In this talk, based on (Zhang & Forceville 2020), and following on the talk in the morning in the Linguistics/English Seminar “What steers the interpretation of a visual or multimodal message? A relevance theory perspective” (based on Forceville 2020), we will have the pleasure to hear and discuss with a prominent researcher in multimodality, cognitive linguistics and relevance theory. We are going out for dinner with Charles after the talk, so please email Jordan if you wish to join - by Monday, April 29.

Political cartoons make meaning by drawing on scenarios that must be immediately recognizable by their intended audience. Crucial meaning-making mechanisms in these scenarios are verbo-visual ensembles of metaphors and metonymies. In this paper the corpus consists of 69 Chinese and 60 American political cartoons published in 2018 and 2019 that pertain to the two nations’ trade conflict. By examining the cross-cultural similarities and differences between metaphors and metonymies, we have charted how Chinese and American cartoonists portray this trade conflict. In the presentation attention will be paid to methodological challenges we faced. At the end it is argued that a complete interpretation of a cartoon can, and should, be enriched with insights provided by other analytical instruments besides metaphor and metonymy.