7
Preface: Multimodal tropes in contemporary corpora
This special issue is the result of a conference which was organized on May 19th
and 20th, 2022 by the Linguistics Research Center (Centre d’Études Linguistiques
- Corpus, Discours et Sociétés) at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University
(France). The aim consisted in bringing together various researchers working
empirically on figures of speech and adopting a multimodal approach.
Monomodal metaphors have recently been the focus of a vast majority of
studies on linguistics imagery, for example in the fields of literature and
linguistics (verbal metaphors) or in the field of visual studies (pictorial
metaphors). According to Forceville (2009: 23), monomodal metaphors could be
conceived as “metaphors whose target and source are exclusively or predominantly
rendered in one mode” and he, moreover, argues that modes
“include, at least, the following: (1) pictorial signs; (2) written signs; (3) spoken
signs; (4) gestures; (5) sounds; (6) music; (7) smells; (8) tastes; (9) touch.”
Müller/Cienki (2009: 299) distinguish between two different modes: “[…] what
is expressed orally and perceived primarily aurally as sound (the oral/aural
modality)” on the one hand, and the “bodily forms and movements in space
which are primarily perceived visually (the spatial/visual modality)” on the
other hand. Hence, multimodal metaphors are defined as relying on different
modes: “In contrast to monomodal metaphors, multimodal metaphors are
metaphors whose target and source are each represented exclusively or
predominantly in different modes” (Forceville 2009: 24). In other words, the
source domain and the target domain are rendered in different modes.
If the main area of multimodal research was initially multimodal metaphors, a
growing number of research started to investigate the role of multimodal
metonymies, among other tropes. Forceville (2019: 371) rightly points out that
“we ‘live by metaphors’ – but we live by many other things – metonyms, stories,
colour symbolism… – as well”, which calls for theoretical, methodological and
empirical improvement (cf. Forceville 2019). Consequently, multimodal metaphors
and metonymies should not exclusively be studied, but also any other
type of multimodal tropes (such as hyperbole, irony, allegory, antithesis,
oxymoron, onomatopoeia, etc.), following what Forceville (2019) calls a
“Cognitive Trope Theory”. The five papers in this special issue contribute to the
metaphorik.de 34/2023
8
study of the multimodal dimension of these tropes, as well as the combination
of multimodal metaphors with less frequently used tropes as mentioned above.
Finally, the main bulk of research dealing with multimodal tropes has
essentially advertisements, be it for profit, non-profit, institutional, promotional
purposes, etc. (mostly for the combination of the visual and verbal modes).
Other studies engaged with political discourses (mostly with the combination
of the verbal mode and gestures, cf. Charteris-Black (2004); Müller (2009);
Musolff (2016)) and films (cf. Coëgnarts/Kravanja 2012, 2015; Bateman 2012;
Coëgnarts 2019). Less attention has so far been paid to corpora such as comics
(cf. Forceville 2005, 2011), cartoons (cf. Górska 2019), op-ed illustrations,
animation films (cf. Forceville/Jeulink 2011; Fahlenbrach 2017; Forceville/
Paling 2018), logos, banners, placards, posters, street art and wall-paintings,
memes or music. As Forceville (2019: 374) puts it:
It is to be noticed, incidentally, that in most of this work the discussion
of modes partaking in multimodal metaphor is restricted to the visual
and the written-verbal mode. Multimodal metaphor research – and
multimodal discourse analysis more generally – including the sonic
and musical modes is still rare.
It is for this reason that the papers in this special issue focus on various corpora
in an attempt to expanding the research so far conducted on multimodality,
although much remains to be done in this area as well.
The volume opens with a theoretical contribution entitled “Reflections on
developing Multimodal Metaphor Theory into Multimodal Trope Theory” by
Charles Forceville. He discusses the research that has been conducted in the
field of identification and analysis of visual and multimodal tropes, launches
some new proposals, and advocates for a true “multimodal trope theory” based
on cognitivist-oriented work. He concludes that studying the non-verbal and
multimodal manifestations of tropes which have long been considered
exclusively verbal phenomena will undoubtedly benefit research in the field of
communication.
The following contributions in this anthology are case studies that focus on
different corpora and various aspects of multimodal metaphor, and partly on
other tropes:
9
In “Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION - The
case of France and the US”, Aurélie Héois and Bérengère Lafiandra show that
the mismatch between the textual and pictorial modes creates cognitive
dissonance, which is in turn strengthened by complex networks of metaphors.
They also analyse the discrepancies in metaphor interactional patterns between
French and American cartoons and demonstrate that the depiction of
IMMIGRATION is mostly accompanied by metaphors linked to violence (literal or
symbolic).
In her paper entitled “The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath:
Environmental artivism and the visual impacts of metaphors”, Anaïs Augé
investigates the reception and the impact of visual metaphors identified during
two performances produced by the environmental movement Extinction
Rebellion. She examines how different uses of the visual metaphor scenario
SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD may affect the
public while also raising awareness about the climate crisis.
In the fourth paper of this issue, “Brexit as an oven-ready pie? A case study of
Boris Johnson’s BREXIT IS A PIE multimodal metaphor”, Pauline Rodet examines
how BREXIT was and perhaps is still conceptualised as a PIE in different media.
Her study is empirically based on a short video clip, an ad campaign, the 2019
Conservative Party manifesto, and a series of caricatures. The paper shows how
the metaphor was extended and developed through different modes as the
political campaign unfolded and spread.
Finally, in “Multimodal Figuration in Internet Memes”, Silya Benammar
examines the role played by figurative language in memes and discloses the
way it functions. Her analysis focuses on multimodal cases of metaphor,
metonymy and simile and highlights the importance of figurative combinations
raising issues about aspects of categorization in the study of figuration and
multimodal figuration in Internet memes.
To conclude, we would like to thank the editors of metaphorik.de, and
particularly Judith Visser and Sabine Heinemann, with whom we worked
closely, for providing the opportunity to publish the papers in this special issue.
We hope that researchers in the field of multimodality will find this anthology
stimulating and will be inspired to contribute to and further the development
of a “multimodal trope theory”.
metaphorik.de 34/2023
10
Our thanks also go to Kerstin Sterkel for her outstanding support, as always, in
preparing the layout and to Wehrhahn Verlag for publishing the print edition.
Bochum, Bremen, Duisburg-Essen, Flensburg, Graz, Hamburg, Lyon and
Saarbrücken
Denis Jamet, Adeline Terry
Sabine Heinemann, Judith Visser
Martin Döring, Katrin Mutz, Dietmar Osthus, Claudia Polzin-Haumann
References
Bateman, John A./Schmidt, Karl-Heinrich (2012): Multimodal Film Analysis: How
Films Mean, New York: Routledge.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004): Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coëgnarts, Maarten/Kravanja, Peter (2012): “From thought to modality: A
theoretical framework for analysing structural-conceptual metaphor and
image metaphor in film”, in: Image [&] Narrative 13(1), 96-113.
Coëgnarts, Maarten/Kravanja, Peter (eds.) (2015): Embodied cognition and cinema,
Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Coëgnarts, Maarten (2019): “Analyzing metaphor in film: Some conceptual
challenges”, in: Navarro i Ferrando, Ignasi (ed.): Current approaches to
metaphor analysis in discourse, Berlin: De Gruyter, 295-320.
Fahlenbrach, Kathrin (2017): “Audiovisual metaphors and metonymies of
emotions and depression in moving images”, in: Ervas, Francesca/Gola,
Elisabetta/Grazia, Maria (eds.): Metaphor in communication, science and
education, Berlin: De Gruyter, 95-117.
Forceville, Charles (2008): “Metaphor in pictures and multimodal
representations”, in: Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. (ed.): The Cambridge handbook
of metaphor and thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 462-482.
Forceville, Charles (2005): “Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive
Model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie”, in: Journal of Pragmatics
37, 69-88.
Forceville, Charles (2011): “Pictorial runes in Tintin and the Picaros”, in: Journal
of Pragmatics 43, 875-890.
Forceville, Charles (2016): “Visual and Multimodal Metaphor in Film”, in:
Fahlenbrach, Kathrin (ed.): Embodied metaphors in film, television, and video
games: Cognitive approaches, New York: Routledge, 17-32.
11
Forceville, Charles (2019): “Developments in multimodal metaphor studies: A
response to Górska, Coëgnarts, Porto & Romano, and Muelas-Gil”, in:
Navarro i Ferrando, Ignasi (ed.): Current approaches to metaphor analysis in
discourse, Berlin: De Gruyter, 367-378.
Forceville, Charles/Jeulink, Marloes (2011): “The flesh and blood of embodied
understanding: the source-path-goal schema in animation film”, in:
Pragmatics & Cognition 19(1), 37-59.
Forceville, Charles/Paling, Sissy (2018): “The metaphorical representation of
DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films”, in: Journal of Visual
Communication (published ahead of print 21-9-2018 at
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470357218797994).
Górska, Elżbieta (2019): “Spatialization of abstract concepts in cartoons: A case
study of verbo-pictorial image-schematic metaphors”, in: Navarro i
Ferrando, Ignasi (ed.): Current approaches to metaphor analysis in discourse,
Berlin: De Gruyter, 279-294.
Müller, Cornelia/Cienki, Alan (2009): “Words, gestures, and beyond: Forms of
multimodal metaphor in the use of spoken language”, in: Forceville,
Charles J./Urios-Aparisi, Eduardo (eds.): Multimodal metaphor, Volume 11
of Applications of cognitive linguistics, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 297-
328.
Musolff, Andreas (2016): Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios,
London: Bloomsbury.

13
Vorwort: Multimodale Tropen in zeitgenössischen Korpora
Der vorliegende Sonderband ist das Ergebnis einer Konferenz, die am 19. und
20. Mai 2022 am Linguistic Research Center (Centre d’Études Linguistiques
- Corpus, Discours et Sociétés) der Universität Jean Moulin Lyon 3
(Frankreich) stattfand. Ihr Ziel bestand darin, verschiedene Forscher:innen
zusammenzubringen, die sich mit multimodalen Dimensionen verschiedener
Tropen aus einer empirischen Perspektive befassen.
Dies geschah vor dem Hintergrund, dass monomodale Metaphern in den
letzten Jahren im Mittelpunkt der meisten Studien über sprachliche Bilder
standen, beispielsweise in der Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft (verbale
Metaphern) oder im Bereich der visuellen Studien (bildliche Metaphern).
Nach Forceville (2009: 23) können monomodale Metaphern verstanden werden
als „metaphors whose target and source are exclusively or predominantly
rendered in one mode”. Er argumentiert weiterhin, „[that these modi] include,
at least, the following: (1) pictorial signs; (2) written signs; (3) spoken signs; (4)
gestures; (5) sounds; (6) music; (7) smells; (8) tastes; (9) touch.” Müller/Cienki
(2009: 299) unterscheiden im Gegensatz hierzu zwei Modi: „[…] what is
expressed orally and perceived primarily aurally as sound (the oral/aural
modality)” auf der einen Seite und die „bodily forms and movements in space
which are primarily perceived visually (the spatial/visual modality)” auf der
anderen. Multimodale Metaphern definieren sich demnach dadurch, dass sie
sich auf unterschiedliche Modi stützen: „In contrast to monomodal metaphors,
multimodal metaphors are metaphors whose target and source are each
represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes” (Forceville 2009:
24). Die Ursprungs- und die Zieldomäne verteilen sich also auf verschiedene
Modi.
Lag der Schwerpunkt der multimodalen Forschung zunächst auf multimodalen
Metaphern, so begann eine wachsende Zahl von Forschungsarbeiten die Rolle
multimodaler Metonymien und anderer Tropen zu untersuchen. Forceville
(2019: 371) weist zu Recht darauf hin „[that] we ‘live by metaphors’ – but we
live by many other things – metonyms, stories, colour, symbolism… – as well”,
ein Umstand also, der sowohl theoretisch als auch methodologisch und
empirisch Berücksichtigung finden muss.
metaphorik.de 34/2023
14
Folglich sollten nicht nur multimodale Metaphern und Metonymien Gegenstand
von Analysen sein, sondern auch jede andere Art multimodaler Tropen
(wie Hyperbel, Ironie, Allegorie, Antithese, Oxymoron, Onomatopoesie usw.),
die laut Forceville (2019) in eine „Cognitive Trope Theory“ eingehen. Genau an
diesem Punkt setzen die fünf Beiträge in diesem Sonderheft an, indem sie einen
Beitrag zur Untersuchung der multimodalen Dimension dieser Tropen leisten.
(cf. supra).
Der Großteil der Forschung, die sich mit multimodalen Tropen befasst, hat
bislang das Augenmerk im Wesentlichen auf Werbung gelegt, sei es für Profit-,
Non-Profit-, institutionelle oder andere Werbezwecke (meist in Bezug auf die
Kombination von visuellem und verbalem Modus). Andere Studien beschäftigten
sich mit politischen Diskursen (meist in Bezug auf die Kombination von
verbalem Modus und Gesten, vgl. Charteris-Black (2004); Müller (2009); Musolff
(2016)) und Filmen (vgl. Coëgnarts/Kravanja 2012, 2015; Bateman 2012;
Coëgnarts 2019). Weniger beachtet wurden bisher Korpora wie Comics (vgl.
Forceville 2005, 2011), Cartoons (vgl. Górska 2019), Op-Ed-Illustrationen,
Animationsfilme (vgl. Forceville/Jeulink 2011; Fahlenbrach 2017; Forceville/
Paling 2018), Logos, Banner, Plakate, Poster, Street Art und Wall-Paintings,
Memes oder Musik. Wie Forceville (2019: 374) zusammenfasst:
It is to be noticed, incidentally, that in most of this work the discussion
of modes partaking in multimodal metaphor is restricted to the visual
and the written-verbal mode. Multimodal metaphor research – and
multimodal discourse analysis more generally – including the sonic
and musical modes is still rare.
Aus diesem Grund konzentrieren sich die Beiträge in diesem Sonderheft auf
unterschiedliche Korpora und versuchen, die bisher durchgeführte Forschung
zur Multimodalität zu erweitern.
Den Band eröffnet ein theoretischer Beitrag von Charles Forceville mit dem Titel
„Reflections on developing Multimodal Metaphor Theory into Multimodal
Trope Theory”. Er gibt einen Überblick über die Forschung, die im Bereich der
Identifikation und Analyse visueller und multimodaler Tropen bislang
betrieben wurde, schlägt inhaltliche Weiterentwicklungen vor und plädiert für
eine echte „multimodal trope theory”, die theoretisch auf kognitivistischen
Studien fußt. Forceville kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Auseinandersetzung
mit nonverbalen und multimodalen Ausdrucksformen von Tropen, deren
15
Betrachtung lange Zeit auf die verbale Ebene beschränkt war, der Forschung im
Bereich der Kommunikation zweifellos zugutekommen wird.
Die weiteren Beiträge im vorliegenden Sonderband sind Fallstudien, die
unterschiedliche Korpora und verschiedene Aspekte der multimodalen
Metapher und in Teilen anderer Tropen in den Blick nehmen.
Im Beitrag „Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION
- The case of France and the US” zeigen Aurélie Héois and Bérengère Lafiandra,
dass die Diskrepanz zwischen dem Text- und dem Bildmodus zu kognitiven
Dissonanzen führt, die wiederum durch komplexe Metaphernnetzwerke
verstärkt werden. Sie analysieren darüber hinaus die Diskrepanzen in den
Metaphern-Interaktionsmustern zwischen französischen und amerikanischen
Cartoons und verdeutlichen, dass die Darstellung von IMMIGRATION meist von
Metaphern begleitet wird, die mit Gewalt (wörtlich oder symbolisch)
verbunden sind.
In der Studie „The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath: Environmental
artivism and the visual impacts of metaphors” untersucht Anaïs Augé die
Rezeption sowie die Auswirkungen visueller Metaphern, die während zweier
Performances der Umweltbewegung Extinction Rebellion identifiziert wurden.
Sie beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie unterschiedliche Verwendungen des
visuellen Metaphernszenarios SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES ARE
COMMON BLOOD die Öffentlichkeit beeinflussen und gleichzeitig das Bewusstsein
für die Klimakrise schärfen können.
Im vierten Beitrag dieser Ausgabe, „Brexit as an oven-ready pie? A case study
of Boris Johnson‘s BREXIT IS A PIE multimodal metaphor“, analysiert Pauline
Rodet, wie der BREXIT in verschiedenen Medien als PIE konzeptualisiert wurde
und möglicherweise immer noch wird. Ihre Studie stützt sich empirisch auf
einen kurzen Videoclip, eine Werbekampagne, das Parteiprogramm der
Konservativen für 2019 und eine Reihe von Karikaturen. Johnson zeigt, wie die
Metapher im Laufe der politischen Kampagne durch verschiedene Modi erweitert
und weiterentwickelt wurde.
In „Multimodal Figuration in Internet Memes“ untersucht Silya Benammar
schließlich die Rolle und Funktionsweise der figurativen Sprache in Memes.
Ihre Analyse konzentriert sich auf multimodale Fälle von Metapher, Metonymie
und Gleichnis und betont die Relevanz figurativer Kombinationen, die Fragen
metaphorik.de 34/2023
16
zur Kategorisierung bei der Untersuchung von Figuration und multimodaler
Figuration in Internet-Memes aufwerfen.
Abschließend möchten wir uns bei den Herausgeber:innen von metaphorik.de
und insbesondere Judith Visser und Sabine Heinemann für die enge Zusammenarbeit
und Möglichkeit bedanken, die Beiträge in diesem Sonderheft zu
veröffentlichen. Wir hoffen, dass Forscher:innen auf dem Gebiet der Multimodalität
dieses Sonderheft als anregend empfinden und dazu inspiriert
werden, zur Entwicklung einer ‚multimodalen Trophentheorie‘ beizutragen.
Unser Dank geht auch an Kerstin Sterkel für die wie immer hervorragende
Unterstützung bei der Erstellung des Layouts und an den Wehrhahn Verlag für
die Herausgabe der Printausgabe.
Bochum, Bremen, Duisburg-Essen, Flensburg, Graz, Hamburg, Lyon und
Saarbrücken
Denis Jamet, Adeline Terry
Sabine Heinemann, Judith Visser
Martin Döring, Katrin Mutz, Dietmar Osthus, Claudia Polzin-Haumann
Literatur
Bateman, John A./Schmidt, Karl-Heinrich (2012): Multimodal Film Analysis: How
Films Mean, New York: Routledge.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004): Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coëgnarts, Maarten/Kravanja, Peter (2012): „From thought to modality: A
theoretical framework for analysing structural-conceptual metaphor and
image metaphor in film”, in: Image [&] Narrative 13(1), 96-113.
Coëgnarts, Maarten/Kravanja, Peter (eds.) (2015): Embodied cognition and cinema,
Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Coëgnarts, Maarten (2019): „Analyzing metaphor in film: Some conceptual
challenges”, in: Navarro i Ferrando, Ignasi (ed.): Current approaches to
metaphor analysis in discourse, Berlin: De Gruyter, 295-320.
Fahlenbrach, Kathrin (2017): „Audiovisual metaphors and metonymies of
emotions and depression in moving images”, in: Ervas, Francesca/Gola,
Elisabetta/Grazia, Maria (eds.): Metaphor in communication, science and
education, Berlin: De Gruyter, 95-117.
17
Forceville, Charles (2008): „Metaphor in pictures and multimodal
representations”, in: Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. (ed.): The Cambridge handbook
of metaphor and thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 462-482.
Forceville, Charles (2005): „Visual representations of the Idealized Cognitive
Model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie”, in: Journal of Pragmatics
37, 69-88.
Forceville, Charles (2011): „Pictorial runes in Tintin and the Picaros”, in: Journal
of Pragmatics 43, 875-890.
Forceville, Charles (2016): „Visual and Multimodal Metaphor in Film”, in:
Fahlenbrach, Kathrin (ed.): Embodied metaphors in film, television, and video
games: Cognitive approaches, New York: Routledge, 17-32.
Forceville, Charles (2019): „Developments in multimodal metaphor studies: A
response to Górska, Coëgnarts, Porto & Romano, and Muelas-Gil”, in:
Navarro i Ferrando, Ignasi (ed.): Current approaches to metaphor analysis in
discourse, Berlin: De Gruyter, 367-378.
Forceville, Charles/Jeulink, Marloes (2011): „The flesh and blood of embodied
understanding: the source-path-goal schema in animation film”, in:
Pragmatics & Cognition 19(1), 37-59.
Forceville, Charles/Paling, Sissy (2018): „The metaphorical representation of
DEPRESSION in short, wordless animation films”, in: Journal of Visual
Communication (published ahead of print 21-9-2018 at
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470357218797994).
Górska, Elżbieta (2019): „Spatialization of abstract concepts in cartoons: A case
study of verbo-pictorial image-schematic metaphors”, in: Navarro i
Ferrando, Ignasi (ed.): Current approaches to metaphor analysis in discourse,
Berlin: De Gruyter, 279-294.
Müller, Cornelia/Cienki, Alan (2009): „Words, gestures, and beyond: Forms of
multimodal metaphor in the use of spoken language”, in: Forceville,
Charles J./Urios-Aparisi, Eduardo (eds.): Multimodal metaphor, Volume 11
of Applications of cognitive linguistics, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 297-
328.
Musolff, Andreas (2016): Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios,
London: Bloomsbury.

19
Reflections on developing Multimodal Metaphor Theory into
Multimodal Trope Theory
Charles Forceville, University of Amsterdam, dept. of Media Studies
(c.j.forceville@uva.nl)
Abstract
The publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s pioneering Metaphors We Live By (1980) launched
Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which located the essence of this trope in cognition. This model
entails that metaphors in language are no less but also no more than verbal manifestations of
what is in the last resort a cognitive process. Unsurprisingly, scholars studying other
discourses than (exclusively) verbal ones began to research how metaphors could be, and
were, expressed both in co-speech gestures and in visual media. In more recent years,
cognitivist scholars have begun to theorize and analyse verbal manifestations of other tropes
besides metaphor, such as metonymy, antithesis, hyperbole, and irony. A logical next step is
examining if, and if so, how, classic tropes can assume visual and multimodal forms. This
paper discusses work that has been done in this area, launches some new proposals, and
sketches desiderata of a truly “multimodal trope theory.”
Mit der Publikation von Metaphors We Live By entwickelten Lakoff und Johnson 1980 den
Ansatz der kognitiven Metapherntheorie. Er betont im Gegensatz zu anderen Ansätzen die
Relevanz des bildlichen Sprachgebrauchs für das menschliche Denken, Verstehen und
Handeln. Aufbauend auf den Überlegungen von Lakoff und Johnson entwickelte sich eine
umfassende Forschung zu Sprachbildern im Alltagsdiskurs und es ist nicht überraschend,
dass Forscher:innen auch damit begannen, die Relevanz und Bedeutsamkeit von Metaphern
in Interaktion, Gestik sowie für visuelle Medien zu analysieren. Hier entwickelte sich neben
dem Fokus auf die Metapher in den vergangenen Jahren ein zunehmendes Interesse für
Sprachfiguren wie Metonymien, Antithesen, Hyperbeln oder die Ironie. Deren multimodale
Dimensionen und Formen stellen jedoch nach wie vor ein Forschungsdesiderat dar, mit dem
sich der vorliegende Beitrag kritisch auseinandersetzt. Sein Ziel besteht darin, erste
Denkanstöße zu geben, die für die Entwicklung einer adäquaten „multimodalen Theorie der
Sprachfiguren“ wichtig sind.
1. Introduction
Discussing the command of language a good poet possesses, Aristotle famously
wrote in his Poetics that “it is important to use aptly each of the features
mentioned […] but much the greatest asset is a capacity for metaphor. This
alone cannot be acquired from another, and is a sign of natural gifts: because to
use metaphor well is to discern similarities” (1999: 115). However, it took many
centuries before metaphor studies became truly popular, mostly thanks to Black
(1979), Ortony (1979) and Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Particularly Lakoff and
Johnson (1980) emphasized that metaphor is primarily a matter of thought and
metaphorik.de 34/2023
20
only derivatively a matter of language, and thereby pioneered the influential
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Scholars such as Whittock (1990), Carroll
(1994), and Forceville (1996, heavily indebted to Black 1979) took this idea
seriously by embarking on metaphor research involving other modes than
language, mainly focusing on visuals. Research in this area is still in full swing,
not least because robust analyses of metaphor (as of any other phenomenon in
discourse) need to be cognizant of (1) the combination of modes deployed; (2)
the genre to which the discourse belongs; and (3) the medium in which it occurs.
There are still many mode combinations, genres, and media to be studied.
But research needs to expand into a different direction as well. If “metaphor” is
first and foremost a matter of thought, then surely other tropes are, too. It then
makes sense to systematically start investigating which other tropes may be
usefully claimed to have visual and multimodal manifestations. Within CMT
the awareness that metonymy, though less spectacular than metaphor, is no less
crucial in meaning-making gained ground in the early years of the 21st century
(Barcelona 2000; Dirven/Pöring 2002). This insight in turn spawned research on
metonymy in co-speech gesturing (e.g., Mittelberg/Waugh 2009), and in
discourse involving visuals and written language, such as advertising (Peréz-
Sobrino 2017).
The next step is to examine if, and if so, how, any other non-verbal and
multimodal constellations besides metaphor and metonymy can be claimed to
constitute tropes. An affirmative answer would require on the one hand
defining each candidate trope in a mode-independent, conceptual manner, and
on the other hand demonstrating how this candidate trope could manifest itself.
Systematically addressing these questions requires joint efforts by scholars with
expertise in rhetoric and scholars knowledgeable about visual and multimodal
analysis (cf. Tseronis/Forceville 2017a).
In this paper I cannot but scratch the surface of these issues, expanding on ideas
in Forceville (2010, 2019). Examining examples (some of them discussed in my
earlier papers), I will say something about the role of mode, genre, and medium
in analysing visual and multimodal manifestations of metaphor, metonymy,
antithesis, hyperbole, and irony, and sketch some of the problems that need to
be addressed by scholars motivated to extend classic verbal rhetoric into
“Multimodal Trope Theory.”
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
21
2. Some preliminary assumptions
First of all, I subscribe to the view that all communication is governed by the
relevance principle as proposed in Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory/RT
(e.g., Sperber and Wilson 1995; Wilson and Sperber 2012; Clark 2013). In my
formulation, slightly adapted from the original version, the central claim of
relevance theory is that “every act of communication comes with the
presumption of optimal relevance to its envisaged addressee” (Forceville
2020a: 99). Informally phrased, this means that each communicator tries to the
best of his/her/+’s ability to convince the envisaged audience of the message
conveyed (an utterance, a letter, an advertising billboard, a political cartoon, a
film scene…) that it is worth the attention of that audience; that it expresses
pertinent information, attitudes, and/or emotions; and that it is in the
audience’s interest to invest mental energy to understand and (hopefully)
accept the message’s contents. The presumption (not: guarantee!) that a
message is relevant thus amounts to the promise that the envisaged audience
(which can vary from an individual to millions of people) will, in a microscopic
or life-changing way, benefit from processing and accepting the message. It is
to be noted that subscribing to the RT model entails recognizing that, in the last
resort, all communication is rhetorical in that it aims to attain an effect on the
envisaged audience in such a way that this audience changes (the strength of)
its ideas about something at least partly on the basis of the communicated
message.
Secondly, I will assume that one of the strategies that communicators have at
their disposal to persuade audiences of the correctness and/or validity of ideas,
perspectives, and attitudes is the use of tropes (cf. Tseronis 2021, and references
quoted therein). Inasmuch as modern communication becomes ever more
visual and multimodal, it is correspondingly more important to further theorize
not only verbal but also non-verbal and multimodal tropes.
Thirdly, I propose it is impossible to fruitfully analyse multimodal tropes in any
discourse – actually, to analyse anything in discourse – without taking into
account the genre to which the trope (or other phenomenon) examined belongs
(cf. e.g., Altman 1999; Neale 2000; Busse 2014; Frow 2015). Genre is the single
most important pragmatic principle governing the interpretation of masscommunicative
messages (Forceville 2020a: Chapter 5).
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Fourthly, it is necessary to specify what is meant by “mode”. Embarrassingly,
multimodality scholars have hitherto not been able to agree on a definition of
mode, and this issue evokes heated debate (cf. for instance Bateman et al.’s
[2020] response to Forceville [2020b]). There is no space here to go further into
this debate. For present purposes it will have to suffice to present my mode
candidates for mass-communication: visuals; written language; spoken
language; music; sound; and bodily behaviour (the latter including touch,
gestures, postures, manner of movement, and facial expressions; for more
discussion, cf. Forceville 2021).
In the fifth place, it makes good theoretical sense to retain the distinction
between monomodal and multimodal discourse – even though there is growing
consensus that completely monomodal discourse is rare. After all, even a book
without any pictures features visual elements such as different fonts, signals for
chapter divisions, and margins, while purely spoken language cannot help but
draw on the sound mode (pitch, loudness, timbre). In the present paper a trope
will nonetheless be considered monomodal if its key elements (more on which
below) can be identified via information in one mode only; it will be called
multimodal if its key elements can only be identified by accessing information
conveyed in at least two different modes.
Some further comments are in order here. It is to be noted that I have made
“identification” of the key elements partaking in a trope a sufficient criterion for
deciding whether a trope is monomodal or multimodal. But it may well be that
although a trope’s identification is possible by drawing on a single mode –
thereby making the trope “monomodal” – its interpretation may be enriched by,
or even require, the input from (an)other mode(s). If it were to be decided that
both identifiability and interpretability of a trope are necessary criteria for
distinguishing between monomodal and multimodal tropes, the number of
monomodal tropes would be considerably smaller than under the broad
definition adhered to here. Clearly, there is a continuum from monomodal to
multimodal tropes. That said, it is important to remember that monomodal
metaphors remain the norm in (pictureless) books and spoken language, while
even if one should adopt the strict definition it is possible to have completely
monomodal metaphors in visuals, as there are discourses in which the visual
mode suffices for both the identification and the interpretation of a trope.
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
23
3. Identifying and analysing visual and multimodal tropes
3.1 Identifying and analysing visual and multimodal metaphor
In Forceville (1996) I wrote extensively on the identification and interpretation
of a single type of visual and multimodal trope, namely metaphor, adapting the
model developed by Black (1979) – surely the single most important modern
work on metaphor predating Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) CMT – so as to make
it work at a conceptual level. I would now formulate the procedure for
identifying and interpreting a phenomenon as a metaphor as follows:
(i) A discourse expresses, or suggests, two phenomena that in the given
context belong to different semantic domains in such a way that it
invites (or forces) equating them, as if they were the same
phenomenon. The incongruity or salience of the equation or
similarity-relation invites the judgment that it should not be taken
literally – or that it should not be taken only literally (Lankjær
2016: 119; Forceville 2016: 25-26). How the similarity is created
depends crucially on the medium in which the (supposed) metaphor
occurs: similarity between visuals is created by different means than
similarity between musical themes or between sounds or between
gestures. In multimodal metaphors, similarity is typically signalled by
salient synchronous cueing of target and source (cf. for some
discussion Forceville 2006: 384-385).
(ii) On the basis of (i), decide which of the two phenomena is the one that
is (part of) the subject about which something is predicated (= the
metaphor’s target) and which is the one that predicates something
about the target (= the metaphor’s source). Verbalize the metaphor
(irrespective of the mode(s) in which it occurs) in a TARGET A IS SOURCE
B form, or in its dynamic equivalent: TARGET A-ING IS SOURCE B-ING.
(iii) Resolve what feature(s) is/are to be mapped from source to target on
the basis of (a) the context within the discourse; (b) the supposed
intention of the communicator of the metaphor (rooted in the
relevance principle); and (c) your knowledge of the world. It is crucial
to realize that the emotions and valuations conventionally associated
with the source domain (which may differ from one (sub)culture to
another) are typically co-mapped onto the target. Stage (iii) amounts
to interpreting the metaphor.
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Here are some examples. In figure 1a, belonging to the genre of public service
advertising, we see five girls in swimwear, located in what appears to be a
shower block. Three girls are lined up and extend their hands in an odd,
unnatural pose toward a slightly overweight, cowering girl, while a girl in the
background sticks up her hand. Even without the accompanying text, which
begins “One shot is enough,” many viewers will construe a metaphor that can
be verbalized as TAKING PICTURES OF SOMEONE AGAINST HER WILL IS EXECUTING THAT
PERSON BY A FIRING SQUAD. In presenting this metaphor UNICEF warns children
against taking unflattering or private pictures of each other (and subsequently
sharing them on social media). Clearly, the negative emotions and attitudes
pertaining to the source domain are co-mapped onto the target domain. It is
worth observing that some, but not all, viewers will need the accompanying text
to construe the metaphor. For the former the metaphor functions as a
monomodal one, for the latter as a multimodal one. The metaphor’s
interpretability is of course aided by the fact that in English one can “shoot”
both bullets and photographs.
Fig. 1a: “One shot is
enough.” Public service
ad by UNICEF (2015)
Fig. 1b: Cartoon by Chen
Song, China Daily 18.07.2019
Fig. 1c: Screenshot from
“The Wound” (Anna
Budanova, 2013)
Figure 1b, part of the corpus analysed in Zhang/Forceville (2020), shows a
Chinese political cartoon providing a perspective on the Sino-US trade conflict,
presenting the metaphor TRADE CONFLICT IS PLAYING TWO DIFFERENT GAMES. At the
moment of the cartoon’s publication presumably most viewers would not need
the help of the text “trade talks” (written on the table) to construe the metaphor
(which would thus be monomodal for these viewers). What is minimally
mapped is the awareness that two opponents playing different games will by
definition not be able to agree on the rules of the game – yielding the
interpretation that any negotiations to resolve the trade conflict are bound to
fail. As in figure 1a, the negative valuations of the source domain are co-mapped
onto the target.
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
25
Figure 1c, a screenshot from the short animation film “The Wound,” discussed
by Forceville/Paling (2021), depicts a monster. From the narrative context of the
film it is clear that this monster is to be construed as the source domain of the
metaphor DEPRESSION IS A MONSTER. Mappable features are scariness, unwantedness,
dangerousness – and again, the negative emotions the source domain
evokes are a crucial part of the mapping.
3.2 Identifying and analysing visual and multimodal metonymy
A mode-independent description of metonymy, adapted with minor changes
from Forceville (2009: 58), is the following:
(i) A metonym consists of a source concept/structure, which via a cue in
a specific mode (language, visuals, music, sound, gesture …) allows
the metonym’s addressee to infer the target concept/structure.
(ii) Source and target are, in the given context, part of the same conceptual
domain.
(iii) The choice of metonymic source makes salient one or more aspects of
the target that otherwise would not, or not as clearly, have been
noticeable, and thereby makes accessible the target under a specific
perspective. The highlighted aspect may have an evaluative dimension.
Whereas the short-hand formula to capture metaphor is A IS B or A-ING IS B-ING,
the short-hand formula for metonymy is B STANDS FOR A: we are given access to
a source B, from which we infer target A. Metonymies are ubiquitous in pictures
of all kinds if only because many pictures present an element that is, in fact, part
of a bigger whole. Instances of such PART FOR WHOLE metonymies are, in a given
context, FACE FOR PERSON, FLOWERBED FOR GARDEN, and GENERAL FOR ARMY. These
are relatively conventional metonymies, of whose highlighting dimension we
are usually not even aware, but that there is such a dimension becomes clear
when we realize that other options are available, such as FINGERPRINT FOR
PERSON, GRASS FOR GARDEN, and SOLDIER FOR ARMY. These latter offer a different
perspective on the target than the first three. In another variety of metonymy, a
typical specimen stands for the class, category, or entity to which it belongs. In
figure 1b, for instance, the Chinese Go-player stands for China, while Uncle Sam
stands for America. The fact that we could also say that Uncle Sam symbolizes
America, incidentally, reminds us that in symbolism, too, we use the B STANDS
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FOR A formula: in certain contexts, a flag stands for a country, a cross for
Christ/suffering, a rose for love.
Figure 2a is an advertising billboard promoting a bank, ABN-AMRO,
recognizable via its logo (a metonym for the bank) and the tag line (“Making
more possible”). To find the ad relevant, we need to be aware that the object
depicted is a grape; that wine is made from grapes; and that the French phrase
grand cru refers to high quality wines. There is thus a metonymic part-whole
relation between the grape (in the visual mode) and grand cru (in the written
verbal mode): GRAPE STANDS FOR GRAND CRU WINE. Of course the source GRAPE is
not coincidentally chosen: clearly, it takes a lot of work, and investments, to
transform grapes into a GRAND CRU WINE – and this is where ABN-AMRO
presumably ‘makes more possible’ by providing loans to invest in a winemaking
business.
Figure 2b is the cover of Shaun Tan’s wordless The Arrival. In the context of this
graphic novel, the suitcase is a metonym for travelling, here specifically for
immigrating: SUITCASE STANDS FOR TRAVEL. Of course the written title cues the
source domain, but to the extent that the suitcase is a fairly context-independent
metonym for travel, we could say that the suitcase in many contexts functions
as a symbol for travel.
Fig. 2a: Billboard from an advertising
campaign by ABN-Amro bank, The
Netherlands, ±2009
Fig. 2b: Cover of The Arrival by ©
Shaun Tan, Arthur A. Levine
books/Lothian books 2006
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
27
3.3 Identifying and analysing visual and multimodal antithesis
On the basis of definitions by scholars of rhetoric, Tseronis and Forceville
(2017b: 168) launch a proposal for criteria to identify a certain configuration as
a visual or multimodal antithesis. Here is a slight rephrasing of that proposal:
(i) Find a contrastive relation between two states of affairs, entities or
persons …
(ii) that is conveyed by saliently presented stylistic means emphasizing
both difference and similarity …
(iii) that, in the given context, gives rise to an awareness of diametrically
opposed viewpoints, ideas, or interests associated with the two states
of affairs, entities or persons.
I note in passing that Tseronis (2021) further pursues this line of thinking by
making a distinction between antitheses (and metaphors, and allusions) that
have (only) “rhetorical relevance, in the sense that they convey meaning which
helps to frame the message for a particular audience and a particular situation,”
and those that (also) provide “argumentative relevance,” namely “when the
meaning conveyed by the figure contributes content that is somehow part of the
argument (the claim and/or reasons) that may be recovered from the
(multimodal) text” (2021: 378).
Fig. 3a: Screenshot from the documentary Hospital,
Frederick Wiseman, USA 1969 © Zipporah Films
Fig. 3b: “Give the aids babies of
Africa a chance.” Advertisement
by Orange Babies, The
Netherlands 2002
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Figures 3a and 3b provide examples of antithesis. Figure 3a is a screenshot from
a scene in the documentary Hospital, discussed in Tseronis and Forceville
(2017b). A young black male prostitute tells his psychiatrist that his typical client
looks like an average Wall Street worker with a suit and a tie, “and his hair
combed to the side, looking like a billion dollars” (Tseronis/Forceville
2017b: 179). Toward the end of his utterance, the camera zooms out to reveal a
poster of the then mayor of New York, hanging behind the black man – a
striking exemplification of the latter’s stereotypical client. The antithesis could
be phrased as something like “underprivileged low-status black male
prostitutes typically have as their clients privileged high-status white men held
up as role models for society”.
Figure 3b is a public service advertisement from the Orange Babies foundation
that fights HIV in Africa. The main text runs, translated, “Give the AIDS babies
of Africa a chance.” Building on the folk belief that babies are brought by storks,
we can here construe an antithesis that can be formulated as “Whereas Western
babies are auspiciously delivered by storks, African babies are ominously
delivered by vultures.”
3.4 Identifying and analysing visual hyperbole
In order to define hyperbole in a mode-independent manner it is, as always,
important to start with definitions and descriptions of its verbal manifestations.
Aristotle asserts: “Effective hyperboles are also metaphors. […] Hyperboles are
adolescent, for they exhibit vehemence” (1991: 253). In her Dictionary of Stylistics
Katie Wales provides the synonyms of “exaggeration” and “overstatement” for
hyperbole, stating it is “often used for emphasis as a sign of great emotion or
passion. Common phrases, often involving metaphor […] at least imply an
intensity of feeling, and add vividness and interest to conversation” (22001: 190).
Burgers et al. (2016) adopt a cognitivist perspective, and begin by analysing and
discussing various proposals to characterize hyperbole. Emphasizing that
construing something as a hyperbole presupposes common knowledge of what
is to be considered ‘normal’ in the everyday world – which pertains to
knowledge of factual as well as of fictional events – they define hyperbole as
“an expression that is more extreme than justified given its ontological [i.e. factual or
fictional, ChF] referent” (2016: 166, emphasis in original). Peña-Cervel and Ruiz
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
29
de Mendoza-Ibáñez, although proposing some refinements, by and large accept
this characterization of hyperbole:
We take sides with Burgers et al.’s (2016) claim that the clash with the
context should be given primary status in the recognition of
hyperbole. In our view […] this is cognitively substantiated by
postulating a cross-domain mapping from a hypothetical to a real
scenario, which allows the hearer to pin down the nature of the
speaker’s emotional reaction including its intensity (2022: 188).
Although both Burgers et al. (2016) and Peña-Cervel/Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez
(2022) focus on the trope’s verbal manifestations, their characterizations are
mode-independent enough to help identify visual hyperboles.
Fig. 4a: Hyperbolic
smile1
Fig 4b: Hyperbolic
crying2
Fig 4c: Cartoon by Sempé.
Provenance and year unknown
Figure 4a depicts a smile that cannot physically be procured. Similarly, the
uninterrupted stream of tears of the emoji in figure 4b makes it hyperbolic. The
Sempé cartoon suggests a degree of historical imagination that no tourist
possesses. Examples 4a-4c also support the insight that hyperbole is “scalar”
(Burgers et al. 2016: 164): the smile, the tear-flood, and the imagined scene could
have been even bigger/larger/more detailed, but they could also have been
smaller/less detailed – in the latter case crossing a border after which the
expressions would no longer be hyperbolic. Moreover, all three emphasize, in
line with Peña-Cervel and Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez (2022), that the
communicator aims to evoke an emotional response in the envisaged addressee,
namely of joy, sadness, and humorous ridicule, respectively.
1 Source: https://pixabay.com/nl/vectors/meisje-vrolijk-glimlach-vrouwelijk-311674/
(21.08.2022).
2 Source: Christian Dorn, https://pixabay.com/nl/illustrations/smiley-huilend-rouwverdrietig-
5566743/ (21.08.2022).
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3.5 Identifying and analysing visual and multimodal irony
The Dictionary of Stylistics characterizes irony as follows: “the words actually
used appear to contradict the sense actually required in the context and
presumably intended by the speaker” (Wales 22001: 224). Burgers et al. (2011),
discussing and evaluating different approaches to verbal irony, propose that all
of them agree on four aspects:
(1) irony is implicit, (2) irony is evaluative, and it is possible to (3)
distinguish between a non-ironic and an ironic reading of the same
utterance, (4) between which a certain type of opposition may be
observed. Of course, an ironic utterance is also usually directed at
someone or something; its target (Burgers et al. 2011: 189).
On this basis they define irony as “an utterance with a literal evaluation that is
implicitly contrary to its intended evaluation” (2011: 190). Although Burgers et
al. (2011) approvingly mention the relevance theory perspective on irony
(Sperber/Wilson 1995: 237-243), they do not discuss it at length. In a later
formulation Wilson and Sperber state that “irony […] rests on the perception of
a discrepancy between a representation and the state of affairs it purports to
represent. […] Ironical utterances […] are a loosely defined sub-class of echoic
utterances” (Wilson/Sperber 2012: 94).
Peña-Cervel/Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez “take sides with Wilson and Sperber
(2012) and support their claim that echoing is key to explaining irony”
(2022: 235), but maintain that relevance theory undertheorizes the role of
pretense: “irony is almost invariably complemented by pretense since in verbal
irony we find the speaker’s simulation of a belief or thought” (ibid.: 236).
Scott (2004) addresses the issue how irony can occur in photographs, discussing
both multimodal ironies of the verbo-visual variety (e.g., photographs by
Margaret Bourne-White and Dorothea Lange) and monomodal visual ironies
(e.g., photographs by Elliott Erwitt, Barbara Kruger, Jones Griffiths, and Cindy
Sherman). She proposes that “some of the defining properties of irony” can be
listed as follows:
 An ideological component, which sets two orders of reality and
associated belief systems into conflict with each other.
 A dissembling component, or at least an element of differential
awareness, between the ironist-cum-audience and the unwitting
victim of irony.
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
31
 An incongruity, which alerts the viewer to either the intention or the
potential for irony (2004: 35).
Scott finds Sperber and Wilson’s approach to irony as a form of “echoic
mention” useful, emphasizing that for a purely visual irony to work, the viewer
must be able to recognize not just the “echoing” but also the “echoed” element.
She proposes
that if a system of beliefs is readily enough available (the very notion
of “the usual scheme of things” entails a system of belief), and that if
an image can bring to mind this belief system by means of an easily
identifiable symbol, then we do not need words in order to access a
dominant representation. Once a world view has been summoned,
the remainder of the picture must in some way question it in order to
achieve ironic effect (2004: 43).
Scott summarizes the essence of what makes the work of the photographers she
discusses ironical by pointing out that
they set up a frame of reference, and then subvert it by means of an
incongruity. In so doing, they reveal the dominant representation not
to be definitive. In all cases, the recognition of a differential awareness
between ironist and victim enhances the sense of incongruity
(2004: 47).
On the basis of the above sources, let me risk the following mode-independent
definition:
Irony holds, or can be construed to hold, when a discourse in any
medium presents an evaluation of a state of affairs it purports to
represent by explicitly or implicitly echoing a previous, literal
discourse of that state of affairs in such a way that the echoic discourse
makes transparent a discrepancy between the echoic and the echoed
evaluation of the state of affairs at stake.
Figure 5 provides some visual and multimodal examples.
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Fig. 5a: Ashtray3 Fig 5b: Ironic traffic sign
warning against drinking
and driving.
Fig 5c: Plaque
commemorating
Alois Alzheimer4
Figures 5a, 5b, and 5c draw on what Scott calls icons (2004: 42), including a visual
entity with a ‘coded’ meaning (Forceville 2020a: Chapter 6). Figure 5a presupposes
our awareness that an ashtray (the “echoed discourse”) is normally
used to tip cigarette ash in, whereas the no-smoking pictogram provides the
iconic or pictogrammatic ‘echoing’ evaluation that “here it is forbidden to
smoke”. While figure 5b might seem to be ironical on a purely verbal level (“Go
ahead – drink & drive”), I would argue that the type of ‘traffic sign’ on which
the text appears visually reinforces the irony, as its colour reveals it to be an
instruction sign, not a forbidding or warning sign (for more discussion, cf.
Forceville and Kjeldsen 2018). Similarly, the written-verbal mode alone suffices
to make figure 5c (appearing on the English Wikipedia page) ironical. The
plaque commemorates Alois Alzheimer, discoverer of the illness mainly
responsible for dementia, with pathological forgetfulness as its main symptom.
The written text underneath translates as “Alois, we will never forget you.” But
as in figure 5b, the design and colour of the ’echoed’ discourse help identify it,
namely as an official commemoration plaque, while the graffiti style of the
hand-written comment signals its unofficial nature, which adds a visual
dimension to the ‘echoing’ comment, for instance as it is likely that the graffiti
will at one time be painted over, that is, “forgotten” (for an example of a
monomodal musical irony, cf. Forceville 2020a: 235).
3 Source: https://highjimmie.com/collections/ashtrays/products/at-white-no-smoking
(21.08.2022).
4 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony (21.08.2022).
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
33
3.6 Combinations of (visual and multimodal) tropes
The identification and interpretation of verbal tropes is yet further complicated
by the fact that two or more tropes can actually occur together. Burgers et al.
(2018), analysing a corpus of Dutch newspaper text, chart not only occurrences
of metaphor-only, hyperbole-only, and irony-only, but also monitor these
tropes’ various permutations. While combinations of tropes are less frequent
than their isolated occurrence, the authors find a substantial number (although
combinations of metaphor and hyperbole and irony were rare). Clearly,
inasmuch as tropes can be reliably distinguished from one another, it makes
good sense to broaden analyses like those of Burgers et al. (2018) to the nonverbal
and multimodal realm.
Fig. 6.1: Banksy street art: Barcode and Leopard (analysed by Poppi and Kravanja 2019)
Poppi and Kravanja (2019), analysing Banksy’s street art, argue that a full
interpretation of figure 6.1 requires identifying both a metaphor and an
antithesis. The metaphor can be verbalized as BARCODE IS CAGE. The authors in
addition postulate the antithesis CAPTIVITY VS. FREEDOM (2019: 91). I propose that
this antithesis could be construed as something like “barcodes facilitate people’s
freedom to consume while simultaneously constituting a trap from which they
want to escape.” Moreover, Poppi and Kravanja acknowledge (without further
elaboration) that ‘irony’ often also plays an important role in Banksy’s work
(2019: 86), as do Peña-Cervel and Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez (2022: 245).
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Fig. 6.2a: Damaged brain is clouded sun. Fig. 6.2b: Healthy brain is shining sun.
Fig. 6.2c: Damaged brain is fading
dandelion
Fig 6.2d: Healthy brain is flowering
dandelion
Screenshots from Hersenstichting commercial, the Netherlands5
Figures 6.2a-6.2d are screenshots from a commercial commissioned by the
Dutch Hersenstichting (“Brain foundation”), which promotes research to prevent
or slow down brain damage. The voice-over text can be translated as follows:
Try to imagine what it is your brains do …They let you talk, laugh,
enjoy … Try to imagine something happens to your brains. A brain
affliction keels over your life. Try to imagine that everybody has
healthy brains. That is our goal. Check out Hersenstichting.nl.
Figures 6.2a and 6.2b express (monomodal) visual metaphors that can be
verbalized as DAMAGED BRAIN IS CLOUDED SUN and HEALTHY BRAIN IS SHINING SUN,
respectively, while figures 6.2c and 6.2d express DAMAGED BRAIN IS FADING
DANDELION and HEALTHY BRAIN IS FLOWERING DANDELION, respectively. Routinely,
they also feature the part-for-whole metonym CLOSE-UP OF FACE STANDS FOR
PERSON. Arguably 6.2a and 6.2c also feature hyperbole in the commercial: the
speed with which the clouds darken the sun and the speed with which the
5 Source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMSbmKIDI_A (21.08.2022).
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
35
dandelion disperses is much higher than the time it takes for brains to
deteriorate. And finally we can also, in combination with the voice-over text,
construe an antithesis that might run something like “healthy brains make for
happy lives while damaged brains make for unhappy lives”.
Combinations of tropes also occur in print advertising. Given that metaphorical
target and source domains are often visually represented via part-for-whole
metonymies it is actually likely that most visual and multimodal metaphors
automatically involve metonymy (cf. Peréz-Sobrino 2017; Kashanizadeh/
Forceville 2020 for discussion of metaphor-metonymy combinations in print
advertising).
Similarly, while figure 3a was analysed as an example of antithesis, there surely
is also a strong sense that it exemplifies irony. Conversely, figure 5a, analysed
as ironical, also suggests “antithesis”. And arguably, figure 4c is not just
hyperbolic, but also ironic.
A caveat is in order, though. However important tropes are in persuasion, as
theorists and analysts we should not make the mistake to try and squeeze all
elements that partake in meaning-making in discourse into the mould of one or
more tropes. There are many meaning-making elements that simply cannot be
accommodated in a catalogue of tropes. It is sensible to try and distinguish
between tropes and the many other (types of) meaning-making mechanisms
operating in discourse (for examples of this approach cf. Guan/Forceville 2020;
Zhang/Forceville 2020).
4. A ‘script’ for developing Multimodal Trope Theory
As suggested above, developing a robust, reliable multimodal trope theory
needs to begin by reconsidering the catalogue of ‘classical’ verbal tropes, of
which I have discussed only some in this paper. This entails revisiting classic
rhetoric (Aristotle, Quintilian, Cicero …) and to try and extract a supra-modal
‘essence’ from these tropes, rephrasing this essence in terms of criteria in such a
way that it can serve as a heuristic irrespective of medium, mode, and genre.
Such reformulations will benefit from explicitly using the target domain and
source domain terminology, and specifying how the use of the source transforms
the explicit or implicit literal target. It will help to think of test questions to
distinguish between different tropes (e.g., when is something a metonym, and
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when is it (also) a symbol? How can we differentiate between metaphor,
symbolism and allegory? [for a discussion of visual allegory, cf.
Cornevin/Forceville 2017]). It makes good sense to first focus on the tropes’
verbal manifestations by collecting and analysing a vast number of attested
instances of these tropes in order to determine what unites these examples. This
should then lead to formulating a supra-modal definition, which can then help
find supposed non-verbal and multimodal manifestations.
It is recommendable to verbalize all proposed candidates for non-verbal and
multimodal tropes, drawing on the terms target and source, to facilitate checking
against the definition of the trope at stake. That said, the analyst should remain
aware that any verbalization is necessarily no more than a poor approximation
of how the trope appears in the original discourse when the trope is non-verbal
or multimodal. Moreover, no verbalization is value-free, and different
verbalizations may steer different emphases in interpretation.
Assessing whether it is mandatory to analyse a certain phenomenon as
exemplifying a certain trope or whether this is optional is both challenging and
crucial. In some cases a specific entity only makes sense (i.e., is only relevant) if
it is understood as cueing another entity, and thereby constitutes a trope of some
sort. In other cases the tropical interpretation is optional, or requires taking into
account a broader context than the discourse within which it appears, or is only
accessible to interpreters with specific background information.
It is important, moreover, not to look at classical rhetoric for guidelines with too
much deference. I think Peña-Cervel and Ruiz-de Mendoza-Ibáñez (2022) make
important forays into analysing tropes from an inclusive, cognitive perspective
by proposing not only how certain tropes can be clustered hierarchically, but
also by proffering cognitive operations and tests to identify specific tropes as
well as to distinguish between them.
On the basis of good supra-modal definitions of the various tropes, it becomes
possible to address non-verbal manifestations of such tropes. It remains useful
to distinguish between monomodal visual (or musical, or sonic, or gestural …)
and multimodal varieties – analyses of the latter requiring expertise in (at least)
two modes. It is furthermore fundamental to be optimally open to the
affordances and constraints that necessarily characterize each ’mode’, as it is
highly likely that not all modes display the range of tropes that verbal discourse
can. After all, (written and spoken) language has a grammar and a vocabulary,
Forceville: Multimodal Trope Theory
37
while other modes at best have structures. For instance, it deserves closer
inspection whether what Teng and Sun (2002) discuss as visual “oxymoron” is
not the same, after all, as what Tseronis and Forceville (2017b) and Poppi and
Kravanja (2019) theorize in terms of “antithesis”. Conversely, it may be the case
that there are phenomena in non-verbal and multimodal discourse not
appearing in language that nonetheless deserve the label of “trope”. A
candidate is Teng and Sun’s (2002) “pictorial grouping”. Similarly, as Wells
(1998: 69) points out, one of the most pervasive phenomena in animation film is
’transformation’: one thing ‘morphs’ into another thing in a way that does not
necessarily enable construal as, say, a metaphor or antithesis. Should we,
perhaps, promote ‘metamorphosis’ to trope-status, on the basis that it is a
patterned way to suggest non-literalness in animation?
5. By way of conclusion
In this paper I have argued that cognitivist-oriented work on visual and
multimodal metaphor and metonymy can serve as a starting point for
developing an inclusive Multimodal Trope Theory. While proposals on some
multimodal tropes (e.g., antithesis and allegory) had been tentatively addressed
in previous cognitivist-oriented research, others (e.g., hyperbole and irony – but
also symbolism) are virtually untheorized. To stimulate discussion, examples of
some of these latter have been cautiously discussed here. It was pointed out that
some examples arguably show traits of two different tropes – something that
deserves sustained scrutiny in the examination of other examples in future
research.
Crucially, the ambitious project of developing an inclusive Multimodal Trope
Theory needs to begin with cognitivist-oriented analyses of verbal tropes –
which in turn can benefit from classical and modern rhetoric and argumentation
theory. Key aspects of the project are examining how specific tropes are both
different from, and similar to, each other; which tropes can and which cannot
co-occur; and whether it is possible to (hierarchically) cluster various tropes in
terms of how they create meaning. In this respect, Peña-Cervel and Ruiz de
Mendoza-Ibáñez (2022) have done trail-blazing work by defining the supramodal
essence of a number of tropes on the basis of their verbal manifestations.
This will, in turn, make it possible to venture further into charting these tropes’
non-verbal and multimodal expressions.
metaphorik.de 34/2023
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There is a lot of work waiting to be done. In preparing to do this work, let us
never forget that models are there to account for and explain data – and not the
other way round. Reality has the irritating habit of always turning out to be
more complex than the models we build to explain it. Once we discover a new
complexity, we thus need to adapt our models, while simultaneously bearing in
mind that categorizations are a means for better understanding the world, not
a goal in themselves.
That said, the study of multimodal tropes, as a subdiscipline of multimodal
discourse in general, is a highly worthwhile pursuit within humanities research.
Mass-communication is becoming more, rather than less, multimodal. The
project of exploring how tropes that have long been considered exclusively
verbal phenomena can function in non-verbal and multimodal discourses will
ultimately benefit all scholars studying communication – and may help
linguists get rid of the prejudice that communication simply is another word for
language.
Acknowledgments. For several examples, and part of the analyses thereof, I am
indebted to students in my metaphor course, who found and discussed them in
their essays and theses. I am grateful to Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry for
challenging me to develop my ideas for a presentation at their conference at
Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, and to invite me to transform this presentation
into a paper. I also want to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments
on an earlier draft of this paper. They helped me improve it and correct an
irritating error. Of course, I alone remain responsible for its contents.
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43
Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on
IMMIGRATION - The case of France and the US
Aurélie Héois, Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University (aurelie.heois@univ-lyon3.fr)
Bérengère Lafiandra, Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University
(berengere.lafiandra1@univ-lyon3.fr)
Abstract
The objective of this article is to study the representations of IMMIGRATION in newspaper
cartoons, with a specific focus on MOTION. Our work fits into the field of cognitive linguistics,
and more particularly the Conceptual Metaphor Theory expanded to multimodal settings
(Lakoff/Johnson 1980; Forceville 2009). The corpus under scrutiny is composed of 28 cartoons
selected in American and French newspapers. Through the analysis of the representations of
IMMIGRATION MOTION, we observe that the mismatch between the textual and pictorial modes
creates cognitive dissonance, which is in turn strengthened by complex networks of
metaphors. We notice discrepancies in metaphor interactional patterns between French and
American cartoons and their representations of IMMIGRATION: the former favors integration
while chaining is more salient in the latter. Regardless of the language (and culture), the
depiction of IMMIGRATION is mostly accompanied by metaphors linked to violence (literal or
symbolic).
Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, die Darstellung von IMMIGRATION in Zeitungskarikaturen zu
untersuchen, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf der Bedeutungskomponente Bewegung liegt. Das
untersuchte Korpus besteht aus 28 ausgewählten Karikaturen in amerikanischen und
französischen Zeitungen. Die Arbeit fußt auf der Tradition der kognitiven Linguistik,
insbesondere auf der Konzeptuellen Metapherntheorie und auf ihrer Erweiterung auf
multimodale Kontexte (Lakoff/Johnson 1980; Forceville 2009). Die Analyse der Repräsentationen
der Bedeutungskomponente Bewegung innerhalb des Immigrations-Motivs zeigt,
dass die Diskrepanz zwischen dem Text- und dem Bildmodus eine kognitive Dissonanz
erzeugt, die wiederum durch komplexe Netzwerke von Metaphern verstärkt wird. Wir stellen
Diskrepanzen in den Interaktionsmustern der Metaphern zwischen französischen und
amerikanischen Cartoons und ihren Darstellungen von Immigration fest: Jene bevorzugen die
Integration, während diese durch einen häufigeren Rückgriff auf Verkettungen gekennzeichnet
sind. Unabhängig von der Sprache (und Kultur) wird die Darstellung der
Immigration meist von Metaphern begleitet, die mit (physischer oder symbolischer) Gewalt
verbunden sind.
1. Introduction
The aim of this multimodal contrastive study is to analyze how the visual and
linguistic representations of IMMIGRATION in newspaper cartoons interact to
create meaning. In this study, we will only focus on the notion of MOTION in
French and American newspaper cartoons between 2000 and 2021.
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The concept of IMMIGRATION inherently includes the notion of MOTION as
exemplified by the following definitions:
immigrate: “To come to settle in a country (which is not one’s own)” (Oxford
English Dictionary online);
immigrer: “entrer dans un pays étranger pour s’y établir” (Le Grand Robert).
In the two definitions, a person (or group of persons) moves from point A to
point B; this motion is expressed respectively by the verbs come and entrer.
However, these verbs are merely examples and motion can also be expressed
by other means (Stosic/Aurnague 2017; Talmy 2000).
While the concept of IMMIGRATION is clearly about MOTION, cartoons are, by
definition, definitely static:
cartoon: “A full-page illustration in a paper or periodical; esp. applied to
those in the comic papers relating to current events. Now, a humorous or
topical drawing (of any size) in a newspaper, etc.” (Oxford English
Dictionary online).
Thus, studying a visual static representation of MOTION in cartoons may appear
paradoxical at first glance, and that is the starting point of this article. As a
result, we will investigate how the cartoon genre deals, visually and
linguistically, with MOTION when treating the specific subject of IMMIGRATION.
As shown in Talmy (2000), languages can express MOTION in different linguistic
ways1; therefore, one of the objectives of the present study is to determine
whether such differences can also be found through a multimodal analysis.
Considering the nature of the chosen medium, i.e. cartoons, our study is
restricted to two modes: “written signs” and “pictorial signs” (Forceville 2009:
23), which will be referred to as the “textual mode” and the “pictorial mode”
respectively.
1 In his analysis of MOTION, Talmy (2000: 117-118), and many other linguists after him,
distinguishes between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages depending on how one
language generally expresses the notion of PATH. Romance languages, such as French, are
usually classified in the verb-framed languages, while English is a satellite-framed language.
Héois/Lafiandra: Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION
45
We restricted our analysis to tropes2, mainly metaphors and metonymies, as
preliminary observations of the cartoons suggested that the multimodal
representations of MOTION in immigration cartoons were mostly based on
highlighting-hiding processes (Kövecses 2002). This multimodal analysis follows
the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff/Johnson 1980) and its extension to
multimodality (Forceville 2009; Pérez-Sobrino 2017).
Thus, the present study offers a preliminary investigation of American and
French newspaper cartoons and attempts to answer the following question:
how do multimodal tropes, such as metaphor and metonymy, interact in a static
medium? And more specifically, how do they deal with the notion of MOTION
within the topic of IMMIGRATION? And how do they create meaning?
The first section presents the theoretical background this study fits into and the
state of the art on multimodality and immigration. The second section defines
the methodology we adopted for the selection and analysis of the cartoons. A
third section provides the preliminary results and observations concerning the
representations of IMMIGRATION MOTION3 as well as the multimodal metaphors
identified in the cartoons. Finally, a short discussion is provided with
concluding remarks.
2. Multimodality and immigration
2.1 Expanded Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Our analysis is placed within the cognitive linguistic framework and more
particularly that of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (from now on CMT) as
initially developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), which we expand to
multimodal context following Forceville (2009) and Pérez Sobrino (2017).
Expanding CMT to multimodal settings is fully in accordance with the
assumptions made by Lakoff and Johnson, namely that metaphor frames our
cognitive system and is not only verbal and shapes the way we think and
2 This analysis was originally presented in the international conference entitled “Multimodal
Tropes in Contemporary Corpora”, Centre d’Études Linguistiques – Corpus, Discours et
Sociétés, Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, Lyon, 19-20 May 2022.
3 The expression IMMIGRATION MOTION is used through this article as an economical means
to refer to “the notion of MOTION within the topic of IMMIGRATION”.
metaphorik.de 34/2023
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understand the world. Therefore, it has a strong cognitive dimension, as
illustrated by Kövecses (2002: 57):
[I]f the conceptual system that governs how we experience the world,
how we think, and how we act is partly metaphorical, then the
(conceptual) metaphors must be realized not only in language but also
in many other areas of human experience.
As a result, we expect to find, in multimodal settings, similar metaphors and
metonymies that have been found in verbal settings (see next section). We will
consider the two notions in their usual definitions, following Lakoff and
Johnson (1980) and Kövecses and Radden (1998).
In her multimodal analysis of advertisement, Pérez Sobrino (2017), following
Forceville (2009), applies the expanded version of CMT to multimodal settings
with a specific focus on the patterns of interaction between the tropes. She
distinguishes between two types of interaction, namely integration and
chaining (Perez-Sobrino 2017: 70):
Integration consists in the assimilation of one conceptual operation
into another, whereas in chaining, the target domain of one
conceptual operation serves as a source domain for another. In this
view, chaining is qualitatively more complex than integration.
Each type of interaction includes different patterns (Perez-Sobrino 2017: 72).
Patterns of integration include “Multiple source target metonymy”,
“Metaphtonymy” and “Metaphoric amalgam”, while patterns of chaining
include “Metonymic chain” and “Metaphoric chain”. Similarly to Pérez-Sobrino
(2017), our corpus also combines the textual and pictorial modes, thus, it is not
surprising that similar patterns of interaction were found in the cartoons under
scrutiny. However, while patterns may be linked to modes, the metaphors we
are expecting in this analysis are strongly linked to the theme IMMIGRATION.
2.2 Literature review: immigration and its representations
Many different studies on IMMIGRATION and its representations exist in the
literature. Most of them have shown that the target domain of IMMIGRATION is
often conceptualized verbally – through the textual mode – in terms of NATURAL
DISASTERS, INDIGESTIBLE FOOD, SOLDIERS, SPREAD OF DISEASE, WASTE, OBJECTS or
PARASITIC ORGANISMS (Charteris-Black 2006; Hart 2011; Musolff 2011; O’Brien
Héois/Lafiandra: Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION
47
2003; Semino 2008; van Dijk 2000; Silaški/Đurović 2019, 2021), as illustrated in
(1).
(1) [T]he vast tide of illegal immigration that had produced a shadow
population of literally millions of undocumented aliens in the United
States (McNary v. Haitian Refugee Ctr., Inc., 498 U.S. 479, 481 (1991), cited
in Cunningham-Parmeter 2011: 1581).
As explained by KhosraviNik (2010: 13), the negative representations of
migrants often rely on aggregation, collectivization and functionalization
processes:
These can be defined as linguistic processes through which these
groups of people are systematically referred to and constructed as one
unanimous group with all sharing similar characteristics,
backgrounds, intentions, motivations and economic status or
reducing these groups to their functions e.g. ‘entrants’.
Thus, migrants are verbally depicted as commodities whose main characteristic
is to enter, that is to say to go from point A to point B, B being a closed entity.
In addition to these numerous studies on the textual mode, some recent studies
have focused on the visual mode by studying cartoons on immigration.
Özdemir and Özdemir (2017) have shown that visual metaphors such as that of
the wave or that of the barbed wire can often be noted in cartoons on immigration
(2017: 55): “The barbed-wire metaphor is used as a symbol of the exclusionist
attitude of all countries. […] Wave and flood figures are also commonly used in
cartoons to illustrate the dangerous and destructive characteristics of the
refugee influx”. Silaški and Đurović (2021) concur with their study on the
omnipresence of the FORTRESS scenario in European cartoons on immigration.
Swain (2012: 86) points out that “Cartoons are primarily a visual genre, but
have, and frequently take up, the option of including verbal text”. As a result,
cartoons constitute particularly relevant media when studying multimodality.
Following all these studies, this article aims to offer a multimodal analysis of
the representations of MOTION in cartoons on immigration. The starting point,
MOTION, probably makes the originality of this approach as it focuses on the
dynamic nature of IMMIGRATION and some of its salient ‘participants’ (see
Figure 2 below). Our study is however preliminary in nature as the corpus
under scrutiny is limited.
metaphorik.de 34/2023
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3. Methodology
3.1 Corpus selection
Our corpus was selected on Google®, with the tool Google® Images. Two
different corpora were created. One includes French cartoons and the other is
composed of American cartoons.4 Both corpora were created through a similar
process. First, we selected a region (“France” and “US”, respectively) in the
parameters Google® offers and searched images with the help of two keywords
“immigration AND dessin” and “immigration AND cartoon”, respectively. We
also restricted our search to cartoons published between 2000 and 2021.
We then defined four different criteria for the selection. First, (1) only cartoons
directly related to immigration as their main theme were selected. This allowed
us to obtain a relevant corpus for our study of immigration. As a result, cartoons
dealing with immigration policies, for instance, were rejected.5 Then, as our
objective was to carry out a preliminary analysis, we chose to have two rather
small corpora and we selected (2) only the first twenty hits6 for each
language/region. Thirdly, (3) we only retained cartoons that were related to the
news; in other words, we kept cartoons that had been published in newspapers
or equivalents and rejected those that had been published by other
organizations such as NGOs for example (cartooning for peace7 is an example we
rejected).8 Finally, our fourth criterion concerned multimodality as the cartoons
(4) had to include the two modes, namely pictorial and textual. In other words,
cartoons with visual elements only were rejected. As an illustration, the two
cartoons in Figure 1 were included in our corpus:
4 The selected cartoons were published in French or American media respectively.
5 Cartoons on immigration policies can also reflect a certain point of view on immigration,
but they add elements which are out of the scope of the present study.
6 Considering the Google algorithm is unpredictable, the same search can lead to different
results.
7 https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/cartoonotheque/migrations-et-frontieres/.
8 In order to have genre homogeneity, we only focus on news cartoons.
Héois/Lafiandra: Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION
49
Fig. 1: Examples of IMMIGRATION cartoons (from left to right: US08; FR01)
No general conclusion can be drawn from this work as its aim is to provide a
preliminary study which enables us to qualitatively compare French and
American cartoons and make some patterns emerge.
In order to reach that goal, we added a fifth criteria and filtered our 40 cartoons
and only kept the ones encoding multimodal MOTION. This restriction made it
possible to study if there existed a mismatch or a match between the pictorial
and textual motion depicted in the cartoon. In other words, the notion of
MOTION9 had to be coded both textually and visually. We then obtained 13
cartoons for the French corpus and 15 for the American one, which we encoded
according to the following methods.
3.2 Cartoon encoding
As an analytical framework, we divided the concept of MOTION into relevant
and salient elements10 as Figure 2 summarizes: with spatial elements such as
origin, destination, path (in the direction of the destination), and border along
with other participants whether animate (migrant(s) and host country),
inanimate (means of transportation) or related to the motion event (manner of
motion). The aim of this encoding is to analyze which of these elements of
immigration MOTION are highlighted or hidden since “[h]ighlighting necessarily
goes together with hiding” (Kövecses 2002: 80), but also to observe how they
interact with each other to express MOTION. For each cartoon, we identified
9 In this study, MOTION includes the whole continuum from static events to dynamic ones.
10 As in any schematization of a concept, other participants/elements could have been
selected.
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whether the elements were present or not, and, if present, which mode(s)
was(were) used to depict them.
Fig. 2: The conceptualization of immigration
Our first encoding step concerned multimodal, in other words how the textual
and pictorial modes encoded it. For each cartoon, we took the point of view of
the migrant(s) and encoded six possible directions, namely: “forward”,
“backward”, “downward”, “upward”, “static” or “multiple directions”.11
The second step consisted in identifying the multimodal metaphors. To do so,
we followed the methodology described by Pérez-Sobrino (2017: 88-90):
 Identification of the target domain (IMMIGRATION);
 Identification of the source domain (involving MOTION);
 Identification of the conceptual operations;
 Identification of non-core operations;
 Identification of interaction patterns (chaining, integration).
In our case, the first step of identification was made easy by the nature of our
study, in other words, the target domain was always IMMIGRATION. For the
second step, in order for our analysis to be relevant regarding our aims, we
restricted our study to source domains involving MOTION. This means that, to
be considered, a source concept should always imply a translational movement
from a point A to a point B, or the reference to a location for static events. For
instance, even though we found several instances of it, the GAME source domain
11 While our linguistic encoding of MOTION relies on definitions, the pictorial encoding may
not be as straightforward as cartoons are, by nature, static, and there is no “picture dictionary”
available. Hence, our analysis is experiential and based on multiple cues when possible. For
instance, when a wall with a door is represented, we may consider the MOTION to be static if
the door is closed, forward if the door is open with people facing the door, and backward if
the door is open but with people turning their back to it (see cartoons FR04 – Figure 6 – and
FR10 – Figure 7 – for illustration).
Origin Path Destination
Migrant(s) Host country
Border
Means of transportation
Manner
Conceptualization of IMMIGRATION
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51
was not selected as it does not inherently involve a translational movement,
although it may. Conversely, the JOURNEY domain was selected as it fits this
movement criteria. We then identified the various conceptual operations
relevant for the study of IMMIGRATION MOTION, mostly metaphors. In cases
other (non-motional) metaphors were combined with MOTION metaphors, we
then identified them. Finally, we mapped Pérez-Sobrino’s patterns of
interaction (see section 3.2) with the metaphors we found. Because our data is
limited to small corpora, we only distinguished between the two macro-types
of interaction, namely chaining and integration.12
In addition, we paid attention to the UP/DOWN orientational metaphors
(Lakoff/Johnson 1980: 14-22) as we observed that many cartoons were
organized with UP/DOWN structures and that it supported the meaning of other
metaphors.
Finally, we proceeded to the description of our corpora according to the
parameters we encoded: first, through the description and analysis of single
variables, and then through their interactions.
4. Results and analysis
4.1 Immigration mapping
In this part, we will present the first relevant observations regarding the
encoding of the participants of IMMIGRATION as presented in Figure 2. These
observations are summarized in Figure 3.
US FR Total
Migrant 15 13 28
Origin 4 7 11
Destination 15 13 28
Border 13 10 23
Path 10 9 19
12 Considering the size of our corpora, using a finer-grained categorization of the patterns
would have made it impossible to identify trends to be explored in further research.
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Means of
transportation
5 8 13
Manner of motion 8 2 10
Total 15 13 28
Fig. 3: Representation of immigration participants in the corpora (number of cartoons)
First, if we focus on the origin, that is to say point A, it is striking to note that it
is rarely coded. However, when we did find the origin in our corpus, it was
usually coded visually with stereotypical clothes (sombreros, turbans etc.)
and/or textually with stereotypes in speech bubbles (accents, broken language
etc.).13 When the origin is coded in American cartoons, it generally represents
immigration from South/Central America and Mexico to the US. As for French
cartoons, they even more rarely specify the origin of the migrants, although in
some cases, the Middle East or Northern Africa can be inferred through, once
again, stereotypical clothes. Let us consider the two examples in Figure 4.
Fig. 4: Examples of cartoons encoding the origin (from left to right: FR02; US11)
In the cartoon on the left (FR0214), the origin, Mexico, is coded only visually with
the sombrero, which is a typical Mexican hat. Without the hat, we could not
infer where the migrants come from. In the cartoon on the right (US11), the
origin can only be deduced thanks to the speech bubble in the top right-hand
corner, when the ICE guard naively mocks the Latino pronunciation of Jesus,
saying “HAY-SOOS” instead. With that text, we can then guess that the
13 Those are cases of metonymies.
14 This cartoon is part of the French corpus as it was published in a French newspaper. It is,
however, a representation of immigration to the US.
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53
migrants come from a Spanish-speaking country, most likely from Central or
South America.
Two other participants of IMMIGRATION were also rarely coded: the means of
transportation and the manner of motion. What we can note about these two
elements in the two corpora is that the means of transportation are more
frequently coded in the French cartoons, visually represented by a boat, than in
the American ones. Conversely, the manner of motion is more frequently coded
in the American cartoons than in the French ones and usually textually, with
the adjective illegal or the adverb illegally, which insists on the fact that the
migrants may be undocumented.
In 100% of the cartoons, the migrants and the destination are coded. For
migrants, on the one hand, this is not surprising since it was both one of the
keywords and a selection criterion in our methodology. They are often
represented (visually) with people, but also metaphorically, and particularly
with the metaphor of the wave, as will be developed in the third section. On the
other hand, destination is represented through metonymies in the corpus (flag,
president, monument etc.) as illustrated in Figure 5.
Fig. 5: An example of the visual encoding of the destination (US05)
In this example (US05), the destination is coded thanks to a monument, the
Statue of Liberty, which is not only a symbol of the host country, the US, but
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also of its border. Besides, the destination is here multimodally coded since it is
also written U.S. on the sign.
The omnipresence of the destination can be explained by the methodology and
more precisely the use of Google® parameters when we selected the region
“France” or “US”, it is no surprise then to see the cartoons represent either
France or America as the destination. Considering that some migrants are going
to these host countries, it is expected to see the movement from the destination’s
point of view. We did not find any representation of immigration with France
or the US as the origin, which is not surprising as both countries are part of the
top five host countries in the world (Pew Research Center, cf. Gonzalez-
Barrera/Connor 2019).
4.2 Motion directions
One main of this study is the analysis of the notion of MOTION within the topic
of IMMIGRATION, and more specifically the analysis of MOTION directions. We
tried to determine whether there was a match or a mismatch between the textual
and the pictorial modes; in other words, if the direction coded in the text and
the image was the same. In 13 (out of 28) of the cartoons, the direction is the
same visually and textually: 6 of them present a static event, 5 a forward
movement, 1 backward and 1 a forward/backward movement. The coded
motion is therefore mainly the absence of movement (static event) or a forward
movement, as can be seen in the following cartoons.
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Fig. 6: Examples of multimodal match in motion direction (forward on the left, static on the
right) (from left to right: US15; FR04)
In Figure 6, the cartoons both illustrate a match between the text and the
pictorial element concerning motion. Visually, in the cartoon on the left (US15),
one can see a wave, metaphorically representing migrants. The wave is
represented as moving from the sea to the beach, which is its natural movement
from point A to point B and which can be described as forward. Besides, in the
text, which is written on the wave, immigration also denotes a forward
movement from point A to point B. As a result, there is a match between the
forward movement coded in the picture (the wave) and in the text (immigration).
In the cartoon on the right (FR04), there is also a multimodal motion match, but
this time with a static event. In the visual mode, the borders of France are
represented, they refer to a geographical zone, a specific location, which is
unlikely to change. This static event is reinforced by the representation of the
migrants who are stopped at the border of the country as they find a closed
door: they cannot enter the destination. In the text, the static event is coded in
the speech bubble through the nouns terre (French for territory) and pays (French
for country), which, because they refer to a location, also denote a static event.
In the other half of our corpus (15 out of 28 cartoons), there is a mismatch in
directions between the text and the image. Let us consider the two examples in
Figure 7.
FR_La Croix_2012
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Fig. 7: Examples of multimodal mismatch in motion direction (from left to right: US09; FR10)
In Figure 7, the directions coded textually and visually are not the same in the
cartoon on the left (US09), since in the picture, the migrant, who is represented
as the Statue of Liberty, is a monument. Therefore, the pictorial mode encodes
a static event while the textual mode refers twice to a backward movement: first,
with the phrasal verb “send back” and then, with the speech bubble “one-way
ticket to France”15. There is thus a mismatch between the static nature of the
monument and the backward movement that is textually present to highlight,
and mock, Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies: all migrants have to go
back to their origins, even the Statue of Liberty. This multimodal mismatch
underlines the paradoxical nature of Trump’s immigration policies.
In the cartoon on the right (FR10), the mismatch between the pictorial and
textual modes also reinforces humor through a play on polysemy (two different
meanings of the verb rentrer) with a probable aim to criticize Nicolas Sarkozy’s
immigration policies, also known as “immigration choisie” (French for preferred
immigration). In the pictorial mode, a forward movement is coded as the
migrants are moving towards the borders of the destination, here represented
15 The reference to France here is understood as a backward movement because the Statue of
Liberty was created by a French artist, Bartholdi. As a result, and according to our
schematization of immigration, France encodes here the origin of the migrant.
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as a night club.16 But then, so as to make the viewers understand the title of the
cartoon and the notion of “immigration choisie”, the forward movement is
applied textually only for the first two skilled migrants (a scientist and a
surgeon) with the first speech bubble “Toi, tu rentres” (French for you’re coming
in) repeated twice whereas a backward movement applies to the third migrant
in the second speech bubble “tu rentres en charter” (French for you’re going back
(home) by plane). The mismatch in directions, a forward movement for the
pictorial mode and a backward movement for the text concerning the third
migrant, enables the cartoonist to show that only skilled migrants are welcome
in France under Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency.17
4.3 Metaphor analysis
Finally, we identified six different metaphors related to MOTION (whether a
static event or a movement from point A to point B) in our corpora. Figure 8
presents these metaphors along with their relative presence in our two corpora.
Metaphors US corpus FR corpus
IMMIGRATION IS WAR Yes + Yes =
IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE Yes + Yes -
IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY Yes - Yes ++
DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER Yes ++ Yes =
A MIGRANT IS AN OBJECT (THAT CAN BE
MOVED)
Yes = Yes =
THE PATH TOWARDS DESTINATION IS A
MAZE
Yes - Yes -
Fig. 8: The 6 MOTION metaphors18
16 The night club interpretation is inferred through two cues: the sign on the door, “Boîte de
la République”, uses a common French denomination for a night club, “boîte” (literally box);
this meaning of boîte is reinforced by the depiction of Nicolas Sarkozy as a bouncer who
decides who can enter and who cannot.
17 Nicolas Sarkozy was the French President between 2007 and 2012.
18 The use of “++”, “+”, “-“, and “=” is only relative to each corpus. “++” is used when the
metaphor seems to prevail in the subcorpus; “+” is used when the metaphor is present several
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Our qualitative observations suggest a difference between the two corpora in
terms of metaphors: the most salient metaphor in French cartoons is
IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY while DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER appears to be
characteristic of American cartoons. The sixth metaphor of Figure 8, THE PATH
TOWARDS DESTINATION IS A MAZE, only appears in 2 cartoons in our corpus, as a
result, we do not consider it salient enough and do not include it in our present
analysis. As mentioned in the methodological section, on top of what we
identify as “MOTION metaphor”, we took into account the UP/DOWN conceptual
metaphors as well. Our encoding of the corpora shows that this metaphor tends
to structure most of the cartoons and usually act as a reinforcement for the
MOTION metaphors we identified.
As previously stated, metaphors often work in combination with other
metaphors (and with metonymies) so as to create meaning, as is illustrated in
Figures 9 and 10.
Fig. 9: An example of metaphor combination (cartoon) (US04)
times without as much salience; “=” is used when the metaphor is present to a lesser extent;
and “-“ is used when the metaphor is present only once in the corpus.
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Fig. 10: An example of metaphor combination (diagram)19
The diagram illustrates how different processes interact in the cartoon (US04).
The metaphors are represented in red20 and the metonymies in blue. The
fundamental metaphor DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER is here actualized as HOST
COUNTRY IS A PRISON. It is supported linguistically through camp and visually
through the fence as well as the children’s striped clothes, which represent a
prisoner’s outfit. This metaphor leads to two other metaphors, on the one hand
MIGRANTS ARE OBJECTS, reinforced by little animals and dehumanize written on the
signs, and IMMIGRATION IS WAR, with a reference to the second world war, both
visually and textually. Moreover, the multimodal encoding of MOTION
emphasizes the static position of migrants, who are therefore depicted as
objects, so as to support the idea that Donald Trump’s immigration policies are
dehumanizing.21
19 WWII stands for “the second World War”. The different shades of red allow to distinguish
between a conceptual metaphor (dark red), metaphors (lighter red), and metaphor
participants (light red).
20 The light red frames including the “=” sign show relevant metaphorical mappings which
support the capitalized metaphors.
21 The fact that migrants are depicted as children further strengthens the criticism of Trump’s
immigration management and policies as children are construed as both vulnerable and
harmless.
DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER
HOST COUNTRY IS A PRISON
Migrants = prisoners
+ ”dehumanize”
+ ”little animals”
Migrants = not human
MIGRANTS ARE OBJECTS THAT
CAN BE MOVED / DISPOSED OF
Concentration camp for prison
IMMIGRATION IS WAR
WWII for war
Migrants = Jewish people (WWII)
Visual/Textual = static
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4.4 Chained metaphors
As shown in the example above, metaphors combine in complex ways to create
meaning. Following Pérez-Sobrino (2017: 70), we categorized the metaphors
according to two macro-types of metaphor combinations and interactions,
namely integration and chaining (see section 3.2).
A difference between the two corpora can be observed. In this study, American
cartoons favor chaining while French cartoons mostly instance integration. Two
types of chaining are salient in the US corpus, namely from DESTINATION IS A
CONTAINER to A MIGRANT IS AN OBJECT THAT CAN BE MOVED and from
IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE to IMMIGRATION IS WAR, the latter
being usually combined with the UP/DOWN conceptual metaphor. One type of
integration stands out in the French corpus, namely the combination of the
metaphors IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY and DESTINATION IS CONTAINER. Figure 9
is an example of chaining from the American corpus.
Fig. 11: Example of chaining of IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE  IMMIGRATION IS
WAR (US13)
In Figure 11 (US13), the metaphor IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE
leads to IMMIGRATION IS WAR. The border is represented with the dam, which
refers to a real dam between Mexico and the US, the Boquilla dam. The
migrants’ origin is behind the dam, represented as a crumbling wall made of
bricks. Migrants are themselves represented as the water on the brink of
breaking the dam, thus, as a flood, which is why the first metaphor is
IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE. Moreover, the violence of water on
the dam can be grasped with small silhouettes, probably Americans, who are
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61
running for their lives because they are threatened by the giant hand made of
water, which is about to crush them. This can lead to IMMIGRATION IS AN
INVASION which can be encompassed in the conceptual metaphor IMMIGRATION
IS WAR.
Figure 12 presents an example of the second type of chaining present in the
American corpus, from DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER to A MIGRANT IS AN OBJECT.
Fig. 12: Example of chaining of DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER  A MIGRANT IS AN OBJECT
(US06)
First of all, there is an unexpected direction from UP to DOWN in this cartoon
(US06) since usually UP IS GOOD and DOWN IS BAD. As a result, in this example,
the immigration of the baby may not be an improvement in its life. This is
strengthened by the destination being represented as a locked ballot box, a
CONTAINER. The migrant baby is moving towards the box. He is thus associated
with a ballot, an OBJECT, which is why DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER leads to A
MIGRANT IS AN OBJECT, which enables the cartoonist to criticize Joe Biden’s
political opportunism, as migrants are used for election purposes. Furthermore,
this process of functionalization of migrants (KhosraviNik 2010) is not only
perceived in the pictorial mode, with the box, but also in the textual one, in the
speech bubble with the verb stuff.
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Fig. 13: Example of integration of IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY + DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER
(FR10)
Figure 13 reproduces again the cartoon FR10 which was analyzed in section 4.2
(Figure 7) for its multimodal MOTION mismatch. This cartoon also illustrates the
process of integration through the combination of IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY
with DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER. Here, these two metaphors are associated
and lead to a complex metaphor, namely IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY THAT STOPS
AT THE BORDER (OF THE CONTAINER). The source domain of the JOURNEY can be
inferred because the migrants are walking towards the destination, France,
which is represented as a VIP night club, hence as a CONTAINER, but also
through the use of charter in the speech bubble (French for charter flight). This
cartoon is not representative of the rest of the French corpus as the means of
transportation is not represented as a boat here; however, it is multimodally
very rich. As mentioned in 4.2, there is a multimodal forward movement only
for skilled migrants while the apparently unskilled migrant has to go back to
his origin and is not allowed to enter the host country, the CONTAINER: THE
JOURNEY therefore stops at the border for him, which is how the cartoonist
pictures the notion of preferred immigration.
5. Conclusion
This study of the representations of IMMIGRATION through multimodal MOTION
in French and American cartoons first suggests that there are three main types
of multimodal representations when it comes to IMMIGRATION, regardless of the
country: forward match, static match, or mismatch. In case of a forward match,
the cartoon depicts a forward migratory movement both in the text and the
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63
image. In most cases of our corpora, this forward MOTION goes hand in hand
with violence, and more specifically with the metaphor IMMIGRATION IS A
THREAT/WAR. In case of a static match, that is to say when the pictorial and
textual modes both code a static event, the main idea which is conveyed in our
corpora relates to the functionalizing and/or dehumanization of migrants and
is supported by the metaphor A MIGRANT IS AN OBJECT. Finally, in case of a
mismatch, what the cartoons depict are two irreconcilable points of view,
usually those of the migrant and the host country: the former wants to come
and settle, the latter would rather they remain in their home country, or at least
outside the host country.
What is striking in these cases of mismatch is that they create a cognitive
dissonance in the viewer/reader. Whether this dissonance creates humor, or
another feeling, would require another type of experimentation and analysis.
Nonetheless, it aims to create a reaction, as Özdemir and Özdemir (2017: 33-34)
point out: “The difference between cartoons and other visual communication
tools is that they use satire, making readers laugh as well as think.”
Our analysis also suggests that cartoons are complex objects which usually aim
to convey a message through pictorial elements and minimal text. This message
is supported by means of metonymies and metaphors which combine in various
ways together and with other elements (culture, history, etc.). We observed, in
our limited corpora, a difference between France and the US in terms of the
main interactional pattern used to convey meaning: integration was more
salient in the French cartoons while chaining was favored in the American
cartoons. Moreover, different metaphors stood out depending on the corpus:
IMMIGRATION IS A JOURNEY was the only clearly salient metaphor in the French
corpus, while DESTINATION IS A CONTAINER was often found in its American
counterpart, along with, but to a lesser extent, IMMIGRATION IS WAR and
IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE.
Many questions arise from these observations on the differences in
representations between the US and France. First, a study on a wider sample of
cartoons on IMMIGRATION from these two countries could shed light on whether
these differences in metaphors and interaction patterns are contextual (related
to our corpora only) or real. In the latter case, insights from historical, political
and sociocultural contexts would probably be needed in order to understand
and explain these differences. Furthermore, more general research on cartoons
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on the one hand, and on interaction patterns on the other, in these two countries,
could help us understand how entrenched these differences are. Indeed, it is
possible that some metaphors are more easily combined through integration
while others may work better in chaining, making this difference in interaction
patterns a side-product of the cognitive preference for some metaphors over
others.
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7. Corpora
7.1 French corpus
[FR01] FR_Chappatte_2015, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.chappatte.com/images/leurope-et-les-immigrants/.
[FR02] FR_Chappatte_2019, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.chappatte.com/images/trump-impose-des-taxes-aumexique/.
[FR03] FR_Dessins_Miss_Lilou_2016, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
http://dessinsmisslilou.over-blog.com/2016/03/la-nouvelle-reponseeuropee...
aux-migrants.html.
[FR04] FR_LaCroix_2012, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL: https://www.lacroix.
com/Actualite/France/Faut-il-restreindre-l-immigration-_NG_-
2012-03-20-780207.
[FR05] FR_Le_monde_2015, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/plantu/2015/12/02/sextape-devalbuena-
un-piege-contre-daech-le-dessin-du-monde-de-ce-mercredi-2-
decembre/.
[FR06] FR_Le_monde_2017, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/plantu/2017/08/07/migrants-accueilselectif-
le-dessin-du-monde-de-ce-lundi-7-aout/.
[FR07] FR_Le_monde_2018_1, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/plantu/2018/06/28/leurope-apres-ladefaite-
allemande/.
[FR08] FR_Le_monde_2018_2, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/plantu/2018/06/21/trump-plushumain-
le-dessin-du-monde-de-ce-jeudi-21-juin/.
[FR09] FR_Le_monde_2018_3, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/plantu/2018/04/23/brigitte-etemmanuel-
macron-chez-trump-le-dessin-du-monde-de-ce-lundi-23-
avril/.
[FR10] FR_Philippe_Tastet_2006, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.philippetastet.com/nicolas-sarkozy-pour-uneimmigration-
choisie.
[FR11] FR_Toute_la_culture_2015, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://toutelaculture.com/actu/politique-culturelle/la-situation-desmig...
resumee-en-dessins/.
Héois/Lafiandra: Multimodal representations of MOTION in cartoons on IMMIGRATION
67
[FR12] FR_Urtikan_2014, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.urtikan.net/dessin-du-jour/un-president-inaugure-enfinle-
musee-de-limmigration/.
[FR13] FR_Urtikan_2015, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.urtikan.net/dessin-du-jour/europe-un-plan-daction-pourlimmig....
7.2 American corpus
[US01] US_Chappatte_2018, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.chappatte.com/en/gctheme/european-union/.
[US02] US_Independent_2021, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.independent.com/2021/04/03/immigration-reform-mustbegin-
with-secure-borders/.
[US03] US_Mercury News_2017, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.mercurynews.com/?returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.m
ercurynews.com%2F2017%2F01%2F30%2Fcartoons-donald-trumpsimmigration-
from-mexico-to-muslims%2F%3FclearUserState%3Dtrue.
[US04] US_Mercury News_2019, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/26/political-cartoons-trumpadministr...
migrant-camps/.
[US05] US_Mercury News_2021_1, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.mercurynews.com/?returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.m
ercurynews.com%2F2021%2F03%2F22%2Fcartoons-immigration-policyin-
focus-as-border-crossings-rise%2F%3FclearUserState%3Dtrue.
[US06] US_Mercury News_2021_2, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/22/cartoons-immigrationpolicy-
in-focus-as-border-crossings-rise/.
[US07] US_mprnews_2014, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/11/24/immigration-cartoonsparks-
outcry-over-racism.
[US08] US_orangecountyregister_2018, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.ocregister.com/2018/06/19/trump-goes-all-in-onimmigration-
political-cartoons/.
[US09] US_Philadelphia Inquirer_2019, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/cartoons/immigration-trumpstatue-
of-liberty-20190815.html.
metaphorik.de 34/2023
68
[US10] US_reviewjournal_2021, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/michael-ramirez/cartoonopening-
the-floodgates-2259417/.
[US11] US_Seattletimes_2018, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/immigrant-children-wwjd/.
[US12] US_Startribune_2013, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.startribune.com/sack-cartoon-immigration/196804601/.
[US13] US_The Week_2021, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://theweek.com/articles/973377/5-cartoons-about-bidensimmigration-
troubles.
[US14] US_thedestinlog_2021, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://eu.thedestinlog.com.
[US15] US_washingtontimes_2019, consulted on 20 May 2022, URL:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/cartoons/immigration/illegalimmigration-
201903.

69
The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath: Environmental
artivism and the visual impacts of metaphors
Anaïs Augé, UCLouvain (anais.auge@uclouvain.be)
Abstract
This paper investigates the visual metaphors identified during two performances produced
by the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion: the Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood
Bath. These performances use BLOOD as a visual source concept at play during environmental
protests. The different conceptualisations of BLOOD and the arguments promoted during each
performance shed light on the visual metaphor scenario SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL
CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD. I thus ask how the different uses of the scenario may
affect the public while raising awareness about the climate crisis. On the one hand, I
demonstrate that the Red Rebel Brigade relies on artistic features to depict Extinction
Rebellion’s vision of an ideal world. On the other hand, I establish that the Blood Bath relies
on more explicit conceptualisations to make environmental damages visible to the public.
Der Beitrag untersucht visuelle Metaphern, die während zweier Aufführungen der Umweltbewegung
Extinction Rebellion, Red Rebel Brigade und Blood Bath, identifiziert werden
konnten. Diese Performances nutzen BLOOD als visuelles Quellkonzept bei Umweltprotesten.
Die unterschiedlichen Konzeptualisierungen von BLOOD und die während jeder Aufführung
vorgebrachten Argumente werfen Licht auf das visuelle Metaphernszenario SHARED
ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD. Es wird gefragt, wie sich die
unterschiedlichen Nutzungen des Szenarios auf die Öffentlichkeit auswirken und gleichzeitig
das Bewusstsein für die Klimakrise schärfen können. Einerseits wird gezeigt, dass die Red
Rebel Brigade auf künstlerische Elemente setzt, um Extinction Rebellions Vision einer idealen
Welt darzustellen. Andererseits ist festzustellen, dass Blood Bath auf expliziteren
Konzeptualisierungen beruht, um Umweltschäden für die Öffentlichkeit sichtbar zu machen.
1. Introduction
Since the 1990s, environmental scientists have evidenced the human
responsibility for climate change in the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC, First Assessment Report, 1990). However, global
emissions are still rising, and the climate crisis has transformed into an
increasingly dangerous phenomenon.
Because of this increasing danger, environmental Non-Governmental Organisations
have alerted the public to the effects of the climate crisis (Augé 2021,
2022a, 2023; Bosworth 2021; Doyle 2007). This paper focuses on the
communicative strategies used by a particular NGO, Extinction Rebellion (XR).
The organisation is known for its international influence and its spectacular
protests facilitating wider communication about the climate crisis. These
metaphorik.de 34/2023
70
protests distinguish XR from other environmental organisations: activists
attract media attention through peaceful disturbances (blocking streets and
businesses), and eye-catching performances (see below). While XR remains a
relatively new organisation – officially established in the United Kingdom in
2018 – its influence spread globally: in 2020, 1,136 affiliated groups and 250,000
’rebels’ were established in 72 countries (according to XR’s official website).
Following an investigation reported in the British newspaper The Independent,
XR represents “by far” the least popular NGO in the UK, but it is also
established as the most well-known (Tryl 2021).
In April 2019, XR was joined by a circus troupe, the Red Rebel Brigade. The Red
Rebel Brigade was originally part of a slow-motion mime show called Blanco,
displayed as part of the “Invisible Circus” during the 1990s (Invisible Circus’
official website).1 The “Invisible Circus” gathers street performers who travel
across Europe to “encourage people to be a part of the change and challenge the
status quo” (quoted after the Circus’ website).2 According to the creative
directors, Doug Francisco and Justine Squire, the emphasis on the colour red
“was part aesthetic and part symbolic, creating a very strong contrasting visual
and resonating with emotive responses to the colour, red symbolising blood,
danger, passion, stop signs etc.” (quoted from the Red Rebel Brigade’s official
website).
Despite the artistic origins of the Brigade, the emphasis on red also comes with
strong political connotations: while the troupe is originally based in England,
their name may also refer to leftist terrorist organisations such as Germany’s
Red Army Faction (Pluchinsky 2008) or Italy’s Red Brigades (Jamieson 2007),
alongside the long-established association between red and communism
(Priestland 2009). Although the troupe never explicitly acknowledged such
political references, one can infer that their involvement in (environmental)
protests may be politically connoted in the eyes of the public.
Along this line, XR’s protests have also been impacted by controversies.
Notably, in 2020, the UK police listed XR as a “terrorist organisation spreading
extremist ideology” (Dodd/Grierson 2020). This eventually resulted in a change
in the protest laws in the UK (Murphy 2022). This controversy may be linked
1 The Red Rebel Brigade’s official website: https://redrebelbrigade.com/(26.08.2022).
2 The Invisible Circus’ official website: https://invisiblecircus.co.uk/ (14.08.2023).
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
71
with the regular arrests of protesters following the blockades (see XR’s official
statement on “Arrestees’ welfare”)3 and with the disturbances caused by
artivists.
The present research draws on these existing controversies by focusing on two
particular performances conducted as part of XR’s protests: the Red Rebel
Brigade and the Blood Bath. The performance of the Red Rebel Brigade involves
a group of ’rebels’ dressed in red robes, with red flowers, red veils and crowns,
and faces painted in white.4 The Blood Bath is a more heterogenous performance
that systematically involves ‘rebels’ spraying fake blood in the streets,
on individuals, or on buildings.5
These two performances are of particular interest because they are regularly
observed during XR’s protests and can characterise the particularities of such
protests. These rely on the source concept BLOOD to convey environmental
arguments. This results in a “cognitively biased” (Kövecses 2010: 176; Lakoff
1987) depiction of the climate crisis that comprises emotional implications (e.g.,
EFFECTS OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS AS A BLOODSHED).
In this paper, I analyse the different conceptualisations attached to the source
domain BLOOD in the context of environmental artivists’ performances observed
in England. On the one hand, I demonstrate that the Red Rebel Brigade relies
on artistic features to share a BLOOD-related conceptualisation of the climate
crisis. On the other hand, I establish that the Blood Bath performance relies on
a more explicit conceptualisation of the environmental threat. This analysis
aims at answering the following question: how do environmental artivists’
different uses of the BLOOD-related metaphor ’affect’ the public to generate
environmental awareness (or environmental ’effect’)?
To this end, I analyse the metaphorical meaning of the two performances.
Throughout this analysis, I aim at uncovering how each use of the visual
3 XR’s Arrestees’ welfare: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/act-now/resources/arresteewelfare/
(06.08.2022).
4 Pictures of the Red Rebel Brigade available at: http://redrebelbrigade.com/visions/
(26.08.2022).
5 Pictures of the Blood Bath available at:
https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2021/11/09/bloodbath-extinction-rebellion...
against-the-destruction-of-the-amazon/ (26.08.2022).
metaphorik.de 34/2023
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metaphor can possibly impact the public, in view of the situational context
(environmental protests in England).
In the following section, I discuss the theoretical approaches at play to analyse
these visual occurrences.
2. Metaphors and climate crisis argumentation
2.1 Environmental artivism
In order to understand how XR’s BLOOD-related performances may ‘affect’ the
public, I first need to discuss the notion of artivism. Lemoine and Ouardi (2010)
provide a thorough analysis of different ‘artivist’ performances, and convincingly
demonstrate that the notion is ultimately attached to various possible
definitions, depending on the causes that are being defended and the artistic
techniques that are used to defend such causes. Overall, they propose a
purposefully general definition: a work of art that is a reflection of activism
(Lemoine/Ouardi 2010).
Existing literature suggests that artivism appeared in the late 1990s, in
California, and primarily focused on racialisation and social marginalisation
(Diverlus 2016). Artivism evolved globally to address a wider range of issues,
among which are environmental issues. For instance, Susan Schuppli’s Nature
Represents Itself (2018), focused on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and Judy
Chicago’s Stranded (2016), which shows a polar bear on top of a shrinking
iceberg, have been cited as examples of environmental artivism (Greenberger
2020; O’Neill 2022).
Artivism has been shown to have a “transformative potential” (Aladro-Vico et
al. 2018: 10-11). It generates reflections on socio-political issues as it invites the
public to learn about such issues and perceive these through the lens of art
(Rhoades 2012; Roig-Palmer/Pedneault 2019). Consequently, artivism can
allow for a “transformative experience” that can yield “creative solutions”, and
it aims at promoting compassion for socially-excluded groups (Schubert/Gray
2015: 1353).
In this research, I do not only aim at analysing the ’effects’ of artivist
performances (i.e., the ‘transformation’ these may allow for), but also the ways
these artivist performances can ‘affect’ the public. This focus draws on
Duncombe’s (2016) and Duncombe and Lambert’s (2018) definition of artivism.
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
73
Accordingly, activism refers to activities that challenge power relations:
activism is oriented towards an outcome and can generate an ‘effect’
(Duncombe/Lambert 2018). In contrast, the ‘effect’ of art cannot be precisely
assessed. Art is oriented towards people’s feelings, perceptions, and emotions;
it generates ‘affect’ (Duncombe/Lambert 2018: 63-64). Following this insight,
artivism is a combination of effect and affect. Duncombe (2016) argues that
affect can lead to effect while effects have an affective impact.
For instance, Medrado and Rega (2023) analyse artivism in the context of ethnic
violence erupting across Kenya. They thoroughly explore how artists responded
by using a creative combination of technologies and aesthetic tactics.
Their analysis shows that artivism was used to resist narratives about Africa
that revolve around fatalism, failure, and poverty by giving a voice to
individuals, raising critical consciousness, and fostering empowering
exchanges (Medrado/Rega 2023: 72-97). This leads the scholars to conclude that
artivism may ultimately generate “counter subversive feelings of connection”
(2023: 143).
Hence, in the analysis that follows, I aim at drawing attention to the ways these
particular performances can ‘affect’ the public so as to generate ’effect’. This
analysis will be conducted by focusing on the ‘conceptual keys’ (Charteris-Black
2001) and cultural connotations associated with BLOOD in the context of XR’s
environmental protests in England.
2.2 Multimodal metaphors in climate crisis discourse
Metaphors prevail in climate crisis discourse. These can make the topic less
complex (e.g., quantifying one’s ‘carbon footprint’, Augé 2022b; Nerlich/
Hellsten 2014), they can promote arguments regarding climate change
mitigation and policies (e.g., the ‘war’ against climate change, Atanasova/
Koteyko 2017), they can persuade recipients of the urgency to tackle the
problem (Flusberg/Matlock/Thibodeau 2017), and they can attract public
attention to the issue (Augé 2021). Notably, in his critics of the metaphor COVID-
19 AS A WAR in political discourse, Hanne (2022) concludes that:
To treat not only the actual pandemic and this metaphorical
pandemic, but also the other major challenges, we require a vision
that incorporates many elements. That vision will be both
international and local. It will view human beings as integral to the
metaphorik.de 34/2023
74
natural world, rather than distinct from it. […] It is the discipline of
ecology which encourages us to think of the world in such a holistic
way. Ecology is concerned with interconnection and interdependence,
with communities of living creatures (Hanne 2022: 97;
my emphasis).
Indeed, this idea of “interconnection and interdependence” seems to be a major
characteristic of XR’s visual metaphors related to the source concept BLOOD (see
below). Visual metaphors have been documented in environmental discourse
(Hidalgo-Downing/O’Dowd 2023). Existing literature has demonstrated that
visual metaphors increase people’s concerns and make the environmental
problem more tangible (Meijers et al. 2019: 999). Notably, Doyle (2007) identifies
a wide range of alarming metaphors observed in the posters produced by the
environmental NGO Greenpeace (e.g., CLIMATE CHANGE AS A TIME BOMB). Pérez-
Sobrino (2013) investigates the advertisement of environmentally friendly
marketed products and notices the prevalence of the colour green to represent
the products as desirable items (i.e., GREEN AS DESIRABLE). However, to my
knowledge, no study has yet focused on the metaphorical meaning of
environmental artivists’ performances.
Forceville (1994, 1996) defines visual metaphor as a replacement of an expected
visual element by an unexpected one. He notes that there must be no preexistent
or conventional connection between these two elements (Forceville
1994). In the context of environmental artivism, the BLOOD is understood as the
source domain of the metaphor since the association between BLOOD and the
climate crisis is, following Forceville’s phrasing, “unexpected” and without
“conventional connection” (Forceville 1994: 24-26, 1996: 200).
2.3 The source concept BLOOD
The BLOOD represents a concrete concept that allows the BODIES to live
(Charteris-Black 2004: 262). This association between BLOOD and LIVING BODIES
can be reflected through prevalent socio-cultural views on the source concept.
Metaphor scholars have acknowledged the relation between bodily experience
and expressions that refer to human emotions (e.g., fullness to describe the
presence of an intense emotion, as in “to be filled with emotion”, Charteris-
Black 2001: 273, 2004: 262). Thus, if the body is conceptualised as a CONTAINER
that can be ’filled’ or ‘emptied’, this indicates that it is one that is filled with
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
75
blood (2001: 273). Following this observation, Charteris-Black (2001) analyses
the different ‘conceptual keys’ associated with the concept BLOOD in different
languages. He defines ‘conceptual keys’ as follows:
this is a formal statement of an underlying idea that accounts for the
related figures of speech that occur in different languages. A
conceptual key explains figurative rather than literal senses in a
language; it does not distinguish between metaphor and metonymy
or other figures because different languages may vary in the way that
these figures are employed in their phraseology. […] If bodily
experience were universal, then we would expect to find evidence in
figurative phraseology for cross-lingual or universal conceptualisations
(Charteris-Black 2001: 274-275).
This consideration leads him to identify three main conceptual keys associated
with BLOOD: BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY, BLOOD FOR LIFE, and BLOOD AS TEMPERAMENT.
He notes that, despite the “universal motivation” of such conceptual keys, their
meanings and resonance considerably vary within and between languages
(Charteris-Black 2001). For instance, the conceptual key BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY
can serve as a metonym for cultural or racial inheritance, dependency, or
aristocracy. BLOOD FOR LIFE may refer to vitality, creativity, enthusiasm, but also
violence, exploitation, and murder. BLOOD AS TEMPERAMENT can refer to
indignation, suffering, or determination (Charteris-Black 2001).
These findings highlight how the concept BLOOD can be used and understood
differently depending on the context in which it appears, and the cultural
connotations it is associated with. The present research, however, does not aim
at establishing such a comparative analysis across languages. I complement
Charteris-Black’s account on the BLOOD conceptual keys by investigating how
these conceptual keys can be reflected, visually, in the performances staged in
the context of environmental artivism. Notably, the performances analysed
below take place specifically in England. It is thus necessary to consider the
cultural connotations associated with the concept of BLOOD in this context.
For instance, the source concept may be associated with Christian religious
beliefs: it can be related to the phenomenon of ‘transubstantiation’ whereby,
according to the Bible, disciples are to drink “the true and eternal life-giving
blood of Jesus” (Wilson 2022: 5). Gonzalez notes that this conversion reflects a
spiritual relationship between Jesus Christ’s body and all species (2005: 208).
metaphorik.de 34/2023
76
Accordingly, the concept BLOOD can be interpreted as a means to create
connections.
From a different stance, the source concept BLOOD can be related to the
conceptual domains of CONFLICT and VIOLENCE. Charteris-Black (2004: 25-27, 41-
42) documents the conceptual associations made in political discourses between
BLOOD and conflicts (e.g., political conflict as BLOODSHED). Notably, the source
concept BLOOD has been widely discussed in the existing literature that
investigates anti-immigration discourse. The BLOOD conceptualisation can be
traced back to the British Conservative Politician Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of
Blood’ speech (1968). According to this politician, “inflows” and “outflows” of
immigrants (Charteris-Black 2006: 566; Chilton 2004: 117; Musolff 2015: 46) have
been implicitly assimilated to Virgil’s depiction of the rivers filled with the
enemies’ blood in the Aeneid (Goguey/Dubouchet 2014: 47). This conceptualisation
also prevails in more recent immigration debates. For instance,
Musolff (2015) identifies “dehumanising metaphors” in contemporary British
press, blogs, and readers’ comments which present depictions of immigrants as
“blood suckers”, “sucking blood out of [the host society]” (2015: 47-48). This
“dehumanisation” also appears in discourses about gender and race. Existing
research has demonstrated that BLOOD metaphors have been used to promote
racist ideologies (“black blood”; “tainted blood”, Russell 2010) which advertise
white supremacy and draw a distinction between different ‘races’.
Following these findings, it is possible to identify different connotations
associated with the source concept BLOOD. In the following analysis (sections 4
and 5), I demonstrate how these connotations are at play in environmental
artivists’ performances.
2.4 Metaphor scenario
The source domain BLOOD can promote different arguments in environmental
discourse. These BLOOD-related arguments lead to the identification of a BLOODrelated
scenario. Scenarios involve assumptions about the source concept: this
source concept becomes part of a metaphorical script to promote a certain
evaluation of the topic (Musolff 2016: 30-31). In the performances of the Red
Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath, the BLOOD is a visual representation of a
characteristic shared by living beings (see sections 4 and 5). Therefore, the visual
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
77
conceptualisations observed during these performances can be associated with
the scenario SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD.
Environmental artivists’ exploitation of the scenario demonstrates the different
ways in which such BLOOD-related metaphorical performances can impact the
public, in the context of environmental protests in England.
The different uses of the metaphor scenario are discussed at length in the
following sections. These are preceded by methodological information, which I
now explain in more details.
3. Methodology
The research started by watching different occurrences of the two performances,
i.e. the Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath, during XR’s protests taking place
in England. I consulted the official British website of the organisation6 along
with the official website of the Red Rebel Brigade7. All the communications
published on the website of the Red Rebel Brigade have been reviewed (i.e.,
introductory statement, visions, exposure) to retrieve contextual information
about the performances (places, dates, and tools used during performances). On
XR’s website, I used the search option to select publications associated with the
search terms red rebel brigade (38 publications) and blood (92 publications). The
publications which were selected for this research include videos or photos of
the performances and textual information about the context of the performances.
The metaphorical conceptualisations associated with the two performances
were analysed following the two established procedures: MIPVU (Steen et al.
2010) and VISMIP (Šorm/Steen 2018; see also FILMIP, Bort-Mir 2021). VISMIP
is a procedure to identify visual metaphors, its steps can be summarised as
follows:
1. look at the entire image, including visual and verbal elements, to
establish a general understanding of the meaning;
2. structure descriptive phrase(s);
3. find incongruous visual units;
6 XR’s official website: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/ (26.08.2022).
7 The Red Rebel Brigade’s official website: https://redrebelbrigade.com/(26.08.2022).
metaphorik.de 34/2023
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4. test whether the incongruous units are to be integrated within the overall
topical framework by means of some form of comparison;
5. test whether the comparison(s) is-are cross-domain;
6. test whether the comparison(s) can be seen as some form of indirect
discourse about the topic (Šorm/Steen 2018).
The procedure established in MIPVU is also relevant as the performances can
involve verbal communication produced by artivists: for instance, the performances
involve artivists talking to the public and giving away leaflets.
Therefore, this verbal communication is also part of the essentially visual
performances. MIPVU focuses on verbal metaphors, its steps are as follows:
1. find local referent and topic shifts;
2. test whether the incongruous lexical units are to be integrated within the
overall referential and-or topical framework by means of some form of
comparison;
3. test whether the comparison is nonliteral or cross-domain;
4. test whether the comparison can be seen as some form of indirect
discourse about the local or main referent or topic of the text”
(Šorm/Steen 2018: 53; Steen et al. 2010).
The metaphorical meaning of the two performances is thoroughly discussed in
the following sections. Yet, neither MIPVU nor VISMIP-FILMIP can fully grasp
the metaphorical meaning of performances: these have been designed for the
analysis of verbal metaphors, images (like cartoons), and films. These procedures
can still help to identify the metaphorical conceptualisations at play
during the performances. Such conceptualisations have then been qualitatively
analysed following the methodology established in Critical Metaphor Analysis
(Charteris-Black 2004): 1. Identification, 2. Interpretation, 3. Explanation. In the
identification phase, I conducted the MIPVU and VISMIP-FILMIP procedures.
In the interpretation phase, I considered how the BLOOD was used in each
performance (e.g., the red robes of the Red Rebel Brigade and the fake
bloodshed resulting from the Blood Bath). In the explanation phase, I focused
on the situational context, i.e. environmental protests in England, to figure out
how these particular occurrences of BLOOD were related to the cause defended
by environmental artivists.
The scope of this research is qualitative. Videos and images of the performances
have been analysed according to the procedures defined above, along with
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
79
Forceville’s definition of visual metaphor, in terms of “unconventional
connections” (Forceville 1994: 24-26, 1996: 200). This qualitative analysis aims at
observing how the performances of the Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
may affect the public and generate environmental awareness, with particular
attention paid to the ‘conceptual keys’ and cultural connotations associated
with BLOOD (Charteris-Black 2001).
In the following section, I discuss the metaphorical use of BLOOD during the
performance of the Red Rebel Brigade. I then focus on the Blood Bath performance
to eventually compare the different connotations at play in the use of
the visual metaphor scenario, observed in the context of environmental
artivism.
4. The Red Rebel Brigade
4.1 The colour red
The Red Rebel Brigade was originally a circus troupe with limited political
involvement (the involvement is not explicitly recognised by performers). In
April 2019, it became affiliated with the environmental movement XR. This
affiliation means that the situational context in which the performance takes
place has – to some extent – altered the meaning of the performance: it moved
from an exclusively artistic setting (i.e., the circus) to a socio-political setting
(i.e., environmental protests). This consideration is significant in the analysis of
the performance: the originally artistic performance is, in this research, viewed
as an instance of environmental artivism because the artistic performance is
displayed as part of environmental protests. In this section, I aim at showing
how the artistic features of the performance have been preserved while the performance
has taken on an additional – environmental – meaning.
The source concept BLOOD remains implicit throughout the Brigade’s performance:
the references to BLOOD can be perceived through the visual metonymy
RED FOR BLOOD while, in such a socio-political context, the colour may easily
recall political movements such as communist movements (Priestland 2009).
Yet, the information retrieved from XR’s website, regarding the origins of the
environmental movement, insists on the fact that the movement is not
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associated with any political party (‘about us’ section of the website).8 Thus, the
red robes, veils, crowns and flowers used by the Brigade may not refer to such
political groups. The leaflets (accessed via the Red Rebel Brigade’s website)9
distributed by artivists during the performance aim at orienting the public’s
interpretation: the short text appearing on the leaflets explains that the colour
red is a way to “symbolise the common blood we share with all species” (my
emphasis).
4.2 COMMON BLOOD
The red colour displayed during the performance is thus to be interpreted
following the metonymy RED FOR BLOOD. The emphasis, in the leaflets, on
“common blood” is also reflected visually during the performance: artivists
hide most of their individual features by painting their faces in white
(preventing the public from identifying particular individuals) and wearing the
same clothes. Additionally, the performance requires artivists to either hold
each other’s hands or, alternatively, to collectively hold a long red thread as they
progress in the streets.10 This visual detail of the performance indicates a focus
on collectivism contrasting with individualism: the performance downplays
artivists’ individual features while collective features are represented through
the omnipresence of the colour red.
This emphasis on collectivism can be analysed in terms of the conceptual key
BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY, and in particular “dependency” (Charteris-Black 2001).
Accordingly, the Brigade relies on the metonym so that the common bodily
features we share with all species are more visible to the public. In the context
of environmental artivism, the insistence on similarities implies that we have
similar bodily features (i.e., blood), therefore what may affect one species can
affect us, and vice versa: interconnectedness has a role to play in the way we
experience the climate crisis.
8 XR’s official website, ‘about us’ section: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-truth/aboutus/
(06.10.2023).
9 The full text of the leaflets is presented in the annexes.
10 Picture of the performance: https://redrebelbrigade.com/wp-content/uploads/stephstillwell-
upsurge-studios-min-scaled.jpg (06.08.2023).
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If one considers the situational context (environmental protests in England), the
colour red displayed by the Brigade is also related to the conceptual key BLOOD
FOR LIFE (Charteris-Black 2001). The visual metonymy RED FOR BLOOD insists on
what makes us all alive (i.e., the blood that runs in our bodies), which contrasts
with the context in which artivists warn about a danger to our lives: the climate
crisis. The BLOOD is a key aspect of the performance: the Red Rebel Brigade
draws attention to a part of the BODY that is, to some extent, invisible when the
BODY IS HEALTHY. However, the BLOOD is a physiological component that
becomes visible when the BODY HAS BEEN INJURED. The Brigade’s performers do
not visually express any signs of INJURIES and PAIN: artivists’ faces are painted,
which deprives them – to some extent – of facial expressions.11 Their focus on
the BLOOD relies on the public’s embodied experiences (El Refaie 2019; Gibbs
2005; Gibbs et al. 2004). Accordingly, the Brigade resorts to the public’s
cognitive bias (Kövecses 2010: 176; Lakoff 1987) and ‘moral foundations’
(Charteris-Black 2021) induced by the conceptual key BLOOD FOR LIFE (Charteris-
Black 2001), which are to possibly generate reflexions regarding a possible
CURE-INTERVENTION. This interpretation is also coherent with the situational
context (i.e., environmental protests) which relates to the extinction of species
caused by the human-made climate crisis.
As the Brigade progresses in the streets, they show to the public a sense of
cohesion: artivists follow the same rhythm, they work together to create a
‘march’ or theatrical mimes. This cohesion displayed by the Brigade can, on the
one hand, highlight that individuals can work together to create a collective
piece while, on the other hand, this cohesion also involves a threatening aspect.
Their cohesion ultimately appears as a ceremonious procession which the
general public may not be initially informed about, and is not invited to join.
This consideration uncovers a significant issue regarding artivism: this cohesion
among artivists might eventually exclude the general public. Members of the
public are only conceived as viewers but not as actors involved in the
performance-protest. For instance, the sophisticated appearance of red ’rebels’
(robes, make-up, mimetic gestures) creates a frontier between the artivists and
the public. The same kind of frontier is notably observed during artistic performances
(e.g., the ‘fourth wall’), which means that the Brigade’s role during
11 Picture of artivists’ painted faces:
https://redrebelbrigade.com/wp-content/uploads/james-pearce-min.jpg (06.08.2023).
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environmental protests remains an essentially artistic role: their performance is
to ‘affect’ the public, but the performance is not aimed at producing immediate
‘effects’ (e.g., public’s impulsive participation). Artivists use this frontier separating
them from the public to attract attention, raise questions about such a
procession, and affect the public so that the public can start a transformative
reflexion on environmental issues.
4.3 The artistic fantasy
From a more critical point of view, this conceptualisation of BLOOD (related to
LIFE and DEPENDENCY and CONNECTIONS) may appear as a fantasy disconnected
with our social reality. Indeed, the artivists’ insistence on collectivism –
perceived through artivists’ cohesion and collective appearance during
performances – discards relevant characteristics of modern society (e.g., the
socio-cultural prevalence of the ‘Great Chain of Beings’, according to Lakoff/
Turner 1989). This consideration can weaken the artivists’ arguments. Yet, the
artivists acknowledge this fantastic aspect of their performance. Notably, they
justify this fantastic aspect in their leaflets (distributed during protests), which
ask the public to “enter into the magic realm” (see Annexes). The selfidentification
of the Brigade as a group of MAGICAL CREATURES is reflected
visually, as the performance deprives artivists of most of their human-like
features: their faces are painted, their bodies are completely covered in large red
robes, and their heads are covered by red veils. These fading human traits are
also associated with non-human gestures (i.e., a slow-motion mime show). This
disguise does not only aim at attracting attention, but it also invites the public
to reflect on the fantasy. Artivists self-identify as ’magical’ creatures while they
are involved in environmental protests. This contrast between fantasy and
protests suggests that the public is not only invited to perceive the environment
as an issue (that requires protests), but they are also invited to fantasise a world
deprived of such environmental issues (the protests transform into artistic
performances).
Additionally, the reference to “magic” in the artivists’ leaflets can be associated
with childhood fantasies: while art may depict a fantasised world, the “magic”
refers more explicitly to stories addressed to children. For instance, the
Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.) defines magic along this line: “the use of special
powers to make things happen that would usually be impossible, such as in
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stories for children” (definition A2). The Brigade aims at inviting the public to
recall the vision of the world they had when they were young children (in the
leaflets, artivists state: “we are who the people have forgotten to be”, see
Annexes). The performance invites the public to reflect on this fantasised world
defined by the lack of environmental issues, as these phenomena were (partly)
ignored during childhood.
However, this ‘fantastic’ aspect of the performance may not generate
transformative reflexion about the climate crisis, if one considers the current
socio-political context. Indeed, the climate crisis remains a highly complex
phenomenon which is misunderstood by a significant part of the population:
for instance, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (ongoing)
recently identified a new wave of climate scepticism which started in 2020 and
is increasing since then. Similarly, artistic performances can be perceived as
complex, since art works rarely convey explicit messages (Duncombe 2016;
Duncombe/Lambert 2018). Hence, even if artivism may succeed in attracting
public attention, this lack of explicit messages about a complex issue, such as
the climate crisis, may in fact increase public misunderstanding. The Brigade’s
performance may still ‘affect’ the public, but its ’effects’ can be questioned.
In the next section, I turn my attention to a more explicit use of the BLOOD source
concept, which can be observed during XR’s Blood Bath performance.
5. The Blood Bath
5.1 The situational context
XR’s Blood Bath performance is mainly characterised by the spraying of fake
blood over strategic places (e.g., banks, fossil fuel lobbies, polluting companies,
politicians’ offices) during environmental protests. Unlike the Red Rebel
Brigade, this performance is produced by ‘regular’ protesters who may be
disguised as politicians12, widows or injured bodies13.
12 Images of the protest available at: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2021/11/09/bloodbathextinction-
rebellion-stands-with-apib-agains-the-destruction-of-the-amazon/ (21.08.2022).
13 Image of the protest available at: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/extinctionrebellion-
protesters-cover-themselves-in-fake-blood-and-stage-diein-at-london-fashionweek-
a4235691.html (21.08.2022).
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It is to be noted that the climate crisis may result in actual bloodsheds in specific
contexts, such as land exploitations in the Amazon which resulted in a “dirty
war” and genocide of Indigenous tribes (Toomey 2009). Accordingly, the BLOOD
used by environmental artivists can be understood as a metonymical reference
to the (literal) deaths caused by such environmental issues. The BLOOD still takes
on a metaphorical meaning while considering the situational context in which
the performance takes place: the BLOODSHED is observed in England and, in
particular, in the wealthy neighbourhoods of London, such as Downing Street14
(where the UK Prime Minister’s office is located). Therefore, the situational
context of the performance produces “unconventional connections” (Forceville
1994: 24-26, 1996: 200) existing between the BLOOD observed in England and
environmental issues (i.e., the cause defended by artivists).
The BLOOD sprayed in the streets or over buildings results in chaotic images
suggesting BARBARIC MASSACRES. In particular, the performance focuses on
politicians’ and polluters’ guilt since the strategic location of the Blood Bath also
adds to the meaning of the performance. Images of the streets covered in BLOOD
can be conceptualised as CRIME SCENES, identifying the targeted polluters and
politicians as BARBARIC CRIMINALS in the eyes of the public. The visual metaphor
is thus a way for XR to draw a direct link between politics, finance, and deaths
related to pollution.
5.2 The fake blood
The environmental artivists’ reliance on ‘fake blood’ as part of their performance
results in a very explicit use of the concept BLOOD, compared with the
Red Rebel Brigade’s implicit references to BLOOD, represented through red
clothes. Such an explicit representation of BLOOD during the Blood Bath can
have a direct ‘effect’ on the public. As the public is to observe the unexpected
presence of BLOOD, this unexpectedness can trigger immediate reflexions
(Schubert/Gray 2015) regarding this visual element. Subsequently, the public
may reflect on the origins of this BLOODSHED which is to prospectively lead them
to learn about the environmental artivists’ message.
14 Images of the Blood Bath in Downing Street available at:
https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/03/09/breaking-extinction-rebellion-...
of-blood-at-downing-st-to-call-alarm-on-climate-and-ecological-emergency/ (17.08.2023).
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
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Alternatively, this “unconventional connection” (Forceville 1994: 24-26, 1996:
200) may weaken the environmental artivists’ message: the resulting
BLOODSHED may seem like an exaggerated representation of the effects of the
climate crisis. The performance can still ’affect’ the public and generate
reflexions regarding the ground of such conceptual associations, but the shock
produced by the performance may also lead some members of the public to
contest the message of environmental artivists. Indeed, the performance
represents a BLOOD-related conceptualisation of environmental issues that does
not correspond to the public’s experiential knowledge (i.e., the “connection”
may be too “unconventional”, Forceville 1994: 24-26, 1996: 200). Consequently,
the artistic aspect of the performance – which is to generate long-term effects
(Duncombe 2016) – may not be grasped by the English public. However, the
affective impact of the performance (Duncombe 2016) can, in such
circumstances, be directed towards the performers themselves, who can be
blamed for the shock experienced by the public. In other words, the ‘artistic’
aspect can also have an impact on the ‘activist’ aspect of the performance.
The visual shock generated by the performance is also permitted by cultural
connotations associated with the concept BLOOD. Indeed, environmental
artivists rely on the conceptual key BLOOD FOR LIFE (Charteris-Black 2001). The
BLOODSHED resulting from the performance can ‘affect’ the public following
conceptual associations between BLOOD and INJURIES and DEATHS: as mentioned
in section 2, this physiological component is – to some extent – invisible in
healthy circumstances but becomes visible in case of injuries. Here, the
environmental artivists do not only make the BLOOD visible, but their performance
also makes it eye-catching.
The amount of fake blood required for the Blood Bath (existing reports claim
that no less than 1,800 litres of fake blood have been used for a single
performance)15 has been calculated so that the performance can easily catch the
attention of the general public. This amount of fake blood, suggesting a
BLOODSHED, does not leave much room for conceptual questioning: the BLOOD
is used to conceptually represent DEATHS, in accordance with the conceptual key
BLOOD FOR LIFE (Charteris-Black 2001).
15 Report available at: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/10/03/extinction-rebellionspray-
fake-blood-on-treasury-using-fire-engine/ (17.08.2023).
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This huge amount of fake blood can also be interpreted following the conceptual
key BLOOD AS TEMPERAMENT (Charteris-Black 2001). Accordingly, the quantity
of fake blood conceptually reflects the high degree of suffering experienced by
the victims of environmental issues. Interestingly, while the strategic location of
the performance helps the public to identify the CULPRIT, the identities of the
VICTIMS are not disclosed. The BLOOD is used as a bodily component that shows
that the CULPRIT is being targeted for MURDEROUS actions. Such actions are
represented as BODILY HARM to insist on a bodily feature (i.e., blood) which the
public can relate to. The performance relies on the public’s conceptual
knowledge to persuade them to CARE for the victims (implicitly represented
through the BLOODSHED), while observing the HARM that has been done.
Along this line, the performance also refers to the interconnectedness between
humans, with regards to the BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY conceptual key (Charteris-
Black 2001). The performance may particularly affect the public because the
BLOOD is similar to the blood contained within the bodies of the members of the
public. The images of the BLOOD sprayed in England warn about the risks that
concern every human being, as this BLOOD could belong to any living being.
5.3 The artefacts
Environmental artivists also use different artefacts to carry the litres of fake
blood during the performance. These artefacts are not only used for practical
reasons, but they also convey additional messages to the public during the
performance.
For instance, a noticeable occurrence of XR’s Blood Bath performance took place
in front of the Treasury, in London, in October 2019. As part of this protest,
environmental artivists used a fire engine to spray fake blood over the
building.16 The use of the fire engine identifies ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIVISTS AS
FIRE FIGHTERS. Accordingly, this performance places artivists in the role of
HEROES while the Treasury is represented as the FIRE RAISER, and the BLOOD may
refer to the victims of the FIRE (implicitly represented through the fake blood,
see above). The representation of the danger as a FIRE may be an implicit
16 Images of the “fire engine” available at: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wpcontent/
uploads/2019/10/72175248_10162360758870710_6250363646992449536_o.jpg
(17.08.2023).
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reference to the climate crisis, also referred to as global warming. The FIRE is a
typical example of extreme, dangerous warmth which suggests a topictriggered
use of the visual metaphor (Semino 2008). The environmental artivists
rely on this conceptual association to draw a visual link between finance and
climate-related deaths.
A different instance of the Blood Bath was performed during an environmental
protest in London in March 2019.17 The ‘rebels’ were holding buckets of fake
blood to be sprayed over Downing Street. This reliance on buckets may be
decoded according to the conceptual key BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY (Charteris-Black
2001). Indeed, the performance involves artivists carrying their own buckets of
blood, which may highlight a link of possession existing between the blood
contained in each bucket and the artivist who holds this bucket. Therefore, we
can speculate that this sense of belonging might visually signify that the bucket
contains the artivist’s own blood.
This use of buckets was also explained by an environmental artivist, speaking
during the performance:
(1) We are in a surreal situation now where we have got devastating
changes, it is very close on the horizon and most of us are asleep,
and part of what we are doing here is to shock a little bit,
because this is the blood of our children, it is our blood, and
things have got to change (Extinction Rebellion 09/03/2019, my
emphasis).18
Following the environmental artivist’s claims, the source concept BLOOD is
exploited to highlight the main unmatching features of the metaphorical
conceptualisation: the protesters (“our blood”) and their children (“the blood of
our children”) are obviously not injured nor dead. These unmatching features
can yet particularly affect the public since these buckets of blood are
represented, verbally, through the conceptual key BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY. This
conceptualisation implies that CARING is conceived as a personal duty: the
BLOOD used during the Blood Bath is similar to human blood, and therefore the
public’s and their children’s blood. The performance thus turns environmental
17 Images of the “buckets of blood” available at:
https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/03/09/breaking-extinction-rebellion-...
of-blood-at-downing-st-to-call-alarm-on-climate-and-ecological-emergency/(17.08.2023).
18 Video available at: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/09/14/our-childrens-blood-xrhamburg-
14-september-2019/ (06.08.2022).
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issues (i.e., the cause defended by artivists) into personal duties, identified
through cultural connotations associated with the concept BLOOD.
The explicit representation of the BLOOD concept as part of the Blood Bath may
lead us to consider the artistic aspects of this artivist performance. Indeed, the
Blood Bath generates immediate ‘effects’ as the public is to learn about the
origins of the unexpected BLOODSHED. It can also generate more long-term
reflexions related to the conceptual associations between environmental issues
and (bodily) danger.
In the following section, I provide answers to my main research question: how
do environmental artivists’ different uses of the BLOOD-related metaphor ‘affect’
the public to generate environmental awareness (or environmental ‘effect’)? I
also discuss the endorsed and contested aspects of these performances in the
British media. This leads me to consider the various functions of visual metaphors
observed as part of environmental artivism.
6. Discussion
This paper has presented the varying uses of the visual metaphor scenario
SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD during the performances
staged by Extinction Rebellion and the Red Rebel Brigade in
England.
The analysis of visual metaphors has demonstrated that the artivists conceptualise
the BLOOD as a CONNECTION between all individuals. This emphasis
on interconnectedness is coherent with the defining features of artivism, which
is to promote “counter subversive feelings of connection” (Medrado/Rega 2023:
143). In this research, I demonstrated how environmental artivists rely on the
conceptual keys BLOOD FOR LIFE, BLOOD FOR ANCESTRY and BLOOD AS
TEMPERAMENT (Charteris-Black 2001) to draw a conceptual link between the
public (and the blood contained in their bodies), and the BLOOD used during
these performances. The BLOOD is a concept that can produce strong emotions,
which are associated with the situational context: environmental artivists’ performances
in England.
This emphasis on interconnectedness in the use of BLOOD by Extinction
Rebellion and the Red Rebel Brigade relies on the public’s moral foundations
(Charteris-Black 2021). Notably, in my analysis of the Blood Bath, I established
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
89
how the fake blood sprayed over strategic places in England (such as banks,
politicians’ headquarters, fossil fuel lobbies) can attract public attention to the
HARM caused by these companies, while inciting the public to CARE for victims
and, more generally, for the prosperity of all living species. In my analysis of
the Red Rebel Brigade’s performance, I suggested that the visual metonymy RED
FOR BLOOD also reflected this idea of interconnectedness and collectivism while
also insisting on BODILY HARM (i.e., visibility of the BLOOD) and thus, environmental
danger (i.e., situational context). Accordingly, the environmental
artivists resort to the public’s cognitive bias (Kövecses 2010: 176; Lakoff 1987)
and moral foundations (Charteris-Black 2021) induced by the conceptual keys
associated with BLOOD (Charteris-Black 2001), which are to generate reflexions
regarding a possible CURE-INTERVENTION.
This focus on interconnectedness represented through the concept of BLOOD
draws on spiritual conceptualisations documented in religious discourse
(Charteris-Black 2004; Gonzalez 2005; Wilson 2022). For instance, this idea of
interconnectedness recalls existing scientific views on the ecosystem defined in
James Lovelock’s “Gaia Theory” (2007). According to this theory, elaborated
since the early 1970s (Donahue 2010: 55-6), nature is represented as a system of
interactions between species, organisms, and the environment. These interactions
create a single living entity characterised by its indivisibility: Gaia
(Donahue 2010: 52; Ogle 2010: 275-7). This theory provides a particular view on
human life on earth: human control of nature is opposed to Gaia’s selfregulation
which leads Lovelock to call for the preservation of “emotional
bonds to Gaia” (Ogle 2010: 280). His work has had a significant impact on
science because it raised new questions and hypotheses about the influence of
humans on the climate (Donahue 2010: 53-4; Ogle 2010: 276-8). In the context of
the environmental artivists’ performances, this conceptualisation is aimed at
promoting compassion through references to moral foundations related to
CARE-HARM (Charteris-Black 2021).
Throughout the analysis, questions have been raised as to how these
environmental artivists’ performances may ‘affect’ the public so as to lead to
‘effect’ (Duncombe 2016; Duncombe/Lambert 2018). During the performances,
the public is essentially perceived as viewers but not as actors. This is
particularly noticeable during the performance of the Red Rebel Brigade: the
artivists self-identify as ‘magic creatures’ conducting a ceremonious procession
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which the public may not be informed about and is not invited to join. While
the ‘magical’ aspect of the performance is aimed at envisioning a fantasised
world deprived of environmental issues, the artivists’ cohesion, theatrical
mimes, and collective appearance as a circus troupe might feel like a threat to
the public. These references to ‘magic’ have been criticised by climate change
deniers who perceive climate activists as “medieval preachers” (Atanasova/
Koteyko 2017: 460) who believe in a “false religion” (Nerlich 2010: 434).
The artivists’ role during environmental protests remains an essentially artistic
role: their performance is to ‘affect’ the public (Duncombe 2016) but the
performance is not aimed at producing immediate ‘effects’. Artivists use this
‘fourth wall’ separating them from the public to attract attention, raise questions
about the performances, and affect the public so that the public can start a
transformative reflexion (Schubert/Gray 2015) on environmental issues.
Alternatively, the artistic aspect of the performances may not be grasped by the
public. This has notably been considered in my analysis of the Blood Bath. In
this case, the affective impact of the performance (Duncombe 2016) can generate
critical views on the performers, and thus the environmental movement, who
can be blamed for the shock experienced by the public during the performance:
the ‘artistic’ aspect can also have an impact on the ’activist’ aspect of the
performance.
Another question appeared with regards to the lack of measurable ‘effects’ of
art (Duncombe/Lambert 2018: 63-64). Indeed, art rarely conveys explicit
messages. Yet, such explicit messages may be required in the context of
environmental artivism because the climate crisis remains a misunderstood
issue as evidenced by the increasing wave of scepticism (Yale Program on
Climate Change Communication, ongoing). The artistic aspect of
environmental artivism may not ultimately generate transformative reflexion
(Schubert/Gray 2015) about the climate crisis.
The question (regarding how these BLOOD-related performances can ’affect’ the
public and generate ’effects’) can be further discussed through a study of British
media descriptions of each performance. A brief research on the Nexis database,
which provides access to newspaper articles and online news, has demonstrated
that the two performances have been endorsed by British newspapers (e.g.,
“keep the strange wonder alive!”, report on XR’s protest by Charlotte Becquart,
Cornwall Live, 17/02/2020), with some verbal exploitations of the source domain
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91
to insist on the artivists’ arguments (e.g., “Red Rebels have travelled, silently
and with purpose, along the veins of the country to the beating heart of COP26
in Glasgow”, Miranda Norris, Oxford Mail, 01/11/2021; “How Extinction
Rebellion put the world on red alert”, Nosheen Iqbal, The Guardian,
06/10/2019). A major contrast between the two performances can yet be
perceived in more critical media, such as the British newspaper Telegraph.
Indeed, both performances have been criticised, but the criticism seems to be
much more scathing in descriptions of the Blood Bath than in descriptions of
the Red Rebel Brigade. For instance, the description of the Red Rebel Brigade in
Telegraph claims that the aim of the “scaremongering” and “disruptive” protest
is to “take us back to pre-industrial Dark Ages” (Telegraph 07/10/2019). Daily
Mail described artivists as “clowns” (Daily Mail 09/10/2019) while The
Cambridge Independent denied that the performance is an instance of
“witchcraft”, as claimed by a discontented citizen (The Cambridge Independent
12/12/2020). In contrast, criticism regarding the Blood Bath suggests that the
performance could have been “claimed by Al Qaeda” and was an instance of
“ecofascism” (Richard LittleJohn, Daily Mail 03/10/2019). The journalists also
criticised the “bloody mess” left by the fake blood sprayed in the streets and
complained about the cost of the cleaning and the possible toxicity of the
material used to produce the fake blood (Telegraph 03/10/2010). The emphasis
on the colour red during the two performances has also been misleadingly
associated with political ideologies (i.e., communism; Telegraph 07/10/2019).
This brief discussion of the media descriptions of the performances suggests
that on the one hand, the Red Rebel Brigade does not produce very strong
criticism, but the main argument is downplayed in descriptions of the ‘wonder’
of the protests. On the other hand, the Blood Bath has been heavily criticised in
the media. Notably, some claims are particularly concerning since these relate
to existing controversies presenting Extinction Rebellion as a terrorist group
(see report by Dodd/ Grierson 2020).
Therefore, the varying visual occurrences of the scenario SHARED ENVIRONMENTAL
CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD during Extinction Rebellion’s and
the Red Rebel Brigade’s performances serve different functions: first, these
undeniably produce ‘peaceful disturbance’ which attracts public attention.
Second, these represent a new form of protests that distinguish the newly
founded NGO from other organisations. This can eventually attract more
activists who may want to join the ‘events’, while avoiding participations to
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‘protests’. Third, the singularity of the performances effectively attracts media
attention, which helps activists to convey their messages to the general public.
7. Concluding remarks
It is now possible to establish the complementarity of the performances: the
Blood Bath favours an explicit version of the visual metaphor scenario SHARED
ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES AS COMMON BLOOD while the Red Rebel
Brigade presents an essentially artistic visual version of the scenario.
Accordingly, the source concept BLOOD is exploited by environmental artivists
so as to encourage the spread of their main message: the climate crisis needs to
be averted to prevent the extinction of all species. Therefore, even if the two
performances seem to differ at first sight, these promote similar environmental
arguments, related to the need for connections. The source concept BLOOD can
provoke a wide range of reactions among the public, which can ultimately
generate transformative reflexion (Schubert/Gray 2015) and foster
“empowering exchanges” (Medrado/Rega 2023: 143).
It is possible to infer that environmental artivists’ significant reliance on BLOOD
during protests is caused by the cultural connotations and the (universal)
conceptual keys associated with the concept (Charteris-Black 2001).
Interestingly, performances related to women’s rights present highly similar
visual characteristics: the visual features of the Red Rebel Brigade recall the
work of the French artist Valérie Belin who depicted female submission through
images of women wearing magnificent, embellished dresses (“The Brides”). In
contrast, the explicit representation of BLOOD as part of Extinction Rebellion’s
Blood Bath recalls the works of female body-artists whose artworks and
performances rely on blood to denounce the violence against women (see the
works of the French artist Gina Pane and the Israeli artist Sigalit Landau). This
demonstrates the relevance of the visual exploitation of a (source) concept,
which can be viewed through different lenses (artistic lens or activist lens) to
reach a large variety of individuals with different visual sensibilities.
From a linguistic viewpoint, this research has proposed a different approach to
the analysis of visual metaphors: it considered the possible impact of a visual
metaphor scenario in the context of environmental artivists’ protests, and it
adapted existing methodologies to investigate the metaphorical conceptualisations
promoted during performances. I conclude that performances taking
Augé: The Red Rebel Brigade and the Blood Bath
93
place in a socio-political context, such as environmental artivism, are relevant
objects of investigation to understand the role played by visual metaphor
scenarios in argumentation.
Data available at:
Extinction Rebellion’s official British website: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/
(26.08.2022).
Red Rebel Brigade’s official website: http://redrebelbrigade.com/ (26.08.2022).
Nexis: http://lexisnexis.com (06.08.2022).
Acknowledgments:
This research is part of an academic project conducted in UCLouvain, Institute
of Political Science Louvain Europe, funded by the Fonds Spécial de Recherche
(FSR Fellowship).
I acknowledge the help and many ideas shared by Professor Jonathan Charteris-
Black, who kindly reviewed this manuscript. I also thank the two anonymous
peer-reviewers who provided many constructive comments to improve the
manuscript. I thank Doctor Adeline Terry and Professor Denis Jamet for the
opportunity to contribute to this special issue.
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Annexes
Text of the leaflets distributed by the Red Rebel Brigade during their
performances (from the Brigade’s official website):
Red Rebel Brigade symbolises the common blood we share with all species,
That unifies us and makes us one.
As such we move as one, act as one and more importantly feel as one.
We are unity and we empathise with our surroundings, we are forgiving
We are sympathetic and humble, compassionate and understanding,
We divert, distract, delight and inspire the people who watch us,
We illuminate the magic realm beneath the surface of all things, and we invite people to
enter in, we make a bubble and calm the storm, we are peace in the midst of war.
We are who the people have forgotten to be!

101
Brexit as an oven-ready pie? A case study of Boris Johnson’s
BREXIT IS A PIE multimodal metaphor
Pauline Rodet, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3/Centre d’Études
Linguistiques (UR CEL) (pauline.rodet@univ-lyon3.fr)
Abstract
This paper aims to study Boris Johnson’s conceptualisation of Brexit as an OVEN-READY PIE
during the 2019 General Election campaign in the UK through the prism of cognitive
linguistics. This election was marked by the omnipresence of digital and social media, which
impacted the course of the campaign, but also diversified the modes of communication and
interactions. In the light of the works on multimodal metaphor carried out by Forceville (2009),
the different media through which this metaphorical conceptualisation of Brexit as a PIE was
cued will be thoroughly analysed. The data includes a short video clip, an ad campaign, and
the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto. Additionally, some caricatures of this metaphor will
also be looked at and compared to the original occurrence of the metaphor which appeared in
Boris Johnson’s ad campaign. The objectives, functions, and the meaning conveyed by this
metaphor will be brought to light. This paper will recount how the metaphor was extended
and developed through different modes as the political campaign unfolded.
Ziel des Beitrags ist die kognitionslinguistische Untersuchung der Konzeptualisierung des
Brexits als OFENFERTIGER KUCHEN durch Boris Johnson während des Parlamentswahlkampfs
2019 im Vereinigten Königreich. Dieser war geprägt von der Omnipräsenz digitaler und
sozialer Medien, die den Verlauf des Wahlkampfs beeinflusste, aber auch die
Kommunikations- und Interaktionsformen diversifizierte. Im Lichte der von Forceville (2009)
durchgeführten Arbeiten zur multimodalen Metapher werden verschiedene Medien, durch
die diese metaphorische Konzeptualisierung des Brexits als KUCHEN auf den Weg gebracht
wurde, analysiert. Zu den Daten gehören ein kurzer Videoclip, eine Werbekampagne und das
Programm der Konservativen Partei von 2019. Darüber hinaus werden einige Karikaturen zu
dieser Metapher untersucht und mit dem ursprünglichen Vorkommen der Metapher in Boris
Johnsons Werbekampagne verglichen. Die Ziele, Funktionen und die von der Metapher
übermittelte Bedeutung werden untersucht. Der Beitrag legt dar, wie die Metapher im Verlauf
der politischen Kampagne auf verschiedene Weise erweitert und weiterentwickelt wurde.
1. Introduction
The 2019 UK General Election was decisive for the unfolding of Brexit.
Following Theresa May’s departure, Boris Johnson was appointed as the
leading figure of a divided and weakened Conservative Party. Yet, this General
Election resulted in a smashing victory for the Conservatives, at the expense of
a declining Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, who did not manage to reach
the voters’ expectations by failing to take a stance on the Brexit issue (Rycroft
2020: 3). As opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, his major opponent during this General
Election, Johnson built his electoral campaign around his will to deliver Brexit,
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whatever it takes, in order to honour the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
“Get Brexit Done” became the official motto of the Conservative Party in the
run-up to the 2019 General Election, a simple yet effective catchphrase that
reflected Boris Johnson’s rhetoric and echoed the 2016 Vote Leave Brexit
campaign (Bonnet 2020). To reach a wider audience and comply with the evergrowing
importance of social media during political campaigns, the
Conservative Party capitalised on digital platforms such as Twitter and
YouTube so as to increase their visibility and target new supporters, especially
among the young people. They resorted to innovative communication
techniques such as memes and parodies to illustrate their ideas. To depict how
supposedly easy “getting Brexit done” would be if Johnson became Prime
Minister, the Conservative Party launched an advertising campaign in which
Brexit was depicted as an oven-ready meal.
This paper will focus on this specific case of rhetorical metaphor which involved
the conceptualisation of Brexit as a MEAL, and more specifically a PIE, through
the use of multimodal metaphors during the 2019 election campaign in the UK.
The metaphorical representations of Brexit as a PIE will be studied in media from
different sorts. The aim of this paper is to illustrate how a metaphor can be
stretched through different modes, be used for rhetorical purposes, and be
twisted from its initial meaning. To begin with, the links between social media
and political campaigning during the 2019 General Election will briefly be
discussed. Then, the data and methodology used for this study will be
presented. In the third part, an in-depth analysis of the metaphor under scrutiny
is carried out. The aim of this third part is threefold: look at how it is cued in the
data selected, interpret the choice of the source domain, and comment on how
the metaphor was then re-used, extended, and twisted.
2. When politics interacts with social media
2.1 Glimpse on the 2019 General Election
The year 2019 turned out to be another turning point in British politics, and
especially in the unfolding of the Brexit process. The United Kingdom was on
the verge of a Constitutional crisis, with Theresa May racing against the alarm
clock set by Brussels, and the MPs rejecting the deal she had negotiated with the
EU no less than three times. Although she had managed to negotiate an
extension of the 2-year period guaranteed by Article 50 with the EU Parliament,
Rodet: Brexit as an oven-ready pie?
103
she did not succeed in rallying the British MPs behind her Withdrawal bill.
Eventually, Theresa May’s failure to get parliamentary support led her to step
down as Prime Minister in June 2019 after having steered the boat through the
Brexit tempest for just over three years. Thus, time was running out for the
settlement of a deal, and the UK lacked a strong figure to finally deliver Brexit.
This period of uncertainty lasted until 23 July 2019, when Boris Johnson was
elected at the head of the Conservative Party, as a result of Theresa May’s
resignation. This new position allowed him to become one of the frontrunners
for the upcoming General Election, which was planned to be held in December
of that same year since Boris Johnson had called for a snap election.
During the 2019 General Election campaign, Boris Johnson competed against
his main opponent, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, and also
against the Lib-Dem, slightly less represented in the media. Most of the issues
at stake during that campaign were related to the delivering of Brexit, which
had started to become a source of weariness and urgency in the country. Public
opinion was fractured over how Brexit should be achieved, and over whether
Brexit should be achieved at all (Vasilopoulou 2020: 82). The Conservative Party
chose to make Brexit the central issue of their campaign, and Boris Johnson
made it his mission to Get Brexit Done – “no ifs, no buts, no maybes”, as he
insisted. In addition to what had already happened during the 2017 General
Election, Brexit had a profound impact on the voters’ behaviour with people
mainly voting in accordance with their stance on Brexit and the EU (Prosser
2020: 10).
Strikingly enough, this time again, the Leave campaign led by Boris Johnson
won the election. What was even more striking was the fact that they won a
landslide majority in Parliament, with 80 seats and 43.6% of the popular vote,
one of the highest percentages ever achieved by the party. This election also
resulted in the disappointing defeat of the Labour Party, likely due to Jeremy
Corbyn’s lack of popularity and his failure to fully grasp the importance of
Brexit during the election campaign. This might have influenced the Labour
voters to migrate towards the Conservative Party or the Lib-Dem, depending
on whether they supported Leave or Remain (Prosser 2020: 9).
However, another decisive point could also account for the crushing victory of
the Conservative Party: How the campaign was fought explains how the
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campaign was won. Yet, the Conservatives manifestly chose the right candidate
and the right communication strategy.
2.2 Johnson’s communication strategy: social media as a new political
tool?
During the 2019 General Election, Boris Johnson’s strategy heavily relied on
social media and the latest internet trends. Nowadays, there is no shadow of a
doubt that social media play a crucial role in almost every aspect of our
existence, whether it be on a personal level, or on society as a whole, and politics
is no exception to that current phenomenon (Wring/Ward 2020: 284).
In the last decade or so, it seems that politicians have started to give more and
more value to their appearance on social media, such as Twitter and Instagram.
These platforms are generally digital places where politicians have room for
improvement as regards their voting base. The use of social media by politicians
facilitates how they interact with their supporters and stimulates public
reactions. It allows them to communicate instantly, share their opinion publicly
and without any filters. Most political entities now own, at least, an official
Twitter account. Twitter has now become a proper political battleground where
politicians try to increase their visibility (Ford et al. 2021: 310). Moreover, the
choice to adopt a horizontal approach on the use of social media allows
supporters to get involved in campaigns, which means that they can contribute
to the rising popularity of a party. According to Bell (2018: 5): “the ‘old politics’
was more likely to use it [digital media] in a top-down way”. Conversely, “the
‘new politics’ used it in a horizontal manner which allowed people to actively
get involved in a political movement”. With this horizontal approach, the socalled
‘new politics’ are able to grant more space to the people in their debates,
and thus gives the illusion that they are closer to the people and more
approachable.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that social media is also a good means
through which politicians can reach youngsters. The majority of Twitter users
age from 13 to 34 years old (Dixon 2022). Yet, this age range also encompasses
the population who is less likely to cast a vote during elections, and who is less
engaged in politics overall (Russell 1999). Additionally, Iyengar (2011: 124)
argues that social media seem to have a positive impact on younger generations
as regards their engagement in politics since they would be less likely to engage
Rodet: Brexit as an oven-ready pie?
105
in traditional forms of political events (TV debates, canvass, handing out flyers,
etc.). Therefore, reaching out to them directly in a (digital) place where they are
used to spending a lot of time seems to be an effective communication strategy
in order to grasp their attention, and thus, their votes. This is also what the
Conservative Party intended to achieve during the 2019 General Election. To do
so, the party hired two communication strategists – Topham and Guerin – both
under 30, who took care of Boris Johnson’s online campaign (Ritchie 2022: 84).
Not only do they specialize in online campaigns, but also their young age helps
them have a better understanding of their target audience’s expectations, and
how social media can be used effectively.
2.3 ‘Shitposting’ on Twitter
Before being hired by the Conservative Party to improve their digital campaign,
Topham and Guerin had already shown their skills in Australia, where they had
worked with the Liberal Party of Australia, which resulted in the unexpected
victory of Scott Morrison in 2018 (Waterson 2019). Topham and Guerin aroused
curiosity and interest from all parts and became renowned for using
‘shitposting’ as a new form of digital strategy for politicians. Journalist
Waterson (2019) defines this new strategy of ’shitposting’ as follows:
“Purposefully low-quality memes based around popular shows such as Game of
Thrones were used in a bid to drive interactions – good or bad – at any cost, on
the basis that this would boost the reach of future Facebook posts”. In other
words, shitposting is the act of releasing rubbish adverts on social media in the
hope that they will be more likely to be shared and go viral on the internet and
beyond. BBC political editor, Laura Kuenssberg explains:
Political parties or campaign groups make an advert that looks really
rubbish and then people share it online saying, ‘Oh I can’t believe how
shit this is’ and then it gets shared and shared and shared and shared
and they go, ‘Ha ha ha, job done’ (Brexitcast 2019).
Posting seemingly low-quality content on social media aims to target
a wider audience and eventually trigger an emotional reaction on the
part of the audience. The emotional reaction could be anger, laugh,
pride. Besides, emotional arousal is a crucial element of a persuasion
strategy (Zhang/Clark 2018: 43).
Multiple occurrences of shitposting can be found on the Conservative Party’s
Twitter account, especially during the campaign leading to the 2019 General
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Election. The example that made the strongest impression is undoubtedly the
parody of Love, Actually released a few days before Christmas on YouTube and
Twitter. This short video clip, which featured Boris Johnson re-enacting the
famous placard door scene to implore the voters to vote Conservative, went
utterly viral, generating millions of views (Ford et al. 2021: 284). Although
politicians are not used to being framed in comical situations, even more during
election campaigns, Boris Johnson managed to catch the attention of journalists
and voters with this imitation of a widely praised, popular British romantic
comedy. In fact, Johnson’s unique personality and charisma, as shown in this
parody, probably contributed to the victory of the Conservatives in 2019. Bonnet
(2020: 6) argues:
The campaign team tried to control Johnson’s public appearance
carefully to drive home the message encapsulated in the “Get Brexit
Done” slogan. To achieve this, they would capitalise on Johnson’s
charisma and easy-going appearance. To symbolise the fact that he
would literally break the Brexit deadlock, he was photographed
wearing boxing gloves emblazoned with “Get Brexit Done” in
Manchester.
Thus, Johnson and his campaign team focused on illustrating the party’s motto
for the election – Get Brexit Done – through visual content that is as simplistic
and explicit as the message conveyed by the motto. Unlike Theresa May,
Johnson aimed to deliver Brexit as quickly as possible, avoiding lengthy
negotiations and deadline extensions. This sense of urgency to get Britain out of
the EU was also reflected in the multiple mini video clips that flourished on the
Internet. This also applies to the “oven-ready deal” scenario studied in this
paper, as it was also crafted to illustrate the party’s slogan and main campaign
promise.
Therefore, Boris Johnson and his campaign team managed to conquer the realm
of social media, now considered a decisive place to gather public attention and
votes. To do so, they used the latest Internet trends, such as memes and short
video clips, as a new form of political discourse and rhetorical tools. Although
these elements may seem irrelevant, in the end, they helped Boris Johnson to
reach young people, mark a clear distance between his intentions and Theresa
May’s premiership, and transmit the idea that the Conservative Party is able to
adapt to new popular trends, to reach the people. Nonetheless, the Electoral
Commission (2020) claimed that some voters raised concerns about the
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unfolding of the campaign, especially about the content released on social
media and the lack of regulations. The Electoral Commission conducted an
opinion poll in which 58% of the respondents regarded online campaigning as
either false or deceptive.
3. Data and methodology
3.1 Focus on BREXIT IS A PIE
This paper aims to study the BREXIT IS A PIE metaphorical scenario that was built
during the Conservatives’ campaign in the run-up for the 2019 General Election.
This metaphorical scenario, which likened the process of parting from the EU
to the baking of a pie, emerged from Boris Johnson’s claim that he had prepared
a deal to deliver Brexit, and that this Brexit deal was “oven-ready.” According
to Musolff (2017: 643), metaphorical scenarios are defined as some “figurative
mini narratives that carry with them an evaluative stance”. In this context, the
evaluative stance leads toward the idea that Brexit is quick and easy.
Later on, Boris Johnson continued to stretch the metaphor extensively through
various modes of communication. This metaphor ended up being distorted, and
eventually used against himself, especially through numerous images and
drawings of the “oven-ready meal.” One way to stretch that metaphor implied
rendering the target domain, Brexit, through visual representations, and the pie
was carefully chosen as the visual cue for the representation of the source
domain. In that respect, the BREXIT IS A PIE metaphor was first cued verbally and
was then cued through other semantic modes.
3.2 Data presentation
A qualitative analysis of a set of data has been performed. The data encompass
metaphorical occurrences related to the BREXIT IS A PIE metaphorical scenario
during the 2019 General Election campaign. The data collection started with the
Conservative Party manifesto for the 2019 General Election in the UK. Then, the
aim was to find other occurrences that came to illustrate the verbal occurrence.
As a result, eight items will be analysed in this paper. These eight elements have
been parted into three categories, according to the modes they display.
Firstly, the analysis will focus on verbal data only, starting chronologically with
the excerpt from the manifesto, then moving on to two occurrences appearing
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in two speeches delivered by Boris Johnson – an interview and a speech given
at the launch of the Conservative Party’s campaign for the 2019 election.
Secondly, an examination will be conducted on data that combines visual and
verbal modes.
A tweet containing verbal elements as well as a computer-assisted illustration
will also be analysed in the light of the OVEN-READY/READY MEAL metaphorical
scenario. This tweet was released by the Conservatives’ campaign team on their
official Twitter account. It can be considered as one of a long series of memelike
campaign ads posted on social media as part of the digital campaign. Still
focusing on visual and verbal elements, but more specifically moving images, a
short video clip of Boris Johnson’s visit to a pie factory in Derby will be studied.
And finally, three images featuring the metaphor will be dealt with. These three
images – two cartoons and one photograph – provide illustrations in which the
metaphor is also cued verbally and visually, but these data items have been
chosen due to their different connotations. They are linked to the previous
elements since the metaphorical representation of Brexit is built on a similar
metaphorical mapping, which likens Brexit to a pie, but the connotation
mapped from the source to the target domain may differ.
Thus, each piece of data presented in this part features the BREXIT IS A MEAL
metaphor and its variations (BREXIT IS A PIE/BREXIT IS AN OVEN-READY MEAL).
However, they do not resort to the same semiotic modes, and their connotation
may also vary.
3.3 Methodology
As regards the methodology, the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP)
elaborated by the Pragglejaz Group (2007) was carried out to establish the
metaphorical nature of the verbal data. This procedure suggests fixed criteria in
order to determine whether a lexical unit should be considered metaphorical.
This can be achieved through a comparison between the basic meaning of the
lexical unit and its meaning in a specific context in which it appears (Pragglejaz
Group 2007: 3).
As mentioned earlier, the aim of this paper is to look at how a metaphor that
first appeared as a rhetorical instrument in a written text, developed through
various semantic modes, with consequences on the connotation of its target
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domain. Consequently, this analysis also relies on the theory of multimodal
metaphors developed by Charles Forceville. According to Forceville (2009: 25),
multimodal metaphors are metaphors whose target and source domains are
cued in different modes. A mode is defined as a sign system that can be
interpreted thanks to a specific perception process often related to the five
senses. The modes include written language, spoken language, visuals, sound,
and gesture among others (Forceville 2009: 22). Therefore, and following
Forceville and Bounergru’s work (2011: 212), if the metaphor is cued both
visually (image, drawing, gesture) and verbally (written text, speech), it shall be
considered a multimodal metaphor.
4. Data analysis
4.1 Verbal data
The first occurrence of the metaphor under scrutiny appeared in the 2019
Conservative manifesto:
(1) With a new Parliament and a sensible majority Government, we
can get that deal through in days. It is oven-ready – and every
single Conservative candidate at this election, all 635 of them,
have pledged to vote for this deal as soon as Parliament returns
(Conservative manifesto 2019).
Thus, the Brexit deal is talked about as if it were some kind of dish ready to be
baked in the oven. The deal, or Brexit deal to be more specific, can be seen as a
metonymy for Brexit since it is part of the process that will allow Britain to exit
the European Union, which is what Brexit is all about. Henceforth, Brexit is
linguistically conceptualised as an “oven-ready” dish through this monomodal
metaphor cued in the verbal mode.
A few weeks after the release of the manifesto, Boris Johnson re-used and
extended the “oven-ready” metaphor in a press interview for Sky News during
a hospital visit (2) and then in a speech delivered at the launch of the
Conservative Party’s General Election campaign in Birmingham (3):
(2) We have an oven ready deal, let's put it in the microwave, as
soon as we get back after the election on 12 December (October
2019).
(3) Whack it [the BREXIT deal] in the microwave, gas mark… I’m not
very good at cooking… Gas mark 4. Prick the lid. Put it in, and
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then we can get on… we can put this deal through Parliament
(November 2019).
These verbal occurrences show that Boris Johnson used and repeated the “ovenready”
metaphor as one of his main talking points during the election
campaign. Besides, it is worth noting that the meal-deal Brexit metaphor can be
considered a creative and unconventional metaphor, as it has been generated in
a specific speech, on a specific occasion. It is still perceived as a metaphor since
it is not lexicalised, and it is not related to any other pre-existing metaphorical
mapping (Dynel 2009: 30; MacCormac 1985). The metaphor is creative, but also
rooted in a basic human activity, that is cooking. Consequently, this makes the
mapping easily understandable for most people, hence accessible to most
people, including young people. However, although cooking a ready meal can
be regarded as a basic human activity, it might not be that obvious for everyone.
Indeed, following these declarations, Boris Johnson was mocked by people
online who pointed out the fact that he got the oven and the microwave mixed
up since there are no gas marks on microwaves.
This verbal metaphor was re-used, extended, and repeated, which fuelled the
mapping between Brexit and the meal deal. It first appeared exclusively
through the verbal mode, so as a monomodal metaphor.
4.2 Verbo-visual meal deal
On 3 December 2019, a week or so prior to the 2019 General Election, the
Conservatives’ campaign team came into action on Twitter with the following
ad illustrating Boris’s oven-ready [Brexit] deal on the Conservatives’ official
Twitter account:
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Fig. 1: Boris’s Brexit deal, @Conservatives, Twitter, 2019
The following verbal tweet: “Ding! Our Brexit deal is ready” is followed by a
computer-generated image that is used as a verbo-pictorial metaphor and
consolidates the mapping between the source and target domains, respectively
a meal deal and Brexit. Here, the occurrence bears the characteristics that
correspond to Forceville’s (2009: 22) definition of a multimodal metaphor. Two
phenomena belonging to different categories are used: BREXIT as the target
domain and COOKING as the source domain, and these two phenomena are cued
in two sign systems: the visual and the verbal systems.
The blue box can be interpreted as a visual symbol of the Brexit deal, so by
metonymic extension, Brexit in itself. This box was designed so as to recall the
boxes containing ready meals in supermarkets. It is not surprising that the
colour blue was chosen, since blue is the official colour of the Conservative
Party. Moreover, the three colours of the Union Jack can be spotted (red, blue,
and white), adding a patriotic tint to this box. This conveys the impression that
the Conservatives are making Brexit theirs, and that they identify themselves
with Brexit and the Brexit deal.
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It is important to mention that without the verbal elements in and around the
picture, the picture would be difficult to understand, and the metaphorical
mapping hardly possible. A parallel can be drawn with the semiotic concept of
anchoring developed by Barthes (1977: 38-41). According to this theory, verbal
elements help the viewer understand the meaning behind an image. Hence, in
a multimodal artefact, the verbal part is used to fix the meaning and guide the
interpretation (Koller 2009: 47). The instruction on the box claims: “Put it in the
microwave”, which echoes Boris Johnson’s speech excerpt studied in 4.1. It
indicates what Johnson intended to do in order to get Brexit done, so the
instructions he would follow if his party were elected. The ingredients section
of the meal deal features the composition of Johnson’s Brexit deal (keeping taxes
low, controlling immigration, etc.). Nonetheless, while the food industry does
verify the nutritional information of food products, no comparable verification
is applied to campaign promises shared on social media. As a result, there may
be reservations about the accuracy and reliability of the content comprising the
Brexit (meal) deal.
Additionally, in the verbal part of the tweet, the onomatopoeia Ding! mimics
the sound of the microwave or oven, which could also add another type of
semantic mode to the multimodal metaphor, as sound also contributes to the
mapping from the source domain.
More than a mere tweet, this can also be considered as an example of
‘shitposting’, since it seems to match the characteristics of the meme-like
campaign ads designed by the digital team led by Topham and Guerin. It is
quite simple, the message is straightforward, and some may find it amusing
(Bonnet 2020: 7). The simplicity of this meme-like campaign advert makes it
easily accessible to all: older voters who are not necessarily familiar with the
meme trend (Bonnet 2020: 7), and younger people who are not familiar with the
current political affairs. This strategy seems to have worked, as the tweet was
retweeted, quoted, and liked thousands of times.
The success of this strategy could also lie in the fact that visual content is more
and more popular on social media, even on platforms initially dedicated to
written content such as Twitter. It has been shown that a tweet which features
a directly viewable image will get more engagement from the audience (Li/Xie
2020). According to Yus (2009: 153), pictures have a more powerful impact and
are efficient devices to visualize concepts. As the expression goes, “a picture is
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worth a thousand words”, especially on social media where people are usually
scrolling without really taking the time to carefully read what pops up before
their eyes.
In summary, this tweet represents an additional stage where the cooking
metaphor was used and extended for rhetorical purpose. It is cued through a
combination of modes: the verbal and visual modes, making it a multimodal
metaphor. The visual part of the metaphor heavily relies on the verbal metaphor
that captions the image, and the multimodal metaphor in its entirety relies on
cultural elements, knowledge of the context, and Boris Johnson’s previous
statements. Boris’s Brexit deal is once again conceptualized as an oven-ready
deal that will promptly be put in the oven, thus likening Brexit to a food item.
On top of that, a couple of days after the tweet was posted, a video was released
in which Boris Johnson was filmed baking a pie and pretending it was Brexit.
Fig. 2: Boris Johnson holding his Brexit pie, S. Rousseau, 2019
This event occurred when Boris Johnson visited a pie factory in Derby, as part
of his campaign. This visit perfectly suited his talking point, and it happened to
be the perfect place to further extend the BREXIT IS AN OVEN-READY MEAL
multimodal metaphor. The following occurrence analysed in the next section is
extracted from a short video clip, so it includes additional modes that help
adding layers to the metaphor: gestures, sounds, visual objects. On top of that,
in the video, Boris Johnson is also putting his gestures into words, hence the
importance of the verbal mode to get a glimpse on the metaphorical meaning
behind this scene.
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Here is the transcript of Johnson’s discourse in the video:
(4) This is the oven-ready pie. We’re here at The Red Olive pie making
facility in Derby where we’ve just made a symbol of what we
intend to do if we are lucky enough to get a working majority
Conservative government and get Brexit done. Put the deal we’ve
got ready to go in the oven, take it out before Christmas and move
our country forward. You put it in, slam it in the oven, take it out,
there it is – get Brexit done, take the country forward, unite, level
up. How could we express this side more succinctly and more
clearly. There it is! (Boris Johnson 2019).
This short video is the epitome of the BREXIT IS AN OVEN-READY MEAL, and more
specifically, BREXIT IS A PIE multimodal metaphorical scenario. In this video,
Boris Johnson is proudly holding a pie. Then, he is being filmed as he is putting
the pie in an actual oven and then taking it out with a large grin on his face,
showing his fresh pie to the cameras. He is wearing an apron emblazoned with
the party’s motto “Get Brexit Done”, which recalls the “Get Brexit Done” boxing
gloves scene in Manchester (Bonnet 2020: 6). Thus, this scene is another symbol
of what he intended to do to “Get Brexit Done”, another visual representation
of his motto. The metaphor is cued verbally, as Johnson is giving a verbal
description of what he is doing and with the motto on the apron. It is cued
visually, through his gestures and actions. The setting and the objects help the
viewer identify the source domain, which is more and more obvious and
delineated. In terms of metaphorical mappings, Boris Johnson is mapped as the
cook, Parliament as the oven, Brexit as a meal (and more specifically, a British
pie), and the voters as those who will enjoy the pie cooked by Boris. This
metaphorical scenario can be connected to the NATION IS A FAMILY scenario,
which was analysed extensively by Musolff (2006, 2016), with Boris Johnson as
the father of the nation, baking a pie to his family, the British citizens.
All in all, this analysis aimed to show how the oven-ready metaphor, which first
appeared verbally in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, was then re-used,
extended, developed through various modes. As time went by, the source
domain used to conceptualise Brexit became more and more definite. It started
as a mere oven-ready meal, and it ended up being symbolised as a British pie.
As for the qualitative interpretation, this metaphor highlights the fact that the
Conservative Party wanted to portray the delivering of Brexit as a simple, basic
process. Getting Brexit done would be resolved in a few steps, as simple as
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putting a pie in the oven. This contrasts with other Brexit metaphors used by
David Cameron and Theresa May who mainly depicted Brexit as a long and
strenuous process with the JOURNEY metaphorical scenario (Jamet/Rodet 2021).
Hence, with his PIE metaphor, Boris Johnson appealed to the voters who
desperately wanted to get over Brexit. Negotiations and debates about Brexit
took up so much time and space in Parliament and in the media, that all the
other issues were swept under the Brexit rug. Nonetheless, this metaphor hides
the potential negative consequences likely to arouse once a Brexit deal would
be put into effect, such as shortages, devaluation of the pound and issues at the
borders with the European continent.
So far in this analysis, the PIE metaphor is positively valued. It was used as a
visual symbol to simplify and illustrate the Conservatives’ motto “Get Brexit
Done”, which was already quite simple. However, Boris’s PIE metaphor was
then re-used and twisted in other contexts with the aim of criticising and
mocking Boris Johnson’s policy and campaign.
4.3 Caricatures of the “oven-ready meal”
Caricatures of Johnson’s oven-ready pie flourished in the media. These
caricatures contributed to the extension of the metaphor and the development
of the mini narrative. Three examples will be studied in this sub-part, starting
with the front cover of the British satirical news magazine Private Eye released
in September 2020:
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Fig. 3: Private Eye magazine, September 2020
The picture chosen to illustrate the issue is an image of an oven that contains a
food item clearly burnt and overcooked to the point where it seems barely
edible. The title preceding the picture indicates that it refers to the latest news
from the oven-ready Brexit deal. The metaphor is cued verbally (via the title)
and visually. The verbal cue helps the reader identify the target domain (Brexit).
This satirised version of the multimodal PIE metaphor conveys the idea that the
deal delivered by Boris Johnson is overcooked, hence a failure. It puts into
question Johnson’s metaphorical cooking skills, thus/hence his skills as the
leader of the nation.
On a different note, freelance cartoonist Royston Robertson also partook in the
redefining of the PIE metaphor with the following drawing:
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Fig. 4: “Prick with a fork”, @roystoncartoons, Twitter, December 2019
The cartoonist seems to have borrowed some elements from the oven-ready
meal advertising campaign released by the Conservative Party on their Twitter
account (see 4.2). In this cartoon, Brexit is also conceptualised as a food
container. It is worth noting that contrary to the Conservatives’ version of the
meal deal, here, the cartoonist labelled it “oven-ready Brexit” instead of “ovenready
deal”, which suggests that the deal can be considered as a metonymy to
talk about Brexit. On this drawing, the use-by date of the meal refers to the date
when the United Kingdom was due to officially leave the European Union.
Below the date, there is a visual rendering of Boris Johnson holding a fork,
followed by the verbal cue “prick with a fork”, which echoes the excerpts from
Johnson’s speech studied in 3.1 (occurrence 3). The word prick here can be
interpreted as a subtle pun targeting Boris Johnson. The warning below
Johnson’s caricature “may blow up in your face” underlines the potentially
detrimental effects of Brexit. Moreover, it recalls the “oven-ready” picture in the
Private Eye. Here, the oven-ready deal multimodal metaphor conveys a
derogatory evaluation, which goes in the opposite direction to what Boris
Johnson’s campaign team intended to do with their image by which this cartoon
is inspired.
Lastly, this political cartoon drawn by Christian Adam for the London Evening
Standard seems to be the pinnacle:
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Fig. 5: “I Never Told any Porkies”, C. Adams, London Evening Standard, 2019
In this cartoon, the multimodal PIE metaphor probably inspired the drawing.
The pie evokes Boris Johnson’s (un)famous oven-ready pie that he baked in
Derby as a symbol of his “Get Brexit Done” motto. In the present case, the
metaphor is cued mainly through the visual mode, but the speech bubble helps
the reader identify the target domain. Here, the target domain is not Brexit, but
it is related to it nonetheless. Here, Boris Johnson himself is encapsulated in his
pie, and more precisely as the stuffing of the pie. This can be interpreted as a
way to denounce the fact that his pie was cooked up with lies, especially since
porkies, or porky pies is Cockney rhyming slang that signifies “telling lies”.
Johnson embodies the porky pie, hence the lie.
Overall, this shows that the multimodal metaphor BREXIT IS A PIE, BREXIT IS AN
OVEN-READY MEAL, which was first used by the Conservative Party for rhetorical
purposes during the 2019 General Election campaign, gradually moved,
evolved, and turned into a parody of Johnson. According to Charteris-Black
(2004: 251): “Since metaphor is a way of creating cognitive and affective
meaning, by changing the metaphor we may change the way we think about
something.” Thus, the different stances endorsed by this multimodal metaphor
change the way we perceive Boris Johnson’s legitimacy as leader of the nation
and his capacity to deliver Brexit. Consequently, this also illustrates the
rhetorical impact metaphors can display as it is “deliberately and consciously
used by speakers or writers to obtain particular effects” (Semino 2008: 29),
(Chilton/Schaffner 2002: 29). On the one hand, it is used by Boris Johnson to
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convey the idea that Brexit is an easy endeavor for its government, and on the
other hand, it is used by cartoonists to mock Boris Johnson’s political campaign.
5. Conclusion
To conclude, this analysis shows how metaphors can evolve and be used to
convey different stances on the same issue, some of these stances can even be
contradictory. The BREXIT IS A PIE metaphor under scrutiny stemmed from a
monomodal metaphor used in the Conservative Party manifesto. As the
metaphor caught attention, it was used as a rhetorical device by Boris Johnson
during the campaign leading to the General Election in December 2019. The
metaphorical mappings between Brexit and a food item were strengthened as
the metaphor was stretched through various modes (visual, verbal, gestures,
sound). As the metaphor turned into a multimodal rhetorical tool, this study
also highlights the fact that its connotation changed and shifted. To begin with,
this metaphor principally highlighted how easy it would be for Boris Johnson
to finally get Brexit done. Then, the PIE metaphor was also used as a means to
trigger an emotional response from those who value traditions, since the pie is
part of the British cultural heritage, which reinforces the identification process
on the part of the voters. Besides, according to journalist Harry Stopes in an
article published in The Newstateman magazine (2020), metaphors tapping into
the domain of food are not uncommon in politics. Brexit was also compared to
a cake, for instance. Boris Johnson also used the expression “have your cake and
eating it” to simplify his policy on Brexit (Charteris-Black 2019: 3). Stopes (2020)
claims that food has the power to symbolise deep feelings about national
identity, especially food items that are considered food specialties in a country,
as is the case of pies, especially pork(y) pies in Britain. However, the connotation
and meaning of the initial metaphor were then twisted and diverted from its
original meaning as it was used by cartoonists and satirists to criticise and mock
the campaign of the Conservatives. The metaphor evolved diachronically, thus
triggering a change in the connotations ascribed to it.
Conversely, comparing Brexit to a ready meal means that Brexit is
conceptualised as a cheap and low-quality meal, usually industrial, and not
recommended due to their poor nutritional value. From this point of view, the
connotation of the metaphor switches from being a positive representation of
Brexit, to considering Brexit as an unhealthy dish served to the British people.
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Nonetheless, ready meals are popular in Britain since they are cheap and easily
accessible in every supermarket, so the choice of the source domain could also
be interpreted as a way to reach every layer of the British population. Therefore,
for further studies, it would be interesting to elaborate on the link between this
metaphorical scenario and the populist approach adopted by Boris Johnson
since the referendum campaign in 2016.
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propagandapair-to-run-online-election-campaign (28.06.2023).
Wring, Dominic/Ward, Stephen (2020): “From Bad to Worse? The Media and
the 2019 Election Campaign”, in: Parliamentary Affairs 73, 272-287.
Yus, Francisco (2009): “Visual metaphor versus verbal metaphor: A unified
account”, in: Forceville, Charles/Urios-Aparisi, Eduardo (eds.): Multimodal
Metaphor, Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 147-172.
Zhang, Lei/Clark, Carlton (2018): Affect, Emotion, and Rhetorical Persuasion in
Mass Communication, New York: Routledge.
7. Corpus
Adams, Christian (2019): “I Never Told any Porkies”, Cartoon, London Evening
Standard.
Conservative Manifesto (2019): “Get Brexit Done: Unleash Britain’s Potential”,
https://www.conservatives.com/our-plan (28.06.2023).
Conservative Party [@Conservatives] (2019): “Boris’s Brexit Deal”, Twitter
(28.06.2023).
Johnson, Boris (2019): “Brexit Deal is ‘oven-ready’ says Boris Johnson”,
Interview by Sky News (28.06.2023).
Johnson, Boris (2019): “Conservative GE2019 Election Launch”, Conservative
Party Conference, Speech recording, NEC, Birmingham.
Rodet: Brexit as an oven-ready pie?
123
Johnson, Boris [@BorisJohnson] (2019): “We’ve got the deal. It’s oven ready.
Vote Conservative tomorrow to get Brexit done.”, Twitter (28.06.2023).
Private Eye Magazine (2020, September 11): “‘Oven-ready’ Brexit deal latest”, 1.
Robertson, Royston (2019): “Prick with a fork”, Cartoon, retrieved from
Royston’s Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/roystoncartoons/status/1206940483584495616.
(28.06.2023).
Rousseau, Stefen (2019): “Boris Johnson holding his Brexit pie”, Photograph, The
Guardian (28.06.2023).

125
Multimodal figuration in internet memes
Silya Benammar, Université de Haute-Alsace Mulhouse
(silya.benammar@uha.fr)
Abstract
Internet memes have become an essential part of Internet-based communication in
recent years. Considering the importance of figuration of language, instances of
figuration in Internet memes are no surprise. Understanding how multimodal figuration
in memes function is essential to comprehend memes in general. Thus, in this paper, I
will look at the role that figurative language plays in memes and how it functions. To do
so, I will begin with Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) before shifting to multimodal
cases of metaphor. I will also examine the case of multimodal metonymy and
multimodal simile to determine how each figure functions in Internet memes,
highlighting the importance of figurative combinations. Early results showed that
figuration in memes is often combined (e.g., simile and metaphor), leading to
categorization issues when studying figuration and multimodal figuration in Internet
memes.
Internet-Memes sind in den letzten Jahren zu einem wesentlichen Bestandteil der
internetbasierten Kommunikation geworden. In Anbetracht der Bedeutung der
Figuration in der Sprache sind Beispiele von Figuration in Internet-Memes keine
Überraschung. Zu verstehen, wie die multimodale Gestaltung von Memes funktioniert,
ist für das Verständnis von Memes im Allgemeinen unerlässlich. In diesem Beitrag
werde ich daher untersuchen, welche Rolle die figurative Sprache in Memes spielt und
wie sie funktioniert. Dazu beginne ich mit der Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), bevor
ich mich multimodalen Fällen von Metaphern zuwende. Ich werde auch den Fall der
multimodalen Metonymie und des multimodalen Vergleichs untersuchen, um
festzustellen, wie diese in Internet-Memes funktionieren, und dabei die Bedeutung von
figurativen Kombinationen hervorheben. Erste Ergebnisse haben gezeigt, dass
Figuration in Memes oft kombiniert wird (z. B. Simile und Metapher), was zu
Kategorisierungsproblemen bei der Untersuchung von Figuration und multimodaler
Figuration in Internet-Memes führt.
1. Introduction and theoretical framework
1.1 Internet memes
Internet communication has become quite ubiquitous in the past few years.
From sending emails to now posting images and videos on social media
platforms, the use of the Internet, and more broadly speaking, the Web 2-0, has
changed the way we live. The core characteristic of the Web 2-0 is the
participation and interaction of people online (Aghaei et al. 2012). Another
significant characteristic of computer-mediated communication (CMC) is
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multimodality (Kress/Van Leeuwen 2001; Stöckl 2004; Kress 2010; Jewitt et al.
2016; Ledin/Machin 22020). While multimodality is not unique to CMC, it is
particularly interesting to look at online examples. Multimodality online can
appear through the use of emojis, such as “☺”, videos, sounds, or images, but
also internet memes (Mittelberg 2007; Skovholt et al. 2014; Thompson/Filik
2016; Evans 2017; Hinnel 2018; Das et al. 2019; McCulloch 2019). The notion of
meme comes from Richard Dawkins’ work on genetics (Dawkins 1976). In its
original sense, it referred to the transmission of cultural items such as fashions,
ideas, and sounds from brain to brain (ibid.: 192). While the means of
transmission differ from genes, memes, in Dawkins’ terms, are also prone to
natural selection, meaning that they must fight for survival. Some memes will
replicate and survive, while others will not and die (Dawkins 1976).
Some of the core notions developed by Dawkins could still apply to Internet
memes, such as the central idea that they are cultural items, as well as their need
to replicate in order to survive in the online world. Internet memes have
attracted the interest of scholars who have started looking at memes, the role
they play, and how they are used (Shifman 2014; Shifman 2013;
Wiggins/Bowers 2014; Milner 2016; Dynel 2016; Piata 2016; Ambrus 2017;
Miltner 2018; Hirsch 2019; Yus 2021). Limor Shifman (2014: 41) defines internet
memes as: “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of
content, form, and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each
other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by
many users.” An essential point that Shifman makes is that often the terms
memes and viral are used interchangeably. The author explains that a viral post
will appear once and will be viewed by many people. Internet memes, on the
other hand, are viral elements that evolved into memes, following modification,
parody, and/or imitation (ibid.: 73).
While primary research has focused on understanding what memes are, some
scholars from the field of linguistics have taken an interest in the role that
language plays in the creation and understanding of memes (see Piata 2016;
Dancygier/ Vandelanotte 2017; Lou 2017; Zenner/Geeraerts 2018; McCulloch
2019; Lugea 2020). Such studies highlighted the importance of cognition and
language in meme interpretation.
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1.2 Figurative language
In the field of cognitive linguistics, for years, the emphasis has been put on
metaphors, more specifically conceptual metaphors. Conceptual Metaphor
Theory was introduced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in 1980. They
claimed metaphor to be more than a simple rhetorical tool, as the way we think
is metaphorical in nature (Lakoff/Johnson 1980). Other scholars quickly took
interest in the topic, bringing many other aspects to it, revealing the importance
of figuration in the way we think, act, and speak (ibid.; Lakoff 1987; Kövecses
2010; Forceville/Urios-Aparisi 2009; Dancygier/Sweetser 2014; Hidalgo-
Downing 2015; Barcelona 2003; Terry 2019). Considering the multimodal nature
of internet communication, and especially internet memes, it is essential to take
into account studies popularized by Charles Forceville that focus on
multimodal figuration such as multimodal metaphor, multimodal metonymy,
multimodal simile, and multimodal hyperbole (Forceville 2009;
Forceville/Urios Aparisi 2009; Ferré 2014; Hidalgo-Downing 2015; Hidalgo-
Downing et al. 2016; Lou 2017; Dancygier/ Vandelanotte 2017). Multimodal
metaphors are defined as “metaphors whose target and source [domains] are
represented exclusively or predominantly in different modes” (Forceville 2009:
24). In recent years, scholars have taken an interest in studying figurative
language in regard to the digital age we currently live in (Bolognesi et al. 2019;
Sweetser et al. 2019; Veale 2019). For instance, Dancygier and Vandelanotte
argued for a vision of internet memes as “emerging multimodal constructions
relying as much on image as on text” (2017: 565). Adrian Lou studied specific
memes, known as when memes, for which he argues that they should be looked
at as instances of multimodal similes and not metaphors (Lou 2017: 106).
2. Research questions
The present paper participates in the ongoing argument regarding multimodal
discourse following a cognitive linguistics approach, and more precisely the
multimodal analysis of Internet memes. It aims to reinforce past research as
other types of memes will be looked at. To this end, the following sections will
present the corpus used in writing this paper, as well as the methodology
followed. The body of the paper is dedicated to the analysis of Internet memes
to answer the research question: how does multimodal figuration function in
Internet memes?
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In this study, I will therefore look at three cases of figuration, metaphor,
metonymy, and simile, in order to hopefully reinforce ongoing research
conducted by cognitive linguists in regard to Internet memes, and to further
broaden the scope on Internet memes to other forms of memes in order to
highlight the function of figurative language in memes.
3. Methodology
Thousands of memes are shared by users daily online. As mentioned above,
most scholars studied specific cases of memes, such as image macros
(Dancygier/ Vandelanotte 2017; Lugea 2020; or when memes (Lou 2017). While
image macros can be considered the prototype of an Internet meme, and when
memes a central type of meme online, they are only two of the many types of
memes that are created and shared nowadays. For this study, I have decided to
conduct a qualitative analysis of some specific memes taken from a larger
corpus.
A corpus of 150 Internet memes was collected arbitrarily using different
platforms. Using Google Images, the keywords internet memes was used for the
search, which mostly returned image macros. Because one of the goals of this
study was to look at other types of memes, I resolved to using social media
platforms, more precisely Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On Twitter, the
memes were collected on specific accounts that are known for their meme
content, such as @9GAG. On Facebook, they were retrieved from the meme
page F R E S H S T O L E N M E M E S, and lastly on Instagram they were
collected using the hashtag #internetmemes.
Using this method, 150 memes were collected. However, since this study aims
to look at memes in English, other memes that were produced in French,
German, and Spanish had to be discarded. Internet memes are not only
produced in English, as scholars have looked at memes in other languages as
well (see Bonenfant 2014; Johann/Bülow 2019). Moreover, some memes were
shared by different users on different platforms and lead to duplicates in the
set. Instances of the same meme were also discarded, which lead to the final set
being composed of 139 unique Internet memes. The set of memes studied for
this project is available online (https://github.com/SisiB97/InternetMemes
Data.git). For the sake of length and time, only some examples of memes will be
singled out and studied below.
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4. Metaphor
While the focus of the present paper is multimodality, it is essential to cover
metaphor in a broader sense. As mentioned above, metaphors were the focus of
Lakoff and Johnson’s book, Metaphors We Live By (1980). Before this book, which
introduced Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth CMT), metaphors were
merely seen as tropes used in literature and poetry to enhance the appeal of a
text. In rhetoric, the use of tropes such as metaphor was simply viewed as a sign
of wit. Therefore, the use of tropes such as metaphors was a way of showing off
one’s intellectual faculty of talking beautifully and, more importantly,
persuasively. However, as stated by Lakoff and Johnson, “metaphor is
pervasive in everyday life, not just language but in thought and action”
(Lakoff/Johnson 1980: 3). Taken that metaphor is pervasive in language, action,
and thought, finding instances of its use in internet memes is no surprise. But
before pursuing the study, let us consider the following linguistic example of a
metaphor:
(1) He is exploding with anger.
This is an example that could be uttered by someone getting angry and not
being able to contain it anymore. The sentence involves a combination of several
conceptual metaphors that are closely related to one another; anger is HEAT,
ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A CONTAINER, which is a subcase of the ANGER IS HEAT
metaphor, as well as the BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR EMOTIONS metaphor. The
metaphors mentioned above are pervasive in Western cultures, meaning that
we live by them, use them, and encounter them very often without necessarily
realizing that they are metaphors because of how entrenched they are in both
thought and language.
With example (1), one could easily visualize a representation of this sentence,
for example, by representing someone with specific features related to heat,
such as fire or smoke. That shows that metaphors are not merely linguistic but
also visual, as seen below in Figure 1.
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Fig. 1: Cartoon representation of Anger (Disney-Pixar movie Inside Out)
In Figure 1, we have apparent depictions of features proper to heat, the most
salient one being the fire coming out of the character’s head. Secondly, the color
red is often associated with several emotions such as “anger, embarrassment or
sexual arousal” (Elliot 2015: 2). This image could eventually be used in addition
to example (1) as a way to represent it visually, but it can also entirely replace
the statement, becoming a fully visual metaphor (cf. Bolognesi et al. 2019). Since
a linguistic metaphor would be a metaphor in which both domains are
represented linguistically, a visual metaphor can be described as a metaphor
whose domains are represented visually, as is the case in Figure 1. That said,
this first part sets the foundation for the remainder of this section by showing
how CMT works in verbal examples and how it can apply to other modes of
communication, as we have seen with images. Let us now have a look at our
first instance of a meme:
Fig. 2: “How boyfriends calm their angry girlfriends down” meme
The meme in Figure 2, more specifically the template, was shared by hundreds
of users online, using the template and adding text to describe various
situations. In this image precisely, two parts can be distinguished. The first one
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is the text which says “[h]ow boyfriends calm their angry girlfriends down”. It
is a general statement people may agree with or not. The text alone is
metaphorical as it is based on the ANGER IS HEAT metaphor, and its subcase
ANGER IS HEAT OF FLUID IN CONTAINER metaphor. It can be observed via the use
of the expression calm […] down, which is related to the idea that anger increases
heat in one’s body, here the girlfriend’s, so by calming her down, the boyfriend
is decreasing the level and intensity of anger (MetaNet Metaphor Wiki). The
second part of Figure 2 is the image that can be considered the actual meme for
it combines text and image, and the caption gives context to the image below it.
This second part is strikingly interesting as we have a photograph of a man
pouring gas into a fire. The man, the jerrycan, and the fire constitute the three
subparts of the meme. Though the relationship between anger and the image
seems unclear at first, after reviewing each text or tag, the viewers are able to
recognize the conceptual metaphors, then construe meaning, and consequently
understand the meme. Concerning the photograph itself, several pieces of text
were strategically placed on top of specific parts or features of the image, the
same way we put tags on kids at school, for instance. These tags work as means
of identifying each part of the meme and what role they each play in relation to
the meme.
As mentioned above, three parts need to be recognized: the man tagged as the
bf, which stands for boyfriend, and the fire tagged as the angry GF, which stands
for girlfriend. Finally, on the red jerrycan, the phrase relax, babe, was added on
top of it. Even though one could argue that water can be found in the jerrycan,
it is most of the time associated with gas. In this particular example, the image
is based on the ANGER IS FIRE metaphor (Lakoff 1987: 388), where the man is
literally adding fuel to the fire (see Fig. 3 below). In this case, the meme needs
to be understood as follows: by saying relax babe, the boyfriend is actually
adding fuel to the fire, hence making his girlfriend angrier rather than calming
her down. After recognizing the construction, the conceptual metaphor, and the
different roles involved in the meme, the viewer will be able to draw the
subsequent additional meaning that is implied here, which may be that men
often fail to calm their girlfriends down. What the boyfriend does and what he
says contrast and have the opposite effect from the one intended. In addition,
the meme seems to also be underlined with a sexist, or perhaps more demeaning
meaning that is derived from it, with the use of the word babe which has a strong
sexist and patronizing undertone. This highlights the spread of sexism to newer
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forms of communication, namely memes, which has received the attention of
scholars in recent years (cf. Drakett et al. 2018; Paciello et al. 2021).
Fig. 3: Mappings for the ANGER IS FIRE metaphor (adapted from Kövecses 2010: 123)
Unsurprisingly, this first example in Figure 2 shows that the conceptual
metaphors we use daily when we talk about anger can also be found in memes.
Moreover, this type of metaphor could be considered a multimodal metaphor
(Forceville/Urios-Aparisi 2009), as two modes are mixed here: the visual and
linguistic modes. However, other examples using a similar template appear to
be more fitting instances of multimodal metaphors.
Fig. 4: “Me; A new Spongebob Meme format; The Internet” meme
-Image of a
campfire
-The angry person
-The rational self of the
angry person
-The anger
-The intensity of anger
-The cause of anger
Domain of FIRE Domain of ANGER
Source Target
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In Figure 4, the meme represents SpongeBob, a cartoon character which inspired
thousands of memes on social media. This meme combines visual and verbal
modes, making it multimodal. Considering the visual mode first without the
textual input, the image would not be meaningful on its own. Hence, unlike the
meme in Figure 2, which did not require the additional tags on the text to make
sense, in Figure 4, the tags on the image are necessary. In this example, three
parts are particularly salient and placed strategically on the image: “me; A new
Spongebob Meme format; The Internet”.
In Figure 4, there is no additional context, as was the case before, where the
caption functioned as the context. Here, the conceptual metaphor IDEAS ARE
FOOD is presented multimodally, as the source and target domain involve two
distinct modes (Forceville/Urios-Aparisi 2009; Piata 2016; Dancygier/
Vandelanotte 2017). The source domain of FOOD is presented visually with the
food being forced into SpongeBob’s mouth, while the target domain of IDEAS is
presented textually with the sentence “a new Spongebob meme format”. This
meme is therefore intended to be understood as being force-fed new SpongeBob
memes.
Furthermore, the contrast between what is said and what is shown is rather
important. The image depicts SpongeBob, while the text criticizes SpongeBob
and, more precisely, its overuse in Internet memes. Therefore, while metaphor
appears to be important, irony is equally important here. Herbert Colston
explained that the goals of irony could be “to show negative emotion (94%)”,
and “to be humorous (65%)” (2015: 18). In the SpongeBob meme, the irony
appears to express humor. However, it is essential to point out that the ironic
statement also seems to express negative emotion toward the idea expressed in
the meme. As shown above, figuration is present and is often combined with
other figures. Therefore, focusing solely on one figure is difficult, as figures are
often combined to make meaning (Burgers et al. 2018).
5. Metonymy
While at the beginning cognitive linguists mostly focused on metaphor, leaving
aside metonymy, the imbalance seems to have been corrected as scholars started
looking at metonymy more often. Lakoff and Johnson defined metonymy as the
“use of one entity to refer to another that is related to it” (1980: 35). They add
that even though metonymy primarily has a referential function, similar to
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metaphor, it also has an understanding function, and is a conceptual
phenomenon that dictates how we think, talk, and act in our daily lives (1980:
35-37). To illustrate the idea that metonymy is a conceptual phenomenon, let us
consider the following example from Lakoff and Johnson:
(2) She is just a pretty face (1980: 37).
This example, which could be found in everyday conversation, is metonymic,
as at its root the metonymy FACE FOR THE PERSON can be found, which is
pervasive in Western cultures as can be seen in both photography and painting
(ibid.).
With conceptual metaphor theory came the notion of domains. In metaphor, the
mapping is between two domains, the source and target domains. Domains are
also part of how metonymy functions. While metonymy involves mappings as
well, the nature of the mapping will be different from metaphorical mapping.
In metonymy, the mapping is established within the same domain because at
the core of metonymy is contiguity (Figure 5) (Littlemore 2015). In addition,
while metaphorical mappings are monodirectional, from source to target
domain, in metonymy, mappings can be multidirectional (Sweetser 2017: 701).
Fig. 5: Representation of a multidirectional metonymic mapping within one domain
While verbal instances of metonymy have been studied at length in the past few
years, visual and, more precisely, multimodal instances of metonymy have
recently piqued the interest of scholars. Emoji are perhaps one of the most
widespread instances of such visual metonymy in CMC. Vyvyan Evans argued
that “[m]etonymy is, in fact, what makes emoji work (2017: 187). He added that
emoji work as EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy, in that emoji usually depict specific
emotions, which can be viewed as the effect (2017).
In regard to Internet memes, Limor Shifman explained that “memetic photos”
are one of the several types of memes (2014). Such memetic photos function like
Face
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emoji in that they provide visual representations of an emotion (see Figure 6
below).
Fig. 6: “had to wake up so early” tweet
In Figure 6, the author of the tweet complains about having to wake up too
early, and to illustrate that, they added the photo of the YouTuber Nicole TV.
The caption on top of the image provides context as to why the author used this
photo. However, knowing the context of the image or who is represented in the
image is not required to understand what is meant. The gesture, namely facepalming,
as well as the facial expression, as Nicole seems to be blowing air out
her mouth, are both known to represent exhaustion or even frustration, to a
certain extent. In that sense, the gesture metonymically evokes an emotion,
similarly to emoji, which depict emotion. The metonymy, therefore, is
multimodal in that the EFFECT is depicted visually, while the CAUSE is presented
textually in the caption, showing the importance of taking a cognitive approach
to the study of Internet memes.
In 2017, Barbara Dancygier and Lieven Vandelanotte (2017) argued that
metonymy is essential to memes. As seen above, conceptual metaphors are
easily found in memes. In June 2019, actor Keanu Reeves appeared on stage at
Microsoft’s E3 conference to present the video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which
he portrays one of the characters (knowyourmeme.com). Following this
conference presentation, a picture of Keanu Reeves standing up on stage was
shared online, and it was quickly modified by social media users, creating the
widely known mini-Keanu Reeves meme (Fig. 7). These two images gave rise
to a tremendous number of memes online.
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Fig. 7: Keanu Reeves and mini-Keanu Reeves
Fig. 8: “My mom explaining what’s wrong with me to the doctor; Me”
This image is well representative of one of the essential aspects that constitute a
meme, that is, modification, or “transformation” (Shifman 2014: 41). It is easily
noticeable that the first image has been transformed, shrunk into the second,
which led to the creation of a plethora of memes. Many memes involve the mix
of the two images together, but other instances only use one of them, mainly the
second image that represents mini-Keanu Reeves. Regarding the collected
corpus, mini-Keanu Reeves is very often used on its own, unlike the standard
picture of the actor, which is only used combined with the modified image.
There is thus an asymmetry in this example in particular in that only in the
context of the modified image of the actor can the original picture express its
meaning. However, the regular picture could stand alone without any semiotic
constraints.
In this example, and this is true of many other memes of the same type, both
standard and mini-Keanu Reeves are mixed into one picture to create the meme.
Similar to the previous meme, the text was added to the image by using the
same tag principle as before. Two different parts need to be recognized in this
meme, my mom, who is doing something, and me. The mom part is placed on top
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of normal Keanu Reeves, and the me part is placed on top of mini-Keanu Reeves.
The first thing that people will recognize is that moms will always be bigger
than their children, and here it is presented through metaphor. As a matter of
fact, the image here provides a visual representation of the IMPORTANCE IS SIZE
conceptual metaphor (Grady 1999; MetaNet Metaphor Wiki). As human beings,
we often understand ‘importance’ in spatial terms, as in “this is the biggest
project of my life,” understood as “this is the most important project of my life”.
In the case of the meme, the metaphor is visual since importance is depicted
through regular Keanu Reeves. Parents are usually seen as more important in
the sense that they are the ones who have authority over their children, and they
provide for their children’s needs. Along these lines, it is worth noting that the
meme evokes a specific frame (Fillmore 1976). In regard to frame, Fillmore
stated that “the idea is that people have in memory an inventory of schemata
for structuring, classifying, and interpreting experiences, and that they have
various ways of accessing these schemata and various procedures for
performing operations on them” (1976: 25).
Such frames metonymically evoke additional meaning, in this case through the
image, which can be essential in the overall understanding of the meme. That is
known as “frame metonymy” (Sweetser/Fauconnier 1996). Frame metonymy
has also been studied in regard to Internet memes (Dancygier/Vandelanotte
2017). Images are compelling at evoking specific frames (Fillmore 1976). In the
example above, the frame evoked is the parent frame, which is evoked visually,
with regular Keanu Reeves, and textually with the word mom, making it even
more evident what frame is evoked here and what type of relationship is
established. The parenting frame is highly related to the frame of authority and
responsibility (MetaNet Frame Wiki). The two latter frames can furthermore be
associated with the notion of importance that is existent in the metaphor since
importance often evokes responsibility and authority as in “he is an important
person”, or “she is a person with responsibilities”, when referring to or talking
about the head of a company, for instance. Presidents and CEOs are often
depicted as responsible because they are in charge and authoritative to the
extent that they need to establish rules that must be followed for the sake of the
company or country.
Concerning the mini-Keanu Reeves meme, the same frames are evoked through
the image, as well as the text. Given the responsible and authoritative nature of
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parents, as they are the ones in charge of the children, the mom in the meme is
taking care of the child by talking with the doctor while the child waits for her.
Understanding the metaphor IMPORTANCE IS SIZE may lead viewers to observe
mini-Keanu Reeves as characterizing the opposite of the parent in the sense that
the child is not responsible, let alone authoritative. Furthermore, for a child of a
certain age, having his mother talk to the doctor instead of talking to the doctor
himself is frustrating, even humiliating. This example highlights the role of
combined figures in the overall functioning and understanding of memes.
6. Multimodal simile
While frame metonymy appears to be present in most memes, there are specific
memes that involve specific figures. In 2017, Lou published a paper on when
memes and why they should be studied as cases of multimodal simile rather
than multimodal metaphor. Outside of the fields of linguistics or rhetoric, simile
is often only dealt with when discussing metaphor as a means to explain what
a metaphor is. Similes should be understood as figurative comparison, as
opposed to literal comparison (Israel et al. 2004; Carston/Wearing 2011). In fact,
one of the initial steps of determining whether a figure is a metaphor, or a simile
is to look for markers such as like or as. While it is often believed that the markers
mentioned above are the only ones available to construct a simile, Israel,
Harding, and Tobin argued that “similes really are just explicit, figurative
comparisons, and therefore any construction which can express a literal
comparison should in principle be available to form a simile” (2004: 125). This
argument challenges the simplistic view that is generally held about simile, as
example (3) shows.
(3) The difference in water volume released is the equivalent of melting the
entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets (COCA 2022).
To contextualize, the example comes from Rutgers University, where
researchers argued that “[e]ven if humankind manages to limit global warming
to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), […] future generations will have to deal with sea
levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present” (ScienceDaily). While
example (3) does not have like or as (typical markers for simile), it is a simile.
The comparison is realized through the use of the term the equivalent of, which
implies a comparison between the difference in water volume released and the
melting of Greenland and Ice Sheets. Israel et al. (2004: 124) also argued that
Benammar: Multimodal figuration in internet memes
139
comparisons are closely related to cognition as “one cannot make a comparison
without thinking about both of the things one is comparing”.
Fig. 9: “People in horror movies be like”
In Internet memes, similes are present in the verbal form. Figure 9 involves the
case of a multimodal simile that is constructed as “X be like”, as can be seen in
the caption. This construction is pervasive on social media and in nonstandard
African American English. While in this example the simile is cued verbally
through the marker like, the caption only provides the viewer with one part of
the simile, the thing being compared. To understand the meme, the image below
is necessary as it depicts a man running in the direction of death, which is
indicated on the sign. Without the image, the caption above does not make
sense. Once viewers connect the caption and the image, they can construe the
meaning, namely that characters in horror movies tend to put themselves in
dangerous situations, which often leads to the character’s death. One of the most
salient examples of this would be the character entering the house of a murderer
and shouting “Anybody here?” while fully aware that the killer is indeed in the
house.
This example can be considered as an instance of multimodal simile since both
the visual mode and verbal mode work together to make sense of the simile.
Various attributes are involved in the example. First and foremost, the
characters mentioned in the caption are visually represented by the man in the
image. Attributes from the characters are mapped onto the visual representation
of the man, such as the fact that they are (most of the time) humans. Secondly,
the road sign verbally evokes the frame of death, which is perhaps a central
aspect of horror movies. These attributes need to be put together for the meme
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to be meaningful. In the data set, several instances of memes involved this “X
be like” construction.
In other examples, simile and metaphor appear to be combined in the meme, as
can be seen in Figure 10 below.
Fig. 10: “Sliding into adulthood like”
Figure 10 displays another instance of a verbally cued simile, as seen with the
marker like used here. The caption reads “Sliding into adulthood like”. In this
part of the meme different frames are evoked metonymically. The first one is
the verb sliding, which evokes a more complex frame that may consequently
involve aspects such as loss of control and having fun carelessly as a child. In
fact, when sliding down, we do not have control over the speed, and therefore
the landing, which may result in falling down the slide, and perhaps getting
injured. Moreover, the term adulthood evoked a frame similar to the one
mentioned regarding mini-Keanu Reeves. In this meme, the main part of the
frame that seems to cohere with the meme involves (unexpected)
responsibilities and not depending on someone else.
Even though there is a clear case simile here, the caption also involves a
conceptual metaphor. In the caption, “Sliding into adulthood” involves the
CHANGE OF STATE IS CHANGE OF LOCATION conceptual metaphor (MetaNetWiki).
Becoming an adult is going from one state, being a child, then becoming a
teenager, before becoming an adult. Moreover, sliding down necessarily
involves a change of location from the top of the slide to the bottom of it.
Considering the case of the images below, it is easy to relate the previous
metaphor with two other conceptual metaphors, namely GOOD IS UP and BAD IS
Benammar: Multimodal figuration in internet memes
141
DOWN, as the images depict becoming an adult as something negative. That is
inferred with the facial expression of the boy, which is gradually getting worse.
We might conclude that the child is grimacing because he is picking up speed
and was not expecting it, therefore losing control. In that sense, the first image
might refer to the early beginning of becoming an adult, where things are not
too bad, but quickly evolves in an uncontrollable, unenjoyable situation at the
end.
To focus now on the simile, as mentioned before, it is cued verbally. However,
the text on its own will not make much sense because we need the sequential
images in order to understand what it is like to become an adult. At first, the
child is very slightly distressed, but it grows into a panic as the last picture
shows that the kid is not amused by the slide at all. This occurs as he seems to
be reaching for the sides of the slide in order to slow down. The simile needs to
be understood as “becoming an adult is like sliding down a slide, you quickly
lose control, and start panicking”. Additionally, the images can be understood
as representing each stage of adulthood. It may start slowly and rather gently,
but it grows into something you cannot control, leading later to panic. Similar
to the previous meme in Figure 9, here the simile is multimodal and explicit as
the text which involves a marker and the images work together in the creation
of similarity. However, other memes can be considered similes without
necessarily involving traditional verbal cues.
While this trope has received relatively less attention than metaphor, scholars
who have looked at it found that there are different types of similes. Two types
that are often dealt with are narrow scope and broad scope simile (Moder 2008;
Dancygier/Sweetser 2014). Moder defines narrow scope similes as “restricted
in their interpretation by the explicit linguistic specification of the attribute or
dimension along which the mapping from the source to target domain is to be
made” (2008: 312). Simply put, narrow scope simile focuses on very specific
features and attributes. On the other hand, broad scope simile is defined as
“relational rather than attributive and more open in their possible
interpretations” (Moder 2008: 313). Broad scope similes, unlike narrow scope
similes, require further explanation to make sense. While both are distinct, they
can both be found in Internet memes.
Regarding multimodal similes in Internet memes, Adrian Lou studied the case
of when memes. According to Lou, such memes should not be studied in terms
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of multimodal metaphors or conceptual blends but rather as instances of
multimodal simile. He proposed that “a multimodal simile, like its verbal
counterpart, triggers mappings without relying on the presence of a final
blended space where all inputs are integrated” (Lou 2017: 115). Additionally, he
provides a classification of four when memes, which he presents as follows:
The multimodal broad-scope simile features a visual input that is
jarringly incongruous with the text. Processing the simile requires the
unpacking of its frame metonymies, which evoke compressed ideas
of particular events and people which the simile tries to compare the
target domain to.
The multimodal narrow-scope simile exhibits more accessibility; even
though the image and the text are initially incompatible, both the
image and the text highlight a similar perceptual pattern that
facilitates mapping across modalities.
The multimodal mimetic simile contains an image that visually
depicts the actions being expressed or implied in the meme’s text. […]
Lastly, the source-focused simile presents a comparison that constructionally
resembles the other when memes. However, the simile’s
textual element retains the absurdity of the image, rather than
likening it to something intuitively comparable. The simile thus
subverts conventionality by restricting audiences from directly
relating to what the simile tries to convey (Lou 2017: 128).
Out of the four categories aforementioned, three of them were found in the data
set, but because of space restriction only two will be studied. The first is that of
a multimodal broad-scope simile, which is observed in Figure 11.
Fig. 11: “when you’re chilling in the World Trade Center and suddenly get airplane wifi”
The meme in Figure 11 is composed of the caption which reads “when you’re
chilling in the World Trade Center and suddenly get airplane wifi”, followed
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143
by two photographs of a young boy, using some kind of device, perhaps a tablet.
In the first photo he appears to be looking at his device, while in the second
photo his facial expression seems to be conveying surprise, as his eyebrows are
lifted up, and his eyes are wide open. Moreover, the low quality of the
photographs seems to enhance the feeling of surprise.
Understanding this meme would require viewers to have the required
knowledge to fully grasp the meaning behind it. In the caption the frame of the
World Trade Center is activated verbally, and is furthermore narrowed to one
specific aspect, namely the 9/11 catastrophe, which is activated via the use of
the word airplane which is reminiscent of the planes crashing into the building
causing the death of thousands of people. Following Lou’s taxonomy (2017) the
meme in Figure 11 falls within the first type of when meme as background
knowledge is required in order to understand why the person is suddenly
picking up airplane Wi-Fi, as it should only be possible on board of the plane.
This meme also highlights the importance of causality in some memes, as here
there is a cause (the caption) and the effect it produces (the photograph).
While multimodal broad-scope similes are relatively present in memes, it
appears that multimodal narrow-scope similes are more pervasive in memes.
As a reminder, multimodal narrow-scope similes are more accessible than
multimodal narrow-scope similes in that they require less contextual or
background knowledge.
Fig. 12: “That feeling when you hit the edge of a table with your elbow”
The meme in Figure 12 introduces us to another version of when memes, one
that involves the entire construction “that feeling when”, which was then
shortened to the when construction. This construction can be found in its
complete form and also abbreviated to TFW, which stands for “That Feeling
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When.” Following the caption is the image from the 1999 TV cartoon Ed, Edd ‘n’
Eddy (1999), in which one can slightly distinguish a human shape. However, the
image is massively pixelated, which makes it challenging to distinguish
apparent aspects of the person. On the one hand, because of the low quality of
the image, viewers might be more inclined to keep scrolling without paying
much attention to the content. However, on the other hand, one might argue
that because it is a low-quality picture, viewers might then spend more time on
the image to try to decipher its representation, which might then lead to the
meme receiving more attention than if it were a clear, high-quality image
(Enns/MacDonald 2012: 9). In fact, Enns and MacDonald argued that blurry
images require more attention from the viewers than a clear image would.
While the caption – “that feeling when you hit the edge of a table with your
elbow” – and the image below appear to be incongruent at first, we are able to
construe meaning between the two. One reason why we can do so is because of
the multimodal narrow-scope simile at play here. While multimodal narrow
scope simile seems to be more prevalent in Figure 11, it is essential to note that
the text is explaining something about the image, but the image is also
explaining something about the text, therefore making it clear that the
boundaries between different types of similes are rather fuzzy and open to
interpretation. In Figure 12, there are two parts, the text, and the image, from
which we have specific attributes, in this case, a feeling. The feeling (the target)
described in the caption is most commonly known as what happens when we
hit our funny bone, and more precisely, the ulnar nerve on the bone of our arm.
Hitting it results in an unpleasant but benign tingling sensation in our arms.
That is another reason we can understand this meme, namely, personal embodied
experience, which in this case is shared by many. The pixelated image visually
represents the tingling sensation that goes through one’s arm as one hits their
elbow on a table corner, which is commonly known as the funny bone.
The meme in Figure 12 highlights a fundamental feature of simile, which is that,
as Lou puts it, “[e]mphasizing one specific feeling or attribute is one of the
rhetorical strengths of the simile, and we see that this is the same strength being
augmented in its multimodal form” (2017: 117). In fact, regarding visual
rhetoric, Charles Hill showed that static images are among the most vivid types
of information available (2008: 31). Therefore, by adding an image to the
caption, the creator is reinforcing and emphasizing the overall strength of the
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145
simile. The meme in Figure 12 establishes the similarity between what is
described in the caption and the experience it represents.
Adrian Lou argued that when memes should be considered instances of
multimodal simile rather than multimodal metaphor (2017). Another type of
meme, based on a different construction, seems to follow a similar pattern, and
therefore fall within the same category.
Fig. 13: “How it feels to eat with someone who's always on their phone”
The caption in Figure 13 reads as “How it feels to eat with someone who’s
always on their phone”. The verb to eat metonymically evokes the restaurant
frame, or at least a frame related to eating. This frame is furthermore reinforced
by the image which represents a man sitting alone at a table in a booth in what
appears to be a restaurant. Similar to other memes, the caption here expresses a
feeling or an emotion regarding a specific situation; in this case, it is how
someone feels when they eat a meal with someone else who is constantly on
their smartphone, and therefore not paying attention to either their meal or their
friend.
At first, the caption essentially appears to be meaningless if used without the
image. While the sentence is understandable, the use of the how construction is
similar to how the when construction was used in the previous examples. Yet
how examples require another part of the construction in order to make sense.
When presented with the image, the meme starts to be meaningful. While the
image is necessary to understand the meme, little to no contextual knowledge
is needed, aside from knowing that a smartphone can capture someone’s
attention for a long time. Because there is very little contextual knowledge
needed, this meme is a multimodal narrow-scope simile. Once offered the two
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parts of the meme, viewers can easily distinguish which attributes are being
mapped from source (image) to target (how it feels) in order to come up with
the intended meaning of “eating with someone who is always on their
smartphone feels like facing or talking to a wall”. In other words, it feels bad.
Because frame metonymy is inseparable from memes, it is essential to point out
that the image also evokes a frame, namely the one related to human communication.
There is a correlation between the wall in the image and a person on their
smartphone while eating with someone else, across the table from them.
Attributes that are proper to walls, such as the fact that they are non-human,
emotionless, and unlikely to start a conversation or to answer back, can refer to
someone who spends much time on their smartphone. These features are
highlighted and then mapped onto the “person who is always on their phone”.
Communicating with a wall is impossible, just as communicating with a person
on their smartphone during a meal is useless, as they are focusing on their
phone and are perhaps less likely to respond or pay attention to the person in
front of them. In this case, the situation presented in the caption is similar to
what is represented visually in the image. Specific attributes will stand out and
make it possible for the viewers to construe meaning and understand the
similarities between the situation and the image. That is what provides the
second element necessary to construe the simile. Therefore, because of the way
that how memes function, we can argue that they are relatively similar to when
memes and can therefore be considered multimodal similes.
7. Conclusion
This paper looked at how metaphor, metonymy, and simile function in Internet
memes. The first and perhaps most essential finding is that Internet memes are
often the result of the combination of at least two figures (e.g., simile and
metonymy), as can be seen in Figure 10, for instance. While conceptual
metaphor studies appear to have attracted most of the attention in the past,
other tropes such as metonymy and simile appear to be more central to memes
than metaphor, as scholars have shown in the past. While multimodal similes
were significantly more present in the form of when memes in the data set, I
argued that cases of how memes should also be studied as multimodal similes,
as other instances in the set fall within this category. This research paper also
has its limits, of course. Firstly, the data set comprised of a total of 139 memes,
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147
which is a relatively small number compared to the numerous examples of
memes that exist online. Secondly, only three figures of speech and thought
were studied here: metaphor, metonymy, and simile. However, other figures,
such as hyperbole and irony, were found in the data set, too. Lastly, I only
studied Internet memes in English in this paper, but memes are not uniquely
attested in the English language. Future research on memes and figuration
could involve a larger corpus and a more comprehensive range of figures.
Moreover, because of the diversity of the Internet and its worldwide use, memes
in other languages could be studied to look for similarities or differences
between them.
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I thank colleagues for feedback on this paper at the conference “Multimodal
Tropes in Contemporary corpora” held in Lyon in 2022. I also thank two
anonymous peer reviewers for their useful advice. All remaining mistakes are
my own.