enjoying the freedom of a humorous and ironic “trace text”, and completely distant from journalistic objectivity, the enunciator explores specific strategies of the appeal of emotion rather than of reason, which is anchored in diverse knowledges that permeate the communicative exchanges and contribute to collective systems of representations. Through support of Theory of Social Representations (MOSCOVICI, 2013; JODELET, 2001), we will see how these knowledges are explored in the verb-visual commentary of the cartoon, impregnating its highly condensed structure with senses – which cannot be interpreted at first sight. The piece that serves as an object of study here is authored by the cartoonist Carlos Latuff and translates an intertextual point of view about education in Rio de Janeiro.