DefinePK

Abstract

            Globalization has influenced how individuals transmit their meaning and made meaning delivery multimodal. The underlying premise of multimodal analysis, an emerging paradigm, is that there are several more instruments for creating meaning, such as cartoons, photos, music, diverse gestures and symbols, and more, that, when combined with words, convey meaning. Political cartoons are among the greatest multimodal media for creating meaning, especially at the time of general elections. This study's primary goals were to examine the kinds of political ideologies, hidden meanings, and messages that political cartoons in e-newspapers about the 2018 election portray; to investigate the ways in which political cartoons convey messages; and to understand the literary techniques used. The nature of this study was descriptive. Data collection for this study was delimited to online Pakistani English newspapers. Political cartoons made up the study's population. Using purposive sampling, nine political cartoons were chosen from three English-language Pakistani newspapers (Pakistan Today, The Nation, and Dawn). All cartoons were chosen by the researchers themselves during a three-month period (May to July 2018). Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996; 2006) framework, which was based on Halliday (1978) Systematic Functional Linguistic (SFL) and multimodal resources, was adapted and modified by researcher used to analyze the data. Only the interactive Meta functions of the chosen visual compositions were analyzed in accordance with the adapted analytical framework. Three political cartoons chosen from each e-newspaper were subjected to multimodal analysis. The results show that political cartoons express meanings that words cannot, in addition to language itself. The study findings demonstrated the substantial significance political cartoons have in expressing hidden meanings, ideas, and ideologies by deploying various literary elements and devices. It was determined that political cartoons are a powerful tool for conveying messages both orally and nonverbally. According to this study, political cartoons may be utilized in English Language Teaching (ELT) classes to teach students about the creation of meaning, sense and awareness within metafunction of verbal and nonverbal language.