A SEMIOTIC STUDY OF CARICATURE: THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN AMERICA AND CHINA

Visual communication is a compound process, which requires broad knowledge of semiotics. Semiotics is the education of signs and symbols. In what way these signs and symbols are interpreted is studied under semiotics. It has many concealed signs and connotations, for example: brand name, logo, package design, color, punch line and trade mark, etc. The present study presents one of the most significant philosophies and replicas of visual social semiotics, namely, Kress and van Leeuwen’s "Grammar of Visual Design". It involves the description of semiotic resources, what can be said and done with images (and other visual means of communication) and how things people say and do with images can be interpreted. Thus, the communicative values of signs in a caricature are a portrait with the volume turned up. A caricature is a painting, or more commonly a picture, of an object or item in which the characteristics and structure have been blurred and exaggerated to ridicule or satirize the topic. Thus the current study aims at studying some caricatures nonverbally through analyzing the image and colours of it. The study tackles semiotics; specifically social semiotics, caricature, the elements of analyzing caricature, which are: image, word, and colour. The first part carries on the introduction of the current study as well as tackling the problem of the study, the literature review of semiotics in general and social semiotics in particular. The second part carries on the data and its analysis through the model, as well as the visual results, finally, giving the conclusion.