Visual metaphors, cartoons and science communication

Abstract This study highlights the semiotic and textual mechanisms underlying the use of visual metaphors in cartoons aimed at scientific dissemination and debate. Visual metaphors are indeed a powerful tool for disseminating knowledge, and in cartoons or comics they can prove a very effective strategy; however, the possibility of using metaphors to frame reality, thus influencing public opinion, is an aspect that must be taken into consideration. This appears to be particularly interesting when scientific concepts are communicated to a large audience. To address this issue, the present contribution analyses the role of cartoons ( dessins de presse ) in a corpus of French-language publications (books and cartoons collections) about the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, to investigate what happens when visual metaphors are used to popularise complex scientific concepts in social debate, and the risks of simplification or polarisation these kinds of metaphors can generate. It describes different kinds of conceptual metaphors involved in the data, their visual realisations and the relationship between the topic (COVID-19, climate change), the nature of the metaphorical conceptual interaction (creative or conventional metaphors) and visual metaphorical models. It thus highlights the potential effects of visual metaphors on the readers’ perception.