Text categories of messages in the form of a political cartoon

Chair of Theory and Methods of Teaching of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Institute of Humanities and Pedagogy, Togliatti State University, 14, Belorusskaya St., 445020, Togliatti Russia

^* Corresponding author: g.denisova@tltsu.ru

Abstract

The article deals with the political cartoon as a creolized text consisting of two parts (verbal and visual) and identifies the potential of verbal and visual means to express text categories in messages under study. The author comes to a conclusion that political cartoons are characterized with the same text categories as a homogeneous verbal text. The text categories of a political cartoon are expressed with verbal and visual means organized in personal, local, temporal and modal structures of the message. Analysis of Walter Hanel's cartoons proves the following: (1) the cartoonist expresses his own opinion using constituents of the personal structure; (2) narration perspective of the message causes its emotional tinge and subjective evaluation (the artist uses verbal means, which have certain connotations or develop ones in connection with the picture, and advantages of visual means, constituents of the modal structure); (3) constituents of the local structure function as direct and indirect local references, indicate place of action and create space of a cartoon; (4) using advantages of both codes and appealing to addressee's background knowledge, the cartoonist can specify time actual for the message, introduce traces of the past into the present and look into the future. The author of the article inclines to the opinion that verbal and visual means are equal in their contribution to the message in the form of a political cartoon