Metaphor, Metonymy and Conceptual Integration in Satirical Discourse: British and American Political Cartoons
Abstract
Verbal and visual metaphorical and metonymic images are key instruments of political satire, enabling the concise and expressive conveyance of evaluative attitudes toward socio-political realities. However, the multi-level mechanism of creating and decoding such figurative constructs in polycode cartoon texts has not yet received a systematic account. The aim of this study is to identify the stages of encoding and decoding metaphorical and metonymic images, expressed visually and/or verbally in English-language political cartoons, and to establish the role of linguistic and pictorial codes in meaning-making through conceptual integration. The empirical material comprises 200 political cartoons (100 British and 100 American) published as editorial illustrations in The Guardian and The U.S. News & World Report from May 2024 to May 2026. The study draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, Johnson), Conceptual Integration Theory (Fauconnier, Turner), and the principles of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (O’Halloran); Trim’s (2024) six-level framework for monomodal political media texts is adapted to model the stages of figurative creation and decoding. The findings reveal that Trim’s six-level model is transformed into a five-level structure: cultural and political contexts are integrated at a single level, while the visual/verbal metaphor, metonymy, or metaphtonymy is distinguished as the initial decoding stage. The analysis identifies the dominance of the pictorial code and three types of intersemiotic ties between the visual figurative unit and the verbal component: weak (the linguistic element is uninformative), elaborative (the verbal code provides minor clarifications of reference and/or enhances the satirical message), and key (the linguistic component determines the reference domain of the visual image). Special attention is given to cases of metaphtonymy, in which metaphor and metonymy function inseparably within a single polycode sign. The study contributes to the investigation of metaphorical encoding and decoding stages in semiotically heterogeneous texts and opens avenues for a comparative analysis of British and American satirical traditions.