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2003 2: 75Visual CommunicationElisabeth El Refaie

Understanding visual metaphor: the example of newspaper cartoons

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A R T I C L E

Understanding visual metaphor: theexample of newspaper cartoons

E L I S A B E T H E L R E F A I E University of Plymouth

A B S T R A C T

Using Austrian newspaper cartoons as examples, this article explores the‘grammar’ of visual metaphor. It is argued that visual metaphors cannot bedescribed adequately in formal terms only. Rather, they must beconsidered as visual representations of metaphorical thoughts orconcepts. A cognitive definition of metaphor must not, however, distractfrom potential variations in meaning and impact arising from the mode ofcommunication through which metaphors are expressed. This studysuggests that many of the dissimilarities between verbal metaphor and itsvisual counterpart result from differences regarding what the two modesare able to express easily and efficiently.

K E Y W O R D S

Austrian newspapers • cartoons • cognitive metaphor theory • refugees •visual metaphor

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The aim of this article is to explore the ways in which metaphors areexpressed in the visual mode, more specifically in newspaper cartoons. I usethe analysis of caricatures from Austrian daily newspapers in order todemonstrate three central arguments, each of which forms the basis of one ofthe article’s three sections. First, I suggest that visual metaphors are bestdescribed in terms of their underlying metaphorical concepts. This view ofvisual metaphors as the pictorial expression of a metaphorical way ofthinking is congruent with the main tenets of cognitive metaphor theory.

My second argument is that such a definition of visual metaphors incognitive terms is not as straightforward as it seems, because the boundariesbetween the literal and the metaphorical are fuzzy and highly context-dependent. This means that metaphors must always be studied within theirsocio-political context.

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Finally, I argue that the specific form in which a metaphor is expressedmay have an important influence on its meaning and impact. Therefore, anemphasis on the conceptual must not distract from the potential significanceof the ‘grammar’ of visual metaphor. Using the cartoons as examples, severalbasic differences between verbal and visual metaphors are suggested.

In spite of some research activity on visual metaphor in the lastdecade (Carroll, 1996; Forceville, 1994, 1995, 1996; Morris, 1993), there isstill no fully coherent account of how it can be understood and how it differsfrom its verbal counterpart. As I show in the first section, most recentapproaches tend to focus on the formal level of visual metaphors and toneglect the important conceptual level. This means that they are generallyquite restricted with regard to the type and genre of visual metaphors aboutwhich they are able to make any meaningful statements. In contrast to this, Ibelieve that a definition of visual metaphor must be based on the conceptsunderlying a particular depiction and that the analysis of visual metaphorscannot be complete without detailed reference to the cognitive level. Thisarticle incorporates elements from the studies mentioned above and fromsocial semioticians’ work on visual grammar (Kress, 1994; Kress and VanLeeuwen, 1996), while also drawing heavily on cognitive metaphor theory.

The view of metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon became popular inthe early 1980s (Gibbs, 1994; Lakoff, 1987, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980;Sweetser, 1990; Turner, 1998). Prior to this, a metaphor was seen as the poeticway of saying or writing something that could also be expressed in a literalway. Consequently, most authors ignored the possibility of metaphors beingrepresented in other modes besides the verbal. Cognitive theorists, bycontrast, proposed that metaphor is a property of thought rather than oflanguage and that it is about ‘understanding and experiencing one kind ofthing in terms of another’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 5). According to thisview, the mechanisms underlying metaphor exist in the mind independentlyof language, and what used to be referred to as a metaphor is now consideredto be simply the surface realization of a particular way of thinking. Hence,any form of communication can be seen as an instance of metaphor, if it isable to induce a metaphoric thought or concept. The view of metaphor as acognitive rather than a merely linguistic phenomenon is now also supportedby an impressive array of empirical evidence (Seitz, 1998).

While the assumption of a cognitive basis to metaphor justifies andgives new relevance to the study of visual metaphors, it also throws up a rangeof theoretical and empirical problems, as shown in the second section of thisarticle. For one thing, researchers working within the cognitive paradigm tendto assume that some basic conceptual metaphors are influenced by our sharedphysical experiences as infants and that they can therefore be determined forall human beings (Lakoff, 1987: 265ff; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 226ff). It isnow becoming increasingly clear, however, that the extent to which metaphorsare connected to the way people think cannot be described universally, or evenfor a whole linguistic community, but must instead be explored in specific

V i s u a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n 2 ( 1 )76



socio-political contexts. In fact, every individual reader or viewer is likely tobring his or her own experiences and assumptions to the interpretation process.

As I demonstrate with reference to the four cartoons discussed in thisarticle, the way people understand these drawings is likely to be influenced bythe social and political circumstances at the time and by the expectationsreaders have towards particular newspapers. In fact, it is this concern withthe role of context that led me to choose these particular Austrian cartoons asexamples for the current discussion. My detailed knowledge of thebackground to the events depicted in the images and of the way in whichAustrian newspapers chose to represent these events (cf. El Refaie, 2001)allows me to draw some tentative conclusions about the possible influence ofdiscursive context on interpretation and meaning.

Another difficulty with conceptual metaphor theory concerns the factthat some analysts seem to be so concerned with describing the cognitive basisof metaphor that they now tend to view the ways in which it is expressed assecondary. According to applied linguist Cameron (1999), the recent trend offocusing concern on the conceptual content of metaphors has ‘under-emphasised the potential effect of form on processing and understanding’ (p.12). Recently, some researchers have begun to address this question withregard to verbal language, by exploring the effect of a metaphor’s linguisticform on its meaning (Goatly, 1997; Steen, 1994). However, the potentialinfluence of the visual form of metaphors has so far been neglected.

To me, this is an inexcusable omission. The fact that one metaphoricalthought or concept can be expressed in many different ways does notnecessarily mean that there are no differences at the level of representation,especially with regard to the degree of implicitness of a metaphor and itsemotional impact. Section three thus focuses on the grammar of visualmetaphors and also explores some of the differences between verbal and visualways of expressing the same metaphorical concept. In the conclusion to thisarticle, I show how my findings might contribute both to a better under-standing of the visual mode of communication and to the critical reassess-ment of some of the fundamental assumptions of cognitive metaphor theory.

W H A T I S A V I S U A L M E TA P H O R ?

In one of his essays, the art historian E.H. Gombrich (1971) argues thatmetaphor is a common and expected device in political cartoons: it is one ofthe main ‘weapons’ in the ‘cartoonist’s armoury’. The cartoons discussed inthis article certainly appear to be highly metaphorical. However, as I show,analytically the concept of a visual metaphor is an extraordinarily difficultand elusive one to deal with.

Ever since Aristotle, theorists have grappled with metaphors, trying tounderstand how they differ from literal language, how people recognize andinterpret them and what role they play in language. The contemporaryscholar is confronted with a daunting range of contradictory theories,

E l R e f a i e : U n d e r s t a n d i n g v i s u a l m e t a p h o r 77



developed mainly within the disciplines of cognitive psychology, semanticsand pragmatics (Gibbs, 1999).

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the importantrole played by the visual mode in contemporary Western society, which hasalso prompted an interest in the nature of pictorial metaphor. A number ofstudies have explored visual metaphors in very diverse genres, such asadvertising (Forceville, 1994, 1995, 1996), films (Carroll, 1996), cartoons(Kennedy, 1993; Morris, 1993) and visual displays for training and controlpurposes (Dent-Read et al., 1994). In spite of this growth of publications,there is still little agreement among researchers even over basic terms anddefinitions. In my view, the main problem with much of the extant literatureis that most researchers still define visual metaphors in terms of their surfacerealization or formal characteristics, rather than trying to understand themas visual expressions of metaphorical thoughts or concepts.

The film theorist Carroll (1996), for instance, restricts his definitionof visual metaphors to cases where there is a visual fusion of elements fromtwo separate areas into one spatially bounded entity. He gives an example fromFritz Lang’s film Metropolis, in which the transformation of a gigantic machineinto a monster is represented through the superimposition of two images:

The machine, or at least parts of it, have been transformed into parts

of a monster, Moloch. Nevertheless, the machine is still recognizable

as a machine. The monster elements and the machine elements are

co-present – or homospatial – in the same figure. (Carroll 1996: 810)

Exploring the use of metaphor in portrait caricature, Gombrich(1971: 134) describes a similar form of visual fusion, for example, when theface of a particular politician is visually amalgamated with the body of ananimal. While fusion is certainly one of the forms a visual metaphor can take,I argue that this definition is much too narrow. Take, for instance, thecartoon from the Austrian tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung1 (Figure 1).

This drawing, entitled ‘Die Alternative’ [‘The alternative’], depicts afamily standing in the middle of EU-Europe, holding up a flag with theinscription ‘Neu Kurdistan’ [‘New Kurdistan’]. The cartoons discussed in thisarticle were all published in January 1998 and they refer to the landing insouthern Italy of two cargo ships with several hundred mostly Kurdishrefugees from Turkey and Iraq on board. Although the arrival of asylumseekers in Italy was – and continues to be – a common occurrence, thepolitical circumstances at the time meant that it was given significance overand above the actual numbers involved: Italy and Austria had just joined the‘Schengen Treaty’2 and had begun to reduce border controls between the twocountries. Politicians in Austria and elsewhere in Europe warned of the direconsequences of allowing asylum seekers to ‘exploit’ the new open borderpolicy and called on the Italian government to prevent the Kurds fromleaving Italy and heading north.




In the bottom right-hand corner of the image, a line of ships isbringing more people from Turkey to the Italian coast. The cartoon thusseems to imply that, if the Kurds (and other Islamic immigrants) are notprevented from entering the EU, they will occupy ‘our’ homeland and declaretheir own nation in the heart of Europe.

Most people would probably feel that this image goes beyond a literaldepiction of events. According to Carroll’s definition of a visual metaphor,however, Figure 1 would not be metaphorical, since it does not contain avisual fusion of parts from two separate areas of experience into one new,spatially bounded entity.

If we compare visual metaphors to verbal ones, then visual fusion inCarroll’s sense would correspond to cases where both the figurative term, or‘vehicle’, and the actual referent, or ‘topic’, of a metaphor are present, as inexplicit nominal metaphors of the form A is B (‘My belief is my rock’, ‘Herhusband is a big teddy bear’). Just as such a high degree of explicitness isactually rather rare in verbal metaphors (Goatly, 1997: ch. 7), so manyinstances of visual metaphors are also based not on visual fusion but onmore implicit forms. As I show later in greater detail, most visual metaphorsdo not contain a fusion of two separate elements into one, because either thevehicle or, more commonly, the topic is not shown explicitly at all. In the cartoon from the Neue Kronen Zeitung, for instance, the vehicle of the


Figure 1 Neue Kronen Zeitung, 14 January 1998: 3. Reproduced by permission of theartist Fritz Behrendt.



metaphor, an ‘occupation force’, is not depicted directly, but rather it isimplied by the context. A broader definition of visual metaphor to the oneoffered by Carroll thus seems to be required.

Forceville (1994, 1995, 1996), who has analysed pictorial metaphor inadvertisements and on billboards, defines a visual metaphor in terms of thereplacement of an expected visual element by an unexpected one. In order tospeak of a metaphor, he argues, there must be no ‘pre-existent or conven-tional connection’ (Forceville, 1994: 2) between these two elements. In a shoeadvertisement, for instance, which shows a male torso adorned with a shoe inplace of a tie, he describes the pictorial metaphor in the following way:

The foregrounded object is a shoe. We immediately see that there is

something odd about this shoe: It is located where we would

ordinarily have expected something else, namely, a tie. The viewer is

invited to perceive the phenomenon shoe not in its usual, literal sense

but in terms of the very different phenomenon tie. The metaphor can

be verbalized as ‘SHOE IS TIE’. (p. 5)

Although Forceville’s understanding of a visual metaphor is moreflexible than the concept of visual fusion, it also seems to describe just onepossible form a visual metaphor may take, albeit one which seems to be verycommon in advertisements. A typical pictorial metaphor in anadvertisement, however, is not necessarily characteristic of all types of visualmetaphors in all genres. It does not, for instance, offer an adequatedescription of the visual metaphor contained in the cartoon in Figure 1,where we do not really expect anything to be in the place where the Kurdishfamily is. Rather than being produced by a simple replacement of anexpected visual element with an unexpected one, the metaphor seems toemerge from the composition of several verbal and visual signs, which,through their particular relation to one another, together produce the idea ofKurdish refugees as a foreign army ‘occupying’ Europe.

The difficulty with Forceville’s notion of pictorial metaphor as thereplacement of an expected visual element with an unexpected one is that,like the concept of visual fusion, it is based principally on formal criteria. Inactual fact, however, there seems to be a whole range of different formsthrough which metaphorical concepts can be expressed visually.

Instead of attempting a definition of a visual metaphor according toits surface realization, Kennedy et al. (1993) suggest that any visual depictioncan be seen as an instance of metaphor, ‘provided that its use is intended tooccasion a metaphoric thought’ (p. 244). In Figure 1, for instance, theunderlying metaphorical concept might be rendered as something like:‘immigration is occupation’. This thought is expressed through severalinterrelated verbal and visual signs: the family super-imposed on the map ofEurope, the flag with its inscription ‘New Kurdistan’, the ships movingtowards the Italian coast, etc.3




The definition of a visual metaphor in terms of its underlying conceptis consistent with the main tenets of conceptual metaphor theory, which iscurrently the dominant paradigm in the field of metaphor studies. Such acognitive definition seems to me to be a good basis on which to try and beginto understand the nature of visual metaphor. Not only does it broadenconsiderably the scope of what might be considered visual metaphors,enabling analysts to explore the various shapes they can take in the differentvisual genres, it also makes it easier to compare and contrast verbal andvisual forms of expressing the same metaphorical concept. However, thedefinition of a visual metaphor in cognitive terms is also not without itsdifficulties and it raises some very complex questions.

W H A T I S A M E TA P H O R I C T H O U G H T ?

If we define a visual metaphor as any image which is ‘intended to occasion ametaphoric thought’, we are, first of all, faced with the problem of theplurality of readings. Clearly, it is not always possible to determineunambiguously which ‘thoughts’ a particular depiction is intended to giverise to, let alone what it will actually mean to individual readers/viewers.Meaning is never simply inherent in a (visual) text, but it is jointly negotiatedby producers and viewers. Consequently, the analyst can only ever point to ameaning potential or preferred reading and cannot assume that this willcorrespond exactly to the actual readings of a text. In his experimentsinvolving pictorial metaphors on billboards, for instance, Forceville (1995,1996) demonstrates that although the central meanings of visual metaphorstend to be strongly implicated, the more associative interpretations can differquite considerably from one respondent to the next.

In the earlier example, some viewers may well associate the raised flagwith the concept of discovering new territory or with a politicaldemonstration, rather than with the idea of forceful occupation of a foreigncountry. It is also just about conceivable that a very badly informed viewer ofthe cartoon from the Neue Kronen Zeitung may assume that Kurdishimmigrants have really – literally – just declared their own state in centralEurope.

This brings us to the second major difficulty resulting from acognitive definition of visual metaphors: the problem of how to distinguishbetween a literal and a metaphoric thought. When the cognitive approachbecame widely accepted in the 1980s, the very distinction between the literaland the metaphorical, which for a long time had been simply taken forgranted, was suddenly called into question. The main observation made byLakoff and Johnson (1980) was that metaphorical language is ubiquitous andthat it is not arbitrary but remarkably systematic. This, they argue, is becausemuch of our ordinary conceptual system is structured metaphorically,enabling us to understand complex areas of experience in terms of conceptswith which we are more familiar.




If many of our common thought patterns are really based onfigurative processes, then expressions that arise from such conceptualmetaphors can actually be considered literal in that they emerge from adirect connection between language and the way we think. Hence, the degreeto which the connection between two concepts strikes us as literal ormetaphorical does not depend on any objective distance between the two butrather on how deeply the connection is ‘entrenched’ in our conceptualsystem, in other words, on how conventional it is.

In fact, conventionality is also rather an elusive concept, which cannotbe determined once and for all but depends on the specific discourse context.Many people would probably regard the connection established in thecartoon in Figure 1 between refugees and an invading army asunconventional and hence as clearly metaphorical. Yet the representation ofimmigration in terms of ‘war’ is actually far from unusual in current publicdiscourses, as several studies of media reports and parliamentary debates indifferent European countries have revealed (Böke, 1997; Reisigl and Wodak,2001; Wodak and Van Dijk, 2000). Regular readers of the tabloid NeueKronen Zeitung, in particular, are unlikely to perceive such a metaphor asparticularly striking or remarkable, as this newspaper regularly writes aboutimmigration in such terms (El Refaie, 2001).

The fuzziness of the boundaries between the literal and themetaphorical, which most researchers into verbal metaphor now readilyacknowledge (Goatly, 1997), is also recognized by an increasing number ofresearchers of visual semiotics. In contrast to ‘traditional’ semiotics, whichdistinguishes between three different kinds of visual signs according to thenature of the relation between the signifier and the signified,4 socialsemioticians define every sign in relation to the act of sign making (Kressand Van Leeuwen, 1996: 6ff). They believe that interest, seen in terms of thesocial position of the sign producer and the context of the sign production,leads people to select a particular characteristic of an event or object and tomake that the basis of the production of a signified. According to this view,there can be no such thing as a completely ‘literal’ visual sign, because theprocess of sign making is always, to a certain extent, based on a process ofanalogy. In fact, seen from this perspective, ‘all signs are metaphors’ (Kress,1993: 174).

Thus, even if we consider the drawing of the Kurdish family in Figure1 in isolation from the context of the rest of the cartoon, it still cannot reallybe described as a neutral, iconic representation of a family. The decision bythe caricaturist to draw the refugee family as a moustached father, a motherwearing a headscarf, and a large number of children is clearly based on hispolitical interests and communicative goals and seems to be intended toconvey the impression of ‘otherness’.

Since all signs are motivated by interest and based on socialconvention, it is thus not possible to determine unambiguously whether avisual sign is meant to be read ‘literally’ or ‘metaphorically’. Instead, the focus




of analysis must be on the process whereby a particular visual metaphor maygradually become accepted as the ‘natural’ way of expressing a particularmeaning.

In this particular Austrian media discourse, for instance, a smallnumber of metaphors, portraying immigration as a criminal activity, aninvasion and a flood, were used again and again. Most commonly they wereexpressed through highly conventional verbal expressions, but they were alsooften reinforced through visual depictions (El Refaie, 2001). The followingcaricature from the Kurier,5 for example, appears to presuppose that peopleare already familiar with the highly conventional verbal metaphor of ‘fortressEurope’:

In this cartoon, the concept of Europe as a ‘fortress’ is presented ascommonly shared background knowledge, which enables viewers tounderstand the central meaning of this cartoon, which is expressed throughthe images of the drawbridge being pulled up and of a star falling from thesymbol of the European Union (EU). The thought underlying these twovisual signs appears to be the lack of solidarity among EU countries in theface of an ‘invasion’ by refugees, a reading which is supported by the picturecaption: ‘Europe? Union? Gemeinschaft?’ [‘Europe? Union? Community?’].

Although there is as yet no empirical evidence for this, it is possiblethat the constant repetition of particular metaphors will encourage theunconscious or at least semi-conscious acceptance of a particularmetaphorical concept as the normal, natural way of seeing a particular area


Figure 2 Kurier, 4 January 1998: 3. Reproduced by permission of the artist M.Pammesberger.



of experience, in this case, immigration. In the following discussion, I usesome more examples of political cartoons to argue that the meaning and theimpact of a metaphorical concept might also be affected by the way in whichit is presented in verbal and/or visual terms.

S I M I L A R I T I E S A N D D I F F E R E N C E S B E T W E E N

V E R B A L A N D V I S U A L M E TA P H O R S

One of the few generalizations that most metaphor theorists would probablyagree on is that metaphors tend to represent the unknown, unresolved orproblematic in terms of something more familiar and more easilyimaginable. Whereas the actual referent of a metaphor is thus likely to bequite an abstract concept, the figurative term is often drawn from thedomain of basic human experience (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Thishypothesis is borne out in many political cartoons. In fact, Morris (1993)describes ‘domestication’, the depiction of a complex or unknown area ofexperience in terms of a more familiar one, as one of the main rhetoricaldevices in cartoons.

However, as Pollio (1996) points out, what is considered to be knownand unknown is always relative to ‘an individual speaker, in a specific setting,in a particular culture, in a given historical period’ (p. 246). Metaphors canthus be seen as indicators of the culturally shared preoccupations of themoment. With regard to the cartoons analysed in this article, for instance, thefact that Austria had just joined Schengen meant that the arrival of severalhundred asylum seekers was suddenly perceived as something particularlynoteworthy and problematic. It is also possible that the mode in which a particular area of experience is to be represented will have an influence on the degree to which this area is considered problematic or difficult tograsp.

Because of the logo-centric history of the study of metaphor, manyresearchers still tend to assume that theories from the domain of linguisticscan be applied to visual metaphors in a simple and straightforward way. Thisassumption is often based on the idea that images are fundamentallyrepresentational, which would imply that the visual can be seen simply asexpressing the same meanings as language, albeit in a more imprecise form.In fact, visual communication can and often does refer to ‘things’ that haveno verbal translation at all (Morris, 1993: 196). While language is perhapsmore precise in expressing some areas of meaning, other meanings may beshown more easily and more effectively in images rather than in words:

The sequential/temporal characteristic of language-as-speech may

lend itself with greater facility to the representation of action and

sequences of action; while the spatial display of visual images may

lend itself with greater facility to the representation of elements and

their relation to each other. (Kress, 2000: 147)




If, as Kress (2000) claims, there are indeed differences regarding whatthe verbal and the visual mode can express easily and efficiently, then thisshould have important consequences with regard to which areas ofexperience are typically represented through the means of a metaphor. Forinstance, if the visual mode of communication is less suitable forrepresenting actions and chronology, then such meanings are likely to beexpressed in a more metaphorical fashion, which allows them to betranslated into an image based on the spatial rather than on the temporalrelations of elements.

Caricatures, in particular, seem to be able to compensate for the lossof the time dimension by implying a sequence of action through othersignifiers such as size and composition. In Figure 1, for instance, twosuccessive events, the journey of refugees in ships to Italy and their(projected) arrival in central Europe, are presented in one single image,which might suggest that they are happening simultaneously. However, thecentral position and the over-dimensional size of the Kurdish family suggestthat this visual element represents the current issue at stake, while the smallerships in the corner of the image – whose progression is indicated by the linesbehind each ship – are presented as the ‘background’ or the ‘what-has-happened-so-far’ of the main story.

Both in language and in the visual mode of communication, it ispossible for the topic of a metaphor to be implied rather than explicitlymentioned (Goatly, 1997).6 The difference is that, in language, even the mostabstract concept can, in theory, generally be given a verbal label. This meansthat there exists a choice in the verbal mode that may not exist in the visualmode. Take, for instance, the concept of the EU. In language, it is possible tosay something like: ‘To many refugees, the EU is paradise’ or ‘fortress Europe’,in which case both the topic and the vehicle of the metaphor are explicitlystated. In the case of a visual metaphor, by contrast, an abstract entity cannotbe depicted at all without the mediation of symbols or metaphors. Hence,the abstract concept of the EU will always be pictorially absent and replacedby more concrete and easily imaginable vehicles.

Figure 2 is a very good example of how one basic metaphoricalconcept – that of the EU as a ‘fortress’ – may be represented through severalverbal and visual signs, which all focus on different parts or aspects of thesame metaphor. Here, the fortress stands for the EU, the gate for Schengen,and the tower perched precariously on the rocks represents Italy. In all theseelements of the ‘Europe as a Fortress’ metaphor, the vehicles are expressedvisually, whereas the topics (the EU, Schengen, Italy, etc.) are implied eitherthrough the verbal or visual context.

In his study of advertisements, Forceville (1994, 1996) has discoveredthat here, too, the topics of pictorial metaphors are often pictorially absent(as for instance in his example of a shoe advertisement mentioned above); insuch cases, he believes, the context assumes a particularly important role indetermining the meaning of a visual metaphor. Forceville distinguishes




between pictorial context, linguistic context and what he terms worldknowledge or encyclopaedic knowledge. He bases his theory of linguisticcontext on Roland Barthes’ (1977) perceptive and still highly influential theoryof text-image relations. Barthes’ main argument is that the meaning of imagesis always related to a linguistic message. The most common function of thelinguistic message is what he calls ‘anchorage’: because images are by nature‘polysemous’, implying ‘a “floating chain” of signifieds’ (Barthes, 1977: 39),language is needed in order to fix both the denoted and the connoted mean-ings of the visual by identifying and interpreting what the image is showing.

Although these concepts provide an important and useful startingpoint, they give the verbal message a clear preference over the visual andeffectively deny the possibility of an image having its own, independentstructure and meaning. Extending Barthes’ rather unidirectional concept ofanchorage, I will follow Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), who regardcommunication as based on an incessant translation or transcoding betweensemiotic modes and assume that verbal and visual messages ‘intermesh andinteract at all times’ (p. 40).7

The assumption of a mutual influence between verbal and visual textsraises the difficult question of boundaries: should a definition of verbalcontext be restricted to linguistic messages which appear either within theimage or in immediate proximity to it, or should articles on the same pagewhich are thematically linked with the image also be included? Alternatively,should the whole page – or even the entire newspaper – be considered as acommunicative unit (Kress, 1994)?

On a newspaper page, verbal and visual elements, such as layout,typeset, photographs, caricatures and graphs, are spatially integrated throughtheir composition. On the other hand, the composition is also likely toinfluence the temporal order in which the various elements on a page areread (Van Leeuwen, 1993). In theory, then, verbal context can be determinedeither spatially – in terms of ‘closeness’, for instance – or temporally, withregard to whether some items are likely to be read in close succession. As thereading path must take into account cultural, perceptual and semanticfactors, it can never be determined absolutely but can only be hypothesized.For practical reasons, it thus seems more straightforward to concentrate onthe spatial relation between verbal and visual elements. I will define verbalcontext as any language which is located in close proximity to the image andwhich is intended to be read in direct conjunction with it. All other items oftext on a newspaper page are treated as part of the broader ‘discoursecontext’, as I prefer to call what Forceville has termed ‘world knowledge’.

As mentioned earlier, the topics of the individual metaphor tokens inFigure 2 are not present visually but implied through the visual, verbal anddiscourse context. The EU is labelled verbally through the word ‘Europa’[‘Europe’] and visually through the symbol of the circle of stars. Themetaphor topic ‘Schengen’ is implied through linguistic labelling only,whereas ‘Italy’ is indicated through a flag in addition to its verbal naming.




As we saw through the earlier examples, many visual metaphors arealso common in language. In such cases, the cartoonist ‘merely secures whatlanguage has prepared’ (Gombrich, 1971: 128), although he or she may givethe metaphor a new twist or focus on elements which would otherwiseremain unused or unnoticed. However, visual metaphors are not alwayssimply translations into the visual mode of verbal metaphors. The abovecartoon (Figure 3) from the Neue Kronen Zeitung, for example, shows howthe visual mode seems to lend itself to the personification of abstract concepts.

This caricature shows two European officials squabbling over whetheror not to abolish border controls in Schengen, while in the background alarge number of refugees are advancing towards the viewer. As in the twoprevious examples, the context is suggested both visually through the circleof stars on the backs of the two male figures and verbally through the text onthe documents they are holding, which clearly identifies the men as‘Schengen’ and as ‘Grenzenlos Reisen’ [‘travel without borders’] respectively.The personifications are presented here as being in conflict with one another,implying that Schengen is essentially about increasing freedom for some andrestricting it for others, by stopping immigration. It is a powerful image,encouraging viewers to realize that there is a dichotomy between the twoaims. Such a personification of two opposing principles would be very diffi-cult, if not impossible, to express verbally. Provided that the viewer is familiarwith the context, a cartoon is thus sometimes able to convey a complexmessage in a much more immediate and condensed fashion than language.

According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), all ‘narrative’ images





contain one or several vectors, either formed obliquely by depicted objects orpeople, or by abstract graphic elements, which represent the narrativeprocess that is taking place. In this case, the two male figures arguing in theforeground form one set of visual ‘vectors’, pointing from left to right andright to left. The three strands of people, who are advancing out towards theviewer, form another narrative vector. As in Figure 1, this cartoon also showshow temporal meaning is expressed in spatial terms; in this case, twocontinuing simultaneous activities – ‘arguing’ and ‘coming’ – are expressedthrough two sets of vectors at right angles to one another.

I argued earlier that the concept of anchorage is not always adequateto describe the complex and often bi-directional transfer of meaningbetween verbal and visual modes of signification. Whereas the labelling ofthe bureaucrats in Figure 3 might well be described as anchorage, the roleplayed by the caption to the picture, ‘Vor dem Tor Europas’ [‘In front of thegates of Europe’], is somewhat more complex, as the verbal and the visualmessages appear to be mutually supportive. The caption is a token of the‘fortress Europe’ metaphor, implying that the refugees are an invadingenemy. It also suggests a spatial analogy, in which ‘we’ Europeans are inside,and the refugees are ‘in front of us’, waiting to come inside. This second levelof meaning is reinforced by the narrative representation of the image, which,as we have seen, is based on a vector pointing out towards the viewer, therebysuggesting visually, too, a connection between spatial relations and identity.

Another difference between the verbal and the visual mode is that thelatter seems to be more restricted when it is used to portray ‘plurals’, andconsequently it tends to reduce large social groups to one stereotypicalimage. Such a compression of a complex phenomenon into a single imagewhich captures its essence is referred to by Morris (1993) as ‘condensation’,which, he says, is especially common in political cartoons. In the example inFigure 1, for instance, one stereotypical family stands for all (Kurdish)immigrants.

The next cartoon (Figure 4) offers another example of condensation,where the person holding the key to the house and looking puzzled ispresumably meant to represent the prototypical German (‘der deutscheMichel’) and by implication all Germans. Figure 4 is also a good example ofdomestication, by which something complex, the EU, is shown in terms ofsomething more immediate, a house. Again, we have a whole chain of visualsigns representing the concept of ‘Europe as a house’: Schengen isrepresented by the door, the borders are portrayed as a keyhole andimmigration policies as a key.

This cartoon also serves to illustrate the importance of the three levelsof context in interpreting a visual metaphor: although the drawing seems tocontain a clear reference to the metaphor theme of refugees as some kind ofliquid substance, in actual fact both the topic and the vehicle of this watermetaphor are pictorially absent. Instead, the topic, the refugees, is suggestedthrough the word ‘Flüchtlinge’ [‘refugees’], inscribed on a sign in the shape of




an arrow, pointing towards the keyhole. The vehicle of this metaphor, water,is present only by implication of the pictorial context (the funnel and thearrow), which suggests that something liquid will soon be poured throughthe keyhole. It is also supported by the discourse context, in which theassociation between refuges and water is extremely common (El Refaie,2001). The high context dependency of many visual metaphors means thattheir meaning is often implicit and that they tend to be open to quite a widerange of interpretations.

The role of the verbal context in Figure 4 is again more complex thanRoland Barthes’ (1977) concept of anchorage would suggest. While thelabelling of the door seems to be a case of a linguistic message acting asanchorage, the caption of the cartoon, ‘Schlüsselfrage’ [‘key question’], has aslightly more complex function. In this case, not only is the abstract madetangible through the visual image, but a completely conventional, inactiveverbal metaphor is reactivated by presenting it in a striking visual form.

This cartoon also gives credence to the suggestion that visual imagesmay be more suited than verbal texts to the task of implicitly conveyingaffective meanings. In his exploration of visual representations of the ‘other,’for instance, Hall (1997) points out that the visual mode often ‘engagesfeelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in theviewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way’(p. 226). In the case of Figure 4, the huge size of the funnel and the imminentdanger of flooding it suggests may well affect readers’ attitudes towardsrefugees at a more irrational and emotional level than if the same idea hadbeen expressed verbally.

To give another example of the implicit emotive meanings whichimages can convey: in visual terms, there are several ways of establishing an





imaginary contact and of inviting the viewer of an image to empathize withthe depicted persons. In photographs this can be achieved, for example, byshortening the distance between the camera and its subject and by showingpeople looking directly into the lens so that they appear to be gazing into theviewer’s eyes (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). In the cartoons discussed inthis article, Figures 1 and 3 could perhaps be described as instances of whatthese authors call ‘demand’ pictures, where there is ‘eye-contact’ between thedepicted people and the viewer. However, in both these cartoons the refugeesare shown from such a distance that their faces are not clearly visible and,consequently, they do not appear as individuals, but rather as anonymousgroups of people.

If the verbal is really better at expressing action and chronology andthe visual mode at showing spatial relations and at tapping in tounconscious, deep-seated emotions, it is doubtful whether it is ever possibleto translate something from one mode into the other without some loss ofmeaning. While it seems sensible to make the most of models that havealready proved successful in the analysis of verbal metaphor, researchers ofvisual metaphor must thus be careful not to assume that every visual formhas an exact verbal equivalent and vice versa.

C O N C L U S I O N

In contrast to some of the recent attempts at defining visual metaphor informal terms, this study of Austrian newspaper cartoons suggests that it ismore appropriate to identify a visual metaphor by referring to the thoughtsor concepts that appear to underlie it. A cognitive definition of a visualmetaphor has the advantage of enabling the analyst to compare and contrastdifferent ways, both verbal and visual, of expressing a metaphorical thought.Perhaps most importantly, it makes it possible to draw on – but also tochallenge and develop further – some of the main tenets of conceptualmetaphor theory, which is currently the dominant approach in this field.

My analysis of four political cartoons highlights the difficulty ofdistinguishing between a literal and a metaphorical depiction. The fuzzinessof boundaries arises partly from the fact that metaphor may well be acommon element of many ordinary thought processes and partly from therecognition that all visual signs are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on aprocess of creating analogies. Because of this, the differentiation between a‘literal’ image and a visual metaphor is never absolute but it will alwaysdepend on the discourse context and on the degree to which particularmetaphors have become accepted as the ‘natural’, commonsensical way ofrepresenting certain meanings. For instance, the concept of immigration asan aggressive ‘assault’ on the majority population, which is expressedthrough many of the cartoons under consideration, may well appear to theaverage reader of the Neue Kronen Zeitung as relatively ‘natural’ andunremarkable. Rather than trying to find evidence for universal patterns of




thinking, as many of the original authors of cognitive metaphor theory havedone, future studies of metaphor must thus be careful always to take thesocio-political context into account.

This article also shows that the original authors of cognitive metaphortheory are mistaken in assuming that the surface form or ‘grammar’ ofmetaphors is secondary or even insignificant compared to the conceptuallevel. The examination of Austrian newspaper cartoons on the topic ofasylum seekers shows that, in spite of many similarities between verbal andvisual metaphor – such as the fact that they both tend to express complex,problematic areas of experience in terms of more straightforward ones –there are also some important differences. In fact, the very definition of whatis a problematic area seems to be partly influenced by the nature of the modeof communication in which a meaning is to be expressed.

For example, in several of the cartoons actions and temporalsuccession are presented through other visual means, such as size andcomposition. These findings lend credence to Kress’ (2000) assumption thatthe spatial display of visual images is more suited to the task of representingthe relations between elements than the verbal mode, which is better atexpressing action and chronology.

Another important difference between the verbal and the visual modeis that the latter is restricted when it is used to portray ‘plurals’, so that groupsof people are often reduced to one stereotypical image which purportedlyrepresents the essence of this group. As I showed with reference to Figures 1and 3, a visual depiction may implicitly invoke various symbols of culturaldifference and it may also convey subtle nuances of meaning with regard tothe degree of closeness and sympathy the viewer is invited to feel for thedepicted people. The visual representation of the ‘other’ is thus sometimesable to convey attitudes and to provoke fears and anxieties in the viewer in ahighly implicit fashion.

Personification is extremely common in political cartoons, as itenables the cartoonist to represent complex issues and relationships in amuch more simple and easily understandable form. Such personificationwould, in many cases, be impossible to express in words.

One of the most interesting findings of this study concerns thecomplexity of the relationship between a visual metaphor and its verbalcontext. In contrast to the verbal mode, in which even the most abstractconcept can, in theory, be given a verbal label, the depiction of an abstractentity in the visual mode is utterly impossible without the mediation ofmetaphors. Consequently, in many visual metaphors the token or the vehicle,or, in some cases, both, are not expressed directly in the image but are insteadimplied by the context. This context-dependency means that many visualmetaphors are implicit rather than explicit and that they are often open to awide range of possible interpretations, which depend on the attitudes and thelevel of knowledge of the reader.

In such cases, the verbal context of the cartoon assumes a particularly




important role in interpretation, as it can suggest what the visually absentconcept might be. Whereas the labelling of particular visual elements inpolitical cartoons is sometimes a clear case of a linguistic message anchoringvisual meaning, in other instances the role played by the caption is morecomplex. In the cartoon in Figure 4, for instance, the conventional, verbalmetaphor in the caption, ‘Schlüsselfrage’ [‘key question’], is reactivated bybeing reinterpreted through the visual mode.

These findings raise some important questions regarding therelationship between the verbal and the visual mode and the boundaries of atext. In this article, I compromised by regarding only the language located inimmediate proximity to an image as constituting its verbal context. It would,however, be important to study the meaning of cartoons in relation to awhole page or even a complete issue of a newspaper. With regard to othergenres, such as film and television, the spatial dimension of verbo–visualrelations would also have to be extended to include a temporal dimension.

While cognitive metaphor theory seems to offer a promisingapproach to the study of visual metaphor, my study of newspaper cartoonsindicates that researchers working within this paradigm must be moresensitive to the socio-political context of metaphor use and that they mustgive more attention to the form in which metaphors are expressed – be itverbal, visual, or a combination of both.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I would like to thank the ‘Arts and Humanities Research Board’ forsupporting the research this article is based on through a postgraduateaward. I am also grateful to F. Behrendt and M. Pammesberger for thepermission to use their newspaper cartoons.

N O T E S

1. The Neue Kronen Zeitung is the most-read daily newspaper in theworld seen in relation to the population: according to distributionfigures drawn from ‘Media Analyse’ (http://www.media-analyse.at), itwas read by 43.1 per cent of the Austrian newspaper readership in1998. It is notorious for its extreme anti-foreigner stance and forleading intensive campaigns for or against particular issues, which canlast for days or even weeks on end (Plasser, 1998).

2. Drawn up in 1990, the Schengen Treaty was first implemented inMarch 1995 by seven EU members. It introduced common visa andasylum policies and abolished border controls between membercountries.

3. Most contemporary analysts of metaphor differentiate between theway metaphors are expressed through language or another mode andthe underlying metaphorical thought, although the exact under-standing and labelling of the two levels differ. Black (1979: 24f), for




instance, speaks of ‘metaphor-themes’ as the abstract semanticcontents of metaphors and of ‘metaphorical statements’ to refer to theexpression of these contents through specific acts of communication.Böke (1997) distinguishes between a ‘Vorkommnis’ [‘incident’] or‘Token’ [‘token’] of a metaphor and its underlying ‘Metapherntyp’[‘metaphor type’]. In Lakoff ’s (1993) terminology, metaphor means ‘across-domain mapping in the conceptual system’ and ‘metaphoricalexpression’ designates the ‘surface realization of such a cross-domainmapping’ (p. 203).

4. Drawing on the sign theory of Charles Sanders Peirce (1965), tradi-tional semiotics distinguishes between symbols, indexes and icons: a‘symbol’ is based on an arbitrary connection between a signifier and asignified and its meaning is thus completely dependent on conven-tion. In Figure 1, the circle of stars representing the EU would be atypical example of a symbol in Peirce’s terms. ‘Index’ refers to a signthat relies on a causal relation between the signified and the signifier: forinstance, smoke is an index of fire. An ‘icon’, finally, is founded on closephysical resemblance and is thus independent of social and culturalconvention: the photograph is a perfect example of an iconic sign.

5. The Kurier used to be a tabloid and the main competitor of the NeueKronen Zeitung, but it has moved upmarket and now represents abroad range of opinions; it is read by 12% of the Austrian newspaperreaders.

6. In the expression: ‘Das Boot ist voll’ [‘The boat is full’], for example,which is particularly common in the argumentation against immigra-tion in Germany (Sendtner, 1999), the ‘topic’ of the metaphor,Germany, is not mentioned explicitly at all.

7. Forceville (1996) admits that it is no longer sufficient to regard theverbal message of an advertisement as always anchoring the visual:‘Nowadays, the reverse situation obtains as well: the text of anadvertisement is often deliberately ambiguous or enigmatic [...] andrequires information supplied by the picture to solve the riddle. Hereone could say that the pictorial information to some extent “anchors”the linguistic information as well as vice versa’ (p. 73).

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B I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E

ELISABETH EL REFAIE is originally from Vienna, where she studied MassMedia at Vienna University and trained and worked in journalism. In 2001she completed a PhD at Bradford University, examining metaphor and visualrhetoric in Austrian newspaper articles about refugees. She is currently work-ing as a lecturer in German at the Business School, Plymouth University. Hermain research interests are in media representations of race/ethnicity, nationalidentity, metaphor theory, visual semiotics and 20th century Austrian history.She has published articles in the Journal of Sociolinguistics and German History.

Address: Department of International Business, Plymouth Business School,University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.[email: [email protected] ]




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