Vol. 16, Issue 1, Jul-Dec 2023

Page: 78-90

A Critical Semiotic Analysis of Oppression in Political Caricature with a Special Reference to Israeli- Palestinian Conflict

Muslim Thajeel Hasan, Prof. Dr. Abdulkarim Fadil Jameel

Received Date: 2025-02-12

Accepted Date: 2025-03-14

Published Date: 2025-03-25

This study investigates the semiotics of political cartoons, with a specific emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The problem addressed by this study concerns the gap in visual analysis frameworks in that it creates a synergy between Social Semiotic Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in studying how political caricatures represent oppression, with regard to the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The aim is to study how semiotic features such as symbols, metaphors, and visual grammar reflect and challenge dominant power structures and in doing so influence public perception. The hypothesis stipulates that political cartoons serve as a strong ideological weapon insofar as they propagate and critique conflicting positions between the oppressor and the victims. The study employed an eclectic model grounded in the semiotic theories as propounded by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2006) in conjunction with Fairclough's (1995) CDA framework. Using a qualitative-quantitative mixed-methods approach, ten selected caricatures were analyzed from Chappatte Globecartoon, Cartoon Movement, and The Palestinian Information Center. By following multimodal analysis, which incorporates composition framing, salience, and social context, it reveals the procedure through which these images encode complex socio-political messages. The findings conclude that political caricatures can very well critique oppression by cleverly weaving together visual and textual strategies in order to subvert dominant ideologies and foreground the perspectives of marginalized subjects.

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