Ideology Trudges on Tabula-Rasa: A Semiotic Analysis of Selected Political Cartoons in Pakistani Newspapers

Abstract

Media has become an inevitable source of information in this era of consumerism where the commodity sells as well as is sold through the discursive devices-both verbal as well as visual. This study explores how perception of socio-political reality is (re/de)constructed through media discourses with ideological underpinning-potent of both face saving and face exploitation. To cope with the research objective, a represented sample comprising political cartoons has been selected from two Pakistani newspapers-Dawn and The Nation, and mixed method is employed to analyse the sample semiotically as well as critically. For this purpose, Kress and Leeuwen's Model (2006), Fairclough’s Tridimensional Model (1995) and Van Dijk’s model (1995, 2006) have been employed to prove media discourse-a discursive and an ideological construct. The interpretation and integration of findings confirm that the discourses reveal representations of representation instead of reality and which (re/de) construct the perception of indigenous socio-political events.

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