Visual Communication

http://vcj.sagepub.com Understanding visual metaphor: the example of newspaper cartoons

Elisabeth El Refaie Visual Communication 2003; 2; 75 DOI: 10.1177/1470357203002001755 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/75

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visual communication
ARTICLE

Understanding visual metaphor: the example of newspaper cartoons

ELISABETH EL REFAIE University of Plymouth

ABSTRACT

Using Austrian newspaper cartoons as examples, this article explores the grammar of visual metaphor. It is argued that visual metaphors cannot be described adequately in formal terms only. Rather, they must be considered as visual representations of metaphorical thoughts or concepts. A cognitive definition of metaphor must not, however, distract from potential variations in meaning and impact arising from the mode of communication through which metaphors are expressed. This study suggests that many of the dissimilarities between verbal metaphor and its visual counterpart result from differences regarding what the two modes are able to express easily and efficiently.
KEY WORDS

Austrian newspapers cartoons cognitive metaphor theory refugees visual metaphor

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this article is to explore the ways in which metaphors are expressed in the visual mode, more specifically in newspaper cartoons. I use the analysis of caricatures from Austrian daily newspapers in order to demonstrate three central arguments, each of which forms the basis of one of the articles three sections. First, I suggest that visual metaphors are best described in terms of their underlying metaphorical concepts. This view of visual metaphors as the pictorial expression of a metaphorical way of thinking is congruent with the main tenets of cognitive metaphor theory. My second argument is that such a definition of visual metaphors in cognitive terms is not as straightforward as it seems, because the boundaries between the literal and the metaphorical are fuzzy and highly contextdependent. This means that metaphors must always be studied within their socio-political context.

Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: www.sagepublications.com) Vol 2(1): 7595 [1470-3572(200302)2:1; 7595;029755]

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Finally, I argue that the specific form in which a metaphor is expressed may have an important influence on its meaning and impact. Therefore, an emphasis on the conceptual must not distract from the potential significance of the grammar of visual metaphor. Using the cartoons as examples, several basic differences between verbal and visual metaphors are suggested. In spite of some research activity on visual metaphor in the last decade (Carroll, 1996; Forceville, 1994, 1995, 1996; Morris, 1993), there is still no fully coherent account of how it can be understood and how it differs from its verbal counterpart. As I show in the first section, most recent approaches tend to focus on the formal level of visual metaphors and to neglect the important conceptual level. This means that they are generally quite restricted with regard to the type and genre of visual metaphors about which they are able to make any meaningful statements. In contrast to this, I believe that a definition of visual metaphor must be based on the concepts underlying a particular depiction and that the analysis of visual metaphors cannot be complete without detailed reference to the cognitive level. This article incorporates elements from the studies mentioned above and from social semioticians work on visual grammar (Kress, 1994; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996), while also drawing heavily on cognitive metaphor theory. The view of metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon became popular in the early 1980s (Gibbs, 1994; Lakoff, 1987, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Sweetser, 1990; Turner, 1998). Prior to this, a metaphor was seen as the poetic way of saying or writing something that could also be expressed in a literal way. Consequently, most authors ignored the possibility of metaphors being represented in other modes besides the verbal. Cognitive theorists, by contrast, proposed that metaphor is a property of thought rather than of language and that it is about understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 5). According to this view, the mechanisms underlying metaphor exist in the mind independently of language, and what used to be referred to as a metaphor is now considered to be simply the surface realization of a particular way of thinking. Hence, any form of communication can be seen as an instance of metaphor, if it is able to induce a metaphoric thought or concept. The view of metaphor as a cognitive rather than a merely linguistic phenomenon is now also supported by an impressive array of empirical evidence (Seitz, 1998). While the assumption of a cognitive basis to metaphor justifies and gives new relevance to the study of visual metaphors, it also throws up a range of theoretical and empirical problems, as shown in the second section of this article. For one thing, researchers working within the cognitive paradigm tend to assume that some basic conceptual metaphors are influenced by our shared physical experiences as infants and that they can therefore be determined for all human beings (Lakoff, 1987: 265ff; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 226ff). It is now becoming increasingly clear, however, that the extent to which metaphors are connected to the way people think cannot be described universally, or even for a whole linguistic community, but must instead be explored in specific
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socio-political contexts. In fact, every individual reader or viewer is likely to bring his or her own experiences and assumptions to the interpretation process. As I demonstrate with reference to the four cartoons discussed in this article, the way people understand these drawings is likely to be influenced by the social and political circumstances at the time and by the expectations readers have towards particular newspapers. In fact, it is this concern with the role of context that led me to choose these particular Austrian cartoons as examples for the current discussion. My detailed knowledge of the background to the events depicted in the images and of the way in which Austrian newspapers chose to represent these events (cf. El Refaie, 2001) allows me to draw some tentative conclusions about the possible influence of discursive context on interpretation and meaning. Another difficulty with conceptual metaphor theory concerns the fact that some analysts seem to be so concerned with describing the cognitive basis of metaphor that they now tend to view the ways in which it is expressed as secondary. According to applied linguist Cameron (1999), the recent trend of focusing concern on the conceptual content of metaphors has underemphasised the potential effect of form on processing and understanding (p. 12). Recently, some researchers have begun to address this question with regard to verbal language, by exploring the effect of a metaphors linguistic form on its meaning (Goatly, 1997; Steen, 1994). However, the potential influence of the visual form of metaphors has so far been neglected. To me, this is an inexcusable omission. The fact that one metaphorical thought or concept can be expressed in many different ways does not necessarily mean that there are no differences at the level of representation, especially with regard to the degree of implicitness of a metaphor and its emotional impact. Section three thus focuses on the grammar of visual metaphors and also explores some of the differences between verbal and visual ways of expressing the same metaphorical concept. In the conclusion to this article, I show how my findings might contribute both to a better understanding of the visual mode of communication and to the critical reassessment of some of the fundamental assumptions of cognitive metaphor theory.
W H AT I S A V I S U A L M E TA P H O R ?

In one of his essays, the art historian E.H. Gombrich (1971) argues that metaphor is a common and expected device in political cartoons: it is one of the main weapons in the cartoonists armoury. The cartoons discussed in this article certainly appear to be highly metaphorical. However, as I show, analytically the concept of a visual metaphor is an extraordinarily difficult and elusive one to deal with. Ever since Aristotle, theorists have grappled with metaphors, trying to understand how they differ from literal language, how people recognize and interpret them and what role they play in language. The contemporary scholar is confronted with a daunting range of contradictory theories,

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developed mainly within the disciplines of cognitive psychology, semantics and pragmatics (Gibbs, 1999). In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the important role played by the visual mode in contemporary Western society, which has also prompted an interest in the nature of pictorial metaphor. A number of studies have explored visual metaphors in very diverse genres, such as advertising (Forceville, 1994, 1995, 1996), films (Carroll, 1996), cartoons (Kennedy, 1993; Morris, 1993) and visual displays for training and control purposes (Dent-Read et al., 1994). In spite of this growth of publications, there is still little agreement among researchers even over basic terms and definitions. In my view, the main problem with much of the extant literature is that most researchers still define visual metaphors in terms of their surface realization or formal characteristics, rather than trying to understand them as visual expressions of metaphorical thoughts or concepts. The film theorist Carroll (1996), for instance, restricts his definition of visual metaphors to cases where there is a visual fusion of elements from two separate areas into one spatially bounded entity. He gives an example from Fritz Langs film Metropolis, in which the transformation of a gigantic machine into a monster is represented through the superimposition of two images:
The machine, or at least parts of it, have been transformed into parts of a monster, Moloch. Nevertheless, the machine is still recognizable as a machine. The monster elements and the machine elements are co-present or homospatial in the same figure. (Carroll 1996: 810)

Exploring the use of metaphor in portrait caricature, Gombrich (1971: 134) describes a similar form of visual fusion, for example, when the face of a particular politician is visually amalgamated with the body of an animal. While fusion is certainly one of the forms a visual metaphor can take, I argue that this definition is much too narrow. Take, for instance, the cartoon from the Austrian tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung1 (Figure 1). This drawing, entitled Die Alternative [The alternative], depicts a family standing in the middle of EU-Europe, holding up a flag with the inscription Neu Kurdistan [New Kurdistan]. The cartoons discussed in this article were all published in January 1998 and they refer to the landing in southern Italy of two cargo ships with several hundred mostly Kurdish refugees from Turkey and Iraq on board. Although the arrival of asylum seekers in Italy was and continues to be a common occurrence, the political circumstances at the time meant that it was given significance over and above the actual numbers involved: Italy and Austria had just joined the Schengen Treaty2 and had begun to reduce border controls between the two countries. Politicians in Austria and elsewhere in Europe warned of the dire consequences of allowing asylum seekers to exploit the new open border policy and called on the Italian government to prevent the Kurds from leaving Italy and heading north.
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Figure 1 Neue Kronen Zeitung, 14 January 1998: 3. Reproduced by permission of the artist Fritz Behrendt.

In the bottom right-hand corner of the image, a line of ships is bringing more people from Turkey to the Italian coast. The cartoon thus seems to imply that, if the Kurds (and other Islamic immigrants) are not prevented from entering the EU, they will occupy our homeland and declare their own nation in the heart of Europe. Most people would probably feel that this image goes beyond a literal depiction of events. According to Carrolls definition of a visual metaphor, however, Figure 1 would not be metaphorical, since it does not contain a visual fusion of parts from two separate areas of experience into one new, spatially bounded entity. If we compare visual metaphors to verbal ones, then visual fusion in Carrolls sense would correspond to cases where both the figurative term, or vehicle, and the actual referent, or topic, of a metaphor are present, as in explicit nominal metaphors of the form A is B (My belief is my rock, Her husband is a big teddy bear). Just as such a high degree of explicitness is actually rather rare in verbal metaphors (Goatly, 1997: ch. 7), so many instances of visual metaphors are also based not on visual fusion but on more implicit forms. As I show later in greater detail, most visual metaphors do not contain a fusion of two separate elements into one, because either the vehicle or, more commonly, the topic is not shown explicitly at all. In the cartoon from the Neue Kronen Zeitung, for instance, the vehicle of the
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metaphor, an occupation force, is not depicted directly, but rather it is implied by the context. A broader definition of visual metaphor to the one offered by Carroll thus seems to be required. Forceville (1994, 1995, 1996), who has analysed pictorial metaphor in advertisements and on billboards, defines a visual metaphor in terms of the replacement of an expected visual element by an unexpected one. In order to speak of a metaphor, he argues, there must be no pre-existent or conventional connection (Forceville, 1994: 2) between these two elements. In a shoe advertisement, for instance, which shows a male torso adorned with a shoe in place of a tie, he describes the pictorial metaphor in the following way:
The foregrounded object is a shoe. We immediately see that there is something odd about this shoe: It is located where we would ordinarily have expected something else, namely, a tie. The viewer is invited to perceive the phenomenon shoe not in its usual, literal sense but in terms of the very different phenomenon tie. The metaphor can be verbalized as SHOE IS TIE. (p. 5)

Although Forcevilles understanding of a visual metaphor is more flexible than the concept of visual fusion, it also seems to describe just one possible form a visual metaphor may take, albeit one which seems to be very common in advertisements. A typical pictorial metaphor in an advertisement, however, is not necessarily characteristic of all types of visual metaphors in all genres. It does not, for instance, offer an adequate description of the visual metaphor contained in the cartoon in Figure 1, where we do not really expect anything to be in the place where the Kurdish family is. Rather than being produced by a simple replacement of an expected visual element with an unexpected one, the metaphor seems to emerge from the composition of several verbal and visual signs, which, through their particular relation to one another, together produce the idea of Kurdish refugees as a foreign army occupying Europe. The difficulty with Forcevilles notion of pictorial metaphor as the replacement of an expected visual element with an unexpected one is that, like the concept of visual fusion, it is based principally on formal criteria. In actual fact, however, there seems to be a whole range of different forms through which metaphorical concepts can be expressed visually. Instead of attempting a definition of a visual metaphor according to its surface realization, Kennedy et al. (1993) suggest that any visual depiction can be seen as an instance of metaphor, provided that its use is intended to occasion a metaphoric thought (p. 244). In Figure 1, for instance, the underlying metaphorical concept might be rendered as something like: immigration is occupation. This thought is expressed through several interrelated verbal and visual signs: the family super-imposed on the map of Europe, the flag with its inscription New Kurdistan, the ships moving towards the Italian coast, etc.3
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The definition of a visual metaphor in terms of its underlying concept is consistent with the main tenets of conceptual metaphor theory, which is currently the dominant paradigm in the field of metaphor studies. Such a cognitive definition seems to me to be a good basis on which to try and begin to understand the nature of visual metaphor. Not only does it broaden considerably the scope of what might be considered visual metaphors, enabling analysts to explore the various shapes they can take in the different visual genres, it also makes it easier to compare and contrast verbal and visual forms of expressing the same metaphorical concept. However, the definition of a visual metaphor in cognitive terms is also not without its difficulties and it raises some very complex questions.
W H AT I S A M E TA P H O R I C T H O U G H T ?

If we define a visual metaphor as any image which is intended to occasion a metaphoric thought, we are, first of all, faced with the problem of the plurality of readings. Clearly, it is not always possible to determine unambiguously which thoughts a particular depiction is intended to give rise to, let alone what it will actually mean to individual readers/viewers. Meaning is never simply inherent in a (visual) text, but it is jointly negotiated by producers and viewers. Consequently, the analyst can only ever point to a meaning potential or preferred reading and cannot assume that this will correspond exactly to the actual readings of a text. In his experiments involving pictorial metaphors on billboards, for instance, Forceville (1995, 1996) demonstrates that although the central meanings of visual metaphors tend to be strongly implicated, the more associative interpretations can differ quite considerably from one respondent to the next. In the earlier example, some viewers may well associate the raised flag with the concept of discovering new territory or with a political demonstration, rather than with the idea of forceful occupation of a foreign country. It is also just about conceivable that a very badly informed viewer of the cartoon from the Neue Kronen Zeitung may assume that Kurdish immigrants have really literally just declared their own state in central Europe. This brings us to the second major difficulty resulting from a cognitive definition of visual metaphors: the problem of how to distinguish between a literal and a metaphoric thought. When the cognitive approach became widely accepted in the 1980s, the very distinction between the literal and the metaphorical, which for a long time had been simply taken for granted, was suddenly called into question. The main observation made by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) was that metaphorical language is ubiquitous and that it is not arbitrary but remarkably systematic. This, they argue, is because much of our ordinary conceptual system is structured metaphorically, enabling us to understand complex areas of experience in terms of concepts with which we are more familiar.

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If many of our common thought patterns are really based on figurative processes, then expressions that arise from such conceptual metaphors can actually be considered literal in that they emerge from a direct connection between language and the way we think. Hence, the degree to which the connection between two concepts strikes us as literal or metaphorical does not depend on any objective distance between the two but rather on how deeply the connection is entrenched in our conceptual system, in other words, on how conventional it is. In fact, conventionality is also rather an elusive concept, which cannot be determined once and for all but depends on the specific discourse context. Many people would probably regard the connection established in the cartoon in Figure 1 between refugees and an invading army as unconventional and hence as clearly metaphorical. Yet the representation of immigration in terms of war is actually far from unusual in current public discourses, as several studies of media reports and parliamentary debates in different European countries have revealed (Bke, 1997; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak and Van Dijk, 2000). Regular readers of the tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung, in particular, are unlikely to perceive such a metaphor as particularly striking or remarkable, as this newspaper regularly writes about immigration in such terms (El Refaie, 2001). The fuzziness of the boundaries between the literal and the metaphorical, which most researchers into verbal metaphor now readily acknowledge (Goatly, 1997), is also recognized by an increasing number of researchers of visual semiotics. In contrast to traditional semiotics, which distinguishes between three different kinds of visual signs according to the nature of the relation between the signifier and the signified,4 social semioticians define every sign in relation to the act of sign making (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996: 6ff). They believe that interest, seen in terms of the social position of the sign producer and the context of the sign production, leads people to select a particular characteristic of an event or object and to make that the basis of the production of a signified. According to this view, there can be no such thing as a completely literal visual sign, because the process of sign making is always, to a certain extent, based on a process of analogy. In fact, seen from this perspective, all signs are metaphors (Kress, 1993: 174). Thus, even if we consider the drawing of the Kurdish family in Figure 1 in isolation from the context of the rest of the cartoon, it still cannot really be described as a neutral, iconic representation of a family. The decision by the caricaturist to draw the refugee family as a moustached father, a mother wearing a headscarf, and a large number of children is clearly based on his political interests and communicative goals and seems to be intended to convey the impression of otherness. Since all signs are motivated by interest and based on social convention, it is thus not possible to determine unambiguously whether a visual sign is meant to be read literally or metaphorically. Instead, the focus
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of analysis must be on the process whereby a particular visual metaphor may gradually become accepted as the natural way of expressing a particular meaning. In this particular Austrian media discourse, for instance, a small number of metaphors, portraying immigration as a criminal activity, an invasion and a flood, were used again and again. Most commonly they were expressed through highly conventional verbal expressions, but they were also often reinforced through visual depictions (El Refaie, 2001). The following caricature from the Kurier,5 for example, appears to presuppose that people are already familiar with the highly conventional verbal metaphor of fortress Europe: In this cartoon, the concept of Europe as a fortress is presented as commonly shared background knowledge, which enables viewers to understand the central meaning of this cartoon, which is expressed through the images of the drawbridge being pulled up and of a star falling from the symbol of the European Union (EU). The thought underlying these two visual signs appears to be the lack of solidarity among EU countries in the face of an invasion by refugees, a reading which is supported by the picture caption: Europe? Union? Gemeinschaft? [Europe? Union? Community?]. Although there is as yet no empirical evidence for this, it is possible that the constant repetition of particular metaphors will encourage the unconscious or at least semi-conscious acceptance of a particular metaphorical concept as the normal, natural way of seeing a particular area

Figure 2 Kurier, 4 January 1998: 3. Reproduced by permission of the artist M. Pammesberger.

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of experience, in this case, immigration. In the following discussion, I use some more examples of political cartoons to argue that the meaning and the impact of a metaphorical concept might also be affected by the way in which it is presented in verbal and/or visual terms.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN V E R B A L A N D V I S U A L M E TA P H O R S

One of the few generalizations that most metaphor theorists would probably agree on is that metaphors tend to represent the unknown, unresolved or problematic in terms of something more familiar and more easily imaginable. Whereas the actual referent of a metaphor is thus likely to be quite an abstract concept, the figurative term is often drawn from the domain of basic human experience (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). This hypothesis is borne out in many political cartoons. In fact, Morris (1993) describes domestication, the depiction of a complex or unknown area of experience in terms of a more familiar one, as one of the main rhetorical devices in cartoons. However, as Pollio (1996) points out, what is considered to be known and unknown is always relative to an individual speaker, in a specific setting, in a particular culture, in a given historical period (p. 246). Metaphors can thus be seen as indicators of the culturally shared preoccupations of the moment. With regard to the cartoons analysed in this article, for instance, the fact that Austria had just joined Schengen meant that the arrival of several hundred asylum seekers was suddenly perceived as something particularly noteworthy and problematic. It is also possible that the mode in which a particular area of experience is to be represented will have an influence on the degree to which this area is considered problematic or difficult to grasp. Because of the logo-centric history of the study of metaphor, many researchers still tend to assume that theories from the domain of linguistics can be applied to visual metaphors in a simple and straightforward way. This assumption is often based on the idea that images are fundamentally representational, which would imply that the visual can be seen simply as expressing the same meanings as language, albeit in a more imprecise form. In fact, visual communication can and often does refer to things that have no verbal translation at all (Morris, 1993: 196). While language is perhaps more precise in expressing some areas of meaning, other meanings may be shown more easily and more effectively in images rather than in words:
The sequential/temporal characteristic of language-as-speech may lend itself with greater facility to the representation of action and sequences of action; while the spatial display of visual images may lend itself with greater facility to the representation of elements and their relation to each other. (Kress, 2000: 147)

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If, as Kress (2000) claims, there are indeed differences regarding what the verbal and the visual mode can express easily and efficiently, then this should have important consequences with regard to which areas of experience are typically represented through the means of a metaphor. For instance, if the visual mode of communication is less suitable for representing actions and chronology, then such meanings are likely to be expressed in a more metaphorical fashion, which allows them to be translated into an image based on the spatial rather than on the temporal relations of elements. Caricatures, in particular, seem to be able to compensate for the loss of the time dimension by implying a sequence of action through other signifiers such as size and composition. In Figure 1, for instance, two successive events, the journey of refugees in ships to Italy and their (projected) arrival in central Europe, are presented in one single image, which might suggest that they are happening simultaneously. However, the central position and the over-dimensional size of the Kurdish family suggest that this visual element represents the current issue at stake, while the smaller ships in the corner of the image whose progression is indicated by the lines behind each ship are presented as the background or the what-hashappened-so-far of the main story. Both in language and in the visual mode of communication, it is possible for the topic of a metaphor to be implied rather than explicitly mentioned (Goatly, 1997).6 The difference is that, in language, even the most abstract concept can, in theory, generally be given a verbal label. This means that there exists a choice in the verbal mode that may not exist in the visual mode. Take, for instance, the concept of the EU. In language, it is possible to say something like: To many refugees, the EU is paradise or fortress Europe, in which case both the topic and the vehicle of the metaphor are explicitly stated. In the case of a visual metaphor, by contrast, an abstract entity cannot be depicted at all without the mediation of symbols or metaphors. Hence, the abstract concept of the EU will always be pictorially absent and replaced by more concrete and easily imaginable vehicles. Figure 2 is a very good example of how one basic metaphorical concept that of the EU as a fortress may be represented through several verbal and visual signs, which all focus on different parts or aspects of the same metaphor. Here, the fortress stands for the EU, the gate for Schengen, and the tower perched precariously on the rocks represents Italy. In all these elements of the Europe as a Fortress metaphor, the vehicles are expressed visually, whereas the topics (the EU, Schengen, Italy, etc.) are implied either through the verbal or visual context. In his study of advertisements, Forceville (1994, 1996) has discovered that here, too, the topics of pictorial metaphors are often pictorially absent (as for instance in his example of a shoe advertisement mentioned above); in such cases, he believes, the context assumes a particularly important role in determining the meaning of a visual metaphor. Forceville distinguishes
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between pictorial context, linguistic context and what he terms world knowledge or encyclopaedic knowledge. He bases his theory of linguistic context on Roland Barthes (1977) perceptive and still highly influential theory of text-image relations. Barthes main argument is that the meaning of images is always related to a linguistic message. The most common function of the linguistic message is what he calls anchorage: because images are by nature polysemous, implying a floating chain of signifieds (Barthes, 1977: 39), language is needed in order to fix both the denoted and the connoted meanings of the visual by identifying and interpreting what the image is showing. Although these concepts provide an important and useful starting point, they give the verbal message a clear preference over the visual and effectively deny the possibility of an image having its own, independent structure and meaning. Extending Barthes rather unidirectional concept of anchorage, I will follow Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), who regard communication as based on an incessant translation or transcoding between semiotic modes and assume that verbal and visual messages intermesh and interact at all times (p. 40).7 The assumption of a mutual influence between verbal and visual texts raises the difficult question of boundaries: should a definition of verbal context be restricted to linguistic messages which appear either within the image or in immediate proximity to it, or should articles on the same page which are thematically linked with the image also be included? Alternatively, should the whole page or even the entire newspaper be considered as a communicative unit (Kress, 1994)? On a newspaper page, verbal and visual elements, such as layout, typeset, photographs, caricatures and graphs, are spatially integrated through their composition. On the other hand, the composition is also likely to influence the temporal order in which the various elements on a page are read (Van Leeuwen, 1993). In theory, then, verbal context can be determined either spatially in terms of closeness, for instance or temporally, with regard to whether some items are likely to be read in close succession. As the reading path must take into account cultural, perceptual and semantic factors, it can never be determined absolutely but can only be hypothesized. For practical reasons, it thus seems more straightforward to concentrate on the spatial relation between verbal and visual elements. I will define verbal context as any language which is located in close proximity to the image and which is intended to be read in direct conjunction with it. All other items of text on a newspaper page are treated as part of the broader discourse context, as I prefer to call what Forceville has termed world knowledge. As mentioned earlier, the topics of the individual metaphor tokens in Figure 2 are not present visually but implied through the visual, verbal and discourse context. The EU is labelled verbally through the word Europa [Europe] and visually through the symbol of the circle of stars. The metaphor topic Schengen is implied through linguistic labelling only, whereas Italy is indicated through a flag in addition to its verbal naming.
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Figure 3 Neue Kronen Zeitung, 3 January 1998: 3. Reproduced by permission of the artist Fritz Behrendt.

As we saw through the earlier examples, many visual metaphors are also common in language. In such cases, the cartoonist merely secures what language has prepared (Gombrich, 1971: 128), although he or she may give the metaphor a new twist or focus on elements which would otherwise remain unused or unnoticed. However, visual metaphors are not always simply translations into the visual mode of verbal metaphors. The above cartoon (Figure 3) from the Neue Kronen Zeitung, for example, shows how the visual mode seems to lend itself to the personification of abstract concepts. This caricature shows two European officials squabbling over whether or not to abolish border controls in Schengen, while in the background a large number of refugees are advancing towards the viewer. As in the two previous examples, the context is suggested both visually through the circle of stars on the backs of the two male figures and verbally through the text on the documents they are holding, which clearly identifies the men as Schengen and as Grenzenlos Reisen [travel without borders] respectively. The personifications are presented here as being in conflict with one another, implying that Schengen is essentially about increasing freedom for some and restricting it for others, by stopping immigration. It is a powerful image, encouraging viewers to realize that there is a dichotomy between the two aims. Such a personification of two opposing principles would be very difficult, if not impossible, to express verbally. Provided that the viewer is familiar with the context, a cartoon is thus sometimes able to convey a complex message in a much more immediate and condensed fashion than language. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), all narrative images
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contain one or several vectors, either formed obliquely by depicted objects or people, or by abstract graphic elements, which represent the narrative process that is taking place. In this case, the two male figures arguing in the foreground form one set of visual vectors, pointing from left to right and right to left. The three strands of people, who are advancing out towards the viewer, form another narrative vector. As in Figure 1, this cartoon also shows how temporal meaning is expressed in spatial terms; in this case, two continuing simultaneous activities arguing and coming are expressed through two sets of vectors at right angles to one another. I argued earlier that the concept of anchorage is not always adequate to describe the complex and often bi-directional transfer of meaning between verbal and visual modes of signification. Whereas the labelling of the bureaucrats in Figure 3 might well be described as anchorage, the role played by the caption to the picture, Vor dem Tor Europas [In front of the gates of Europe], is somewhat more complex, as the verbal and the visual messages appear to be mutually supportive. The caption is a token of the fortress Europe metaphor, implying that the refugees are an invading enemy. It also suggests a spatial analogy, in which we Europeans are inside, and the refugees are in front of us, waiting to come inside. This second level of meaning is reinforced by the narrative representation of the image, which, as we have seen, is based on a vector pointing out towards the viewer, thereby suggesting visually, too, a connection between spatial relations and identity. Another difference between the verbal and the visual mode is that the latter seems to be more restricted when it is used to portray plurals, and consequently it tends to reduce large social groups to one stereotypical image. Such a compression of a complex phenomenon into a single image which captures its essence is referred to by Morris (1993) as condensation, which, he says, is especially common in political cartoons. In the example in Figure 1, for instance, one stereotypical family stands for all (Kurdish) immigrants. The next cartoon (Figure 4) offers another example of condensation, where the person holding the key to the house and looking puzzled is presumably meant to represent the prototypical German (der deutsche Michel) and by implication all Germans. Figure 4 is also a good example of domestication, by which something complex, the EU, is shown in terms of something more immediate, a house. Again, we have a whole chain of visual signs representing the concept of Europe as a house: Schengen is represented by the door, the borders are portrayed as a keyhole and immigration policies as a key. This cartoon also serves to illustrate the importance of the three levels of context in interpreting a visual metaphor: although the drawing seems to contain a clear reference to the metaphor theme of refugees as some kind of liquid substance, in actual fact both the topic and the vehicle of this water metaphor are pictorially absent. Instead, the topic, the refugees, is suggested through the word Flchtlinge [refugees], inscribed on a sign in the shape of
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Figure 4 Neue Kronen Zeitung, 12 January 1998: 3. Reproduced by permission of the artist Fritz Behrendt.

an arrow, pointing towards the keyhole. The vehicle of this metaphor, water, is present only by implication of the pictorial context (the funnel and the arrow), which suggests that something liquid will soon be poured through the keyhole. It is also supported by the discourse context, in which the association between refuges and water is extremely common (El Refaie, 2001). The high context dependency of many visual metaphors means that their meaning is often implicit and that they tend to be open to quite a wide range of interpretations. The role of the verbal context in Figure 4 is again more complex than Roland Barthes (1977) concept of anchorage would suggest. While the labelling of the door seems to be a case of a linguistic message acting as anchorage, the caption of the cartoon, Schlsselfrage [key question], has a slightly more complex function. In this case, not only is the abstract made tangible through the visual image, but a completely conventional, inactive verbal metaphor is reactivated by presenting it in a striking visual form. This cartoon also gives credence to the suggestion that visual images may be more suited than verbal texts to the task of implicitly conveying affective meanings. In his exploration of visual representations of the other, for instance, Hall (1997) points out that the visual mode often engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way (p. 226). In the case of Figure 4, the huge size of the funnel and the imminent danger of flooding it suggests may well affect readers attitudes towards refugees at a more irrational and emotional level than if the same idea had been expressed verbally. To give another example of the implicit emotive meanings which images can convey: in visual terms, there are several ways of establishing an
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imaginary contact and of inviting the viewer of an image to empathize with the depicted persons. In photographs this can be achieved, for example, by shortening the distance between the camera and its subject and by showing people looking directly into the lens so that they appear to be gazing into the viewers eyes (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). In the cartoons discussed in this article, Figures 1 and 3 could perhaps be described as instances of what these authors call demand pictures, where there is eye-contact between the depicted people and the viewer. However, in both these cartoons the refugees are shown from such a distance that their faces are not clearly visible and, consequently, they do not appear as individuals, but rather as anonymous groups of people. If the verbal is really better at expressing action and chronology and the visual mode at showing spatial relations and at tapping in to unconscious, deep-seated emotions, it is doubtful whether it is ever possible to translate something from one mode into the other without some loss of meaning. While it seems sensible to make the most of models that have already proved successful in the analysis of verbal metaphor, researchers of visual metaphor must thus be careful not to assume that every visual form has an exact verbal equivalent and vice versa.

CONCLUSION

In contrast to some of the recent attempts at defining visual metaphor in formal terms, this study of Austrian newspaper cartoons suggests that it is more appropriate to identify a visual metaphor by referring to the thoughts or concepts that appear to underlie it. A cognitive definition of a visual metaphor has the advantage of enabling the analyst to compare and contrast different ways, both verbal and visual, of expressing a metaphorical thought. Perhaps most importantly, it makes it possible to draw on but also to challenge and develop further some of the main tenets of conceptual metaphor theory, which is currently the dominant approach in this field. My analysis of four political cartoons highlights the difficulty of distinguishing between a literal and a metaphorical depiction. The fuzziness of boundaries arises partly from the fact that metaphor may well be a common element of many ordinary thought processes and partly from the recognition that all visual signs are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on a process of creating analogies. Because of this, the differentiation between a literal image and a visual metaphor is never absolute but it will always depend on the discourse context and on the degree to which particular metaphors have become accepted as the natural, commonsensical way of representing certain meanings. For instance, the concept of immigration as an aggressive assault on the majority population, which is expressed through many of the cartoons under consideration, may well appear to the average reader of the Neue Kronen Zeitung as relatively natural and unremarkable. Rather than trying to find evidence for universal patterns of
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thinking, as many of the original authors of cognitive metaphor theory have done, future studies of metaphor must thus be careful always to take the socio-political context into account. This article also shows that the original authors of cognitive metaphor theory are mistaken in assuming that the surface form or grammar of metaphors is secondary or even insignificant compared to the conceptual level. The examination of Austrian newspaper cartoons on the topic of asylum seekers shows that, in spite of many similarities between verbal and visual metaphor such as the fact that they both tend to express complex, problematic areas of experience in terms of more straightforward ones there are also some important differences. In fact, the very definition of what is a problematic area seems to be partly influenced by the nature of the mode of communication in which a meaning is to be expressed. For example, in several of the cartoons actions and temporal succession are presented through other visual means, such as size and composition. These findings lend credence to Kress (2000) assumption that the spatial display of visual images is more suited to the task of representing the relations between elements than the verbal mode, which is better at expressing action and chronology. Another important difference between the verbal and the visual mode is that the latter is restricted when it is used to portray plurals, so that groups of people are often reduced to one stereotypical image which purportedly represents the essence of this group. As I showed with reference to Figures 1 and 3, a visual depiction may implicitly invoke various symbols of cultural difference and it may also convey subtle nuances of meaning with regard to the degree of closeness and sympathy the viewer is invited to feel for the depicted people. The visual representation of the other is thus sometimes able to convey attitudes and to provoke fears and anxieties in the viewer in a highly implicit fashion. Personification is extremely common in political cartoons, as it enables the cartoonist to represent complex issues and relationships in a much more simple and easily understandable form. Such personification would, in many cases, be impossible to express in words. One of the most interesting findings of this study concerns the complexity of the relationship between a visual metaphor and its verbal context. In contrast to the verbal mode, in which even the most abstract concept can, in theory, be given a verbal label, the depiction of an abstract entity in the visual mode is utterly impossible without the mediation of metaphors. Consequently, in many visual metaphors the token or the vehicle, or, in some cases, both, are not expressed directly in the image but are instead implied by the context. This context-dependency means that many visual metaphors are implicit rather than explicit and that they are often open to a wide range of possible interpretations, which depend on the attitudes and the level of knowledge of the reader. In such cases, the verbal context of the cartoon assumes a particularly
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important role in interpretation, as it can suggest what the visually absent concept might be. Whereas the labelling of particular visual elements in political cartoons is sometimes a clear case of a linguistic message anchoring visual meaning, in other instances the role played by the caption is more complex. In the cartoon in Figure 4, for instance, the conventional, verbal metaphor in the caption, Schlsselfrage [key question], is reactivated by being reinterpreted through the visual mode. These findings raise some important questions regarding the relationship between the verbal and the visual mode and the boundaries of a text. In this article, I compromised by regarding only the language located in immediate proximity to an image as constituting its verbal context. It would, however, be important to study the meaning of cartoons in relation to a whole page or even a complete issue of a newspaper. With regard to other genres, such as film and television, the spatial dimension of verbovisual relations would also have to be extended to include a temporal dimension. While cognitive metaphor theory seems to offer a promising approach to the study of visual metaphor, my study of newspaper cartoons indicates that researchers working within this paradigm must be more sensitive to the socio-political context of metaphor use and that they must give more attention to the form in which metaphors are expressed be it verbal, visual, or a combination of both.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board for supporting the research this article is based on through a postgraduate award. I am also grateful to F. Behrendt and M. Pammesberger for the permission to use their newspaper cartoons.
NOTES

1.

2.

3.

The Neue Kronen Zeitung is the most-read daily newspaper in the world seen in relation to the population: according to distribution figures drawn from Media Analyse (http://www.media-analyse.at), it was read by 43.1 per cent of the Austrian newspaper readership in 1998. It is notorious for its extreme anti-foreigner stance and for leading intensive campaigns for or against particular issues, which can last for days or even weeks on end (Plasser, 1998). Drawn up in 1990, the Schengen Treaty was first implemented in March 1995 by seven EU members. It introduced common visa and asylum policies and abolished border controls between member countries. Most contemporary analysts of metaphor differentiate between the way metaphors are expressed through language or another mode and the underlying metaphorical thought, although the exact understanding and labelling of the two levels differ. Black (1979: 24f), for

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4.

5.

6.

7.

instance, speaks of metaphor-themes as the abstract semantic contents of metaphors and of metaphorical statements to refer to the expression of these contents through specific acts of communication. Bke (1997) distinguishes between a Vorkommnis [incident] or Token [token] of a metaphor and its underlying Metapherntyp [metaphor type]. In Lakoff s (1993) terminology, metaphor means a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system and metaphorical expression designates the surface realization of such a cross-domain mapping (p. 203). Drawing on the sign theory of Charles Sanders Peirce (1965), traditional semiotics distinguishes between symbols, indexes and icons: a symbol is based on an arbitrary connection between a signifier and a signified and its meaning is thus completely dependent on convention. In Figure 1, the circle of stars representing the EU would be a typical example of a symbol in Peirces terms. Index refers to a sign that relies on a causal relation between the signified and the signifier: for instance, smoke is an index of fire. An icon, finally, is founded on close physical resemblance and is thus independent of social and cultural convention: the photograph is a perfect example of an iconic sign. The Kurier used to be a tabloid and the main competitor of the Neue Kronen Zeitung, but it has moved upmarket and now represents a broad range of opinions; it is read by 12% of the Austrian newspaper readers. In the expression: Das Boot ist voll [The boat is full], for example, which is particularly common in the argumentation against immigration in Germany (Sendtner, 1999), the topic of the metaphor, Germany, is not mentioned explicitly at all. Forceville (1996) admits that it is no longer sufficient to regard the verbal message of an advertisement as always anchoring the visual: Nowadays, the reverse situation obtains as well: the text of an advertisement is often deliberately ambiguous or enigmatic [...] and requires information supplied by the picture to solve the riddle. Here one could say that the pictorial information to some extent anchors the linguistic information as well as vice versa (p. 73).

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

ELISABETH EL REFAIE is originally from Vienna, where she studied Mass Media at Vienna University and trained and worked in journalism. In 2001 she completed a PhD at Bradford University, examining metaphor and visual rhetoric in Austrian newspaper articles about refugees. She is currently working as a lecturer in German at the Business School, Plymouth University. Her main research interests are in media representations of race/ethnicity, national identity, metaphor theory, visual semiotics and 20th century Austrian history. She has published articles in the Journal of Sociolinguistics and German History. Address: Department of International Business, Plymouth Business School, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK. [email: l.elrefaie@plym.ac.uk ]

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