On metaphor in political cartoons between mono- and multimodality – France in the corona crisis

Abstract Metaphors can be understood as mental, similarity-based mappings between concepts independent of each other. Verbal metaphors are widespread in journalistic texts, whereas in political cartoons, both monomodal and multimodal metaphors can be found. With the latter, it would appear that at least a partial representation of the source and target domain in the different modes is fundamental. Nevertheless, even in the case of a parallel of linguistic and pictorial metaphor, redundancy is seldom observed. In rare instances, a double monomodal realization (cross-modal metaphors) can be found. Accordingly, the boundary between mono- and multimodal metaphors can be situated on a continuum. Focusing on the corona pandemic and its treatment in the cartoons by Plantu for Le Monde , the article first examines the verbal metaphors used in the press coverage in 2020 (and the televised speeches of President Macron) which is intended to serve as a basis for comparison; at the same time, the focus is on the implementation of the metaphors in question. As part of the detailed analyses of the cartoons, particular emphasis is placed on the problem of distinguishing between mono- and multimodal metaphors which allows for the reference to a continuum.