Metaphoric Blends in Online Cartoons on Egypt’s Education System

Document Type : Original Article

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Department of English - Faculty of Al- Alsun, Ain Shams University

Abstract

Political cartoons, as a visual medium, abound in metaphor for its powerful impact on viewers/readers; they comment on various social, cultural, and political aspects of life. On that account, this paper is meant to explore metaphor from the cognitive perspective of conceptual blending theory- developed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) - in five online cartoons by Dr. Sherif Arafa. The theory presents a framework for online meaning construction via mappings, selective projections and other conceptual blending processes to yield novel dynamic inferences. The paper addresses metaphoric blends, as specified by Grady (2005), in an attempt to uncover the cognitive processes pertaining to meaning construction and the ideological assumptions underpinning such metaphoric cartoons. The five cartoons focus on Egypt’s education system. The study concludes that double-scope integration networks dominate the five cartoons; moreover, metaphoric blends are triggered via experiential correlations and analogical mappings. The cartoonist criticizes the current education strategies in Egypt via his ideologically loaded cartoons.

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