Conceptual blending and (im)politeness in political cartooning

Abstract

Abstract This paper is meant to give an account of multimodal (im)politeness in political cartoons, drawing primarily on critical discourse studies (CDS) (in particular, Teun van Dijk’s notion of “context models” and Paul Chilton’s concept of “critical discourse moments”), blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner 2002), and speech act theory (especially Geoffrey Leech’s most recent revisions of Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson’s notions of negative and positive face). There is of course an abundant literature on blending theory, but the potential of this theory for analysing face-enhancing or face-threatening multimodal discourse has not been fully realised. It is shown that political cartoons can exemplify not only face attack but also face enhancement, and that blending theory can contribute to the comprehending and critique of sociopolitical action or linguistic and nonlinguistic forms of control that may operate in the world. The article thus demonstrates the value that results from merging critical cognitive linguistics and sociopragmatics.