POLITICAL CARTOONS ANALYSIS FROM TWO NIGERIAN NEWSPAPER

THE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL CARTOONS FROM TWO NIGERIAN DAILIES SUCH AS THE PUNCH AND BUSINESS DAY NEWSPAPERS FROM 2016 TO 2018

This study aims to analyze selected political cartoons from Nigerian Newspapers through a pragmatic and social semiotic approach to showcase political cartoons as subtle weapons for exposing the hidden agenda of political power controllers and reflecting the political scene of a given period.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background of the study

Communication in the modern world has assumed a new dimension as the over-reliance on verbal expression is being jettisoned for more pragmatic and semiotic systems. This paradigmatic shift from the study of language alone to the integration of multimodal discourse enables discourse analysts to account for meaning arising from multiple semiotic resources deployed in various media.

The wide access to the digital space which has greatly impacted how human beings communicate has caused a major change in globalization. The resultant effect is the undermining of the supremacy of verbal language and projection of diverse aspects of visual images into meaning-making resources.  According to Machin and Mayr (2012), the entrenchment of visual images as a subject of scholarly inquiry arose from the realization that meaning is not only communicated through language but also other semiotic resources. These resources such as graphical materials like motion or motionless pictures/images are imbued with information, ideologies, and properties which enable effective conveyance of implicit and explicit meaning to the target audience.

Van Leeuwen (2004: p.285) describes semiotic resources as the actions, materials, and artifacts that are used for communicative purposes: whether produced physiologically with our vocal apparatus, the muscles we use in making facial expressions and gestures, or technologically with pen and ink or computer hardware and software – together with how these resources can be organized.

According to Ogum (2017: p.245) “semiotics goes beyond the conventions of language, it involves every clue in the signification process” The modes of color, shape, image, depth, illumination, picture, size, etc play important roles in the signification process. Identifying these multimodal clues in texts and their functions go a long way in facilitating meaning-making.

Van Leeuwen (2005, p.3) describes semiotics as “a science that studies the life of signs within the society” while Huhtamo (2003, p.3) sees it as “a field of research that studies signs as an essential part of cultural life and communication. This implies that semiotic resources which are signifiers, objects, artworks depend on concrete social contexts and culture for their meaning potential to be fully understood. Furthermore, the study of semiotics processes of people could lead to an understanding of their culture as social semiotics is people-oriented and context-based. According to Kamalu (2015, p. 36), “context includes the physical, personal, the social-cultural, linguistic, authorial, and editorial context of production and reception”. He further explains that context involves “the physical, social, and linguistics context where an utterance is made, the persons involved in the conversation, the psychological being of the participants, the historical/cultural background knowledge of the conversational world, etc”. All these factors of context according to Kamalu influence the linguistics choices generally made by cartoonists in determining how readers decode implied meaning in any text.

The role of Pragmatics in issues of context can never be overemphasized as it is a branch of linguistics and semiotics that studies how context contributes to the meaning of any text. The word “Pragmatic” which is derived from the Greek word ‘pragma’ means deed or action. Akmajian et al (2001, p.13) defines pragmatics as “the subfield of linguistics that studies the use of words in the actual context of discourse” while Yule (1996, p.127) views it as “ the study of intended speaker meaning” the above definitions imply that not only does pragmatics focus on how words are used in particular contexts taking cognizance of the writer’s intentions, desires, purposes, beliefs, it tries to help the reader understand what the writer has not written which he/she is trying to convey. The invincible or implied meanings most times enshrouded in cartoons are decoded through the pragmatic analysis of not just utterances but visual images used in the cartoons. Pragmatics, in essence, studies how the context of literary works of art contributes to meaning. This fact is emphasized by Kamalu (2015, p.36), who notes that the focus of pragmatics is on context and the effects of the interactional strategies used as well as the interplay between language and other semiotic modes in meaning communication.

Through pragmatics, the political analyst can identify when cartoons are performing illocutionary acts such as deceiving, persuading, cajoling, threatening, wooing, and blackmailing. How the cartoonist flouts or violates the Grecian maxims of quantity, quality, manner, or relevance.

Recently, cartoons have become very prominent in Nigeria to the extent that most Nigerian newspapers devote space to cartoons. Onakpa (2014) remarks that‘cartoons have over the years become very prominent features of newspapers and magazines to the extent that some of them are sought by readers for the cartoons’. According to Gbinije (2010), a cartoon is a drawing, sketch, or comic strip in a book, newspaper, or magazine which incarnates humor, satire, parody, lampoon, mockery, critical political, socio-economic commentaries calculated to inform, educate and entertain. It is an artistic manipulation of voluminous information into a concise version, concisely illustrating vividly the attitude of people and emotions of the cartoon piece. A good cartoon should catch and sustain readers’ attention as well as task their sense of imagination.

The advantages of cartoons include

1. The illustration of messages which enable illiterates and nonnative speakers to grasp the intended message. For example, the government uses it to ensure health and safety messages are heeded.
2. Messages are conveyed in seconds and without the need for lengthy explanation.
3. Cartoons are used in emphasizing messages. That is why they are used in school textbooks.
4. Cartoons can be used as powerful tools in advertising across many industries. A good cartoon designed by a skillful cartoonist will instantly communicate to one’s customers what area of business one is which will be more effective than a slab of text. The recognition is instant and the intended audience will ‘grasp the concept’. The humor embedded in cartoons can be used to diffuse tensions. In Nigeria and all over the world, children grow up with cartoons and become used to the way they function from an early age. What this means is that the cartoonist or a manager using a cartoon to deliver a message has a pre audience as Children and adults associate cartoons with humor, happiness, and fun. Teachers can also use cartoons to keep their audience in a potentially dull or tense meeting. Cartoons can function as icebreakers that unite the audience with humor and the pleasure of shared communication.

Using cartoons as motivational tools or in presentations also encourages the audience.  A speaker who makes good use of cartoons in creating ‘light moments’ achieves an instant sense of relief and gratitude in any meeting. The momentary shift of the ‘feel-good factor’ of cartoons used in presentations helps to endear the speaker to the audience. (Ages & Bolieve, 1993; Kulikova & Detinko, 2014; Onanuga & Ademilokun, 2014; Tehseem & Bokhari, 2015)

All over the world, politicians employ visual resources in the form of cartoons for their popularization, either to project their ideologies or to ridicule their opponents; Cartoon being a satirical medium of communication in modern times. For example, during the fight for national independence before the 1960s, political cartoons were a major means of communication in the struggle for the freedom of Nigeria from colonial rule. Agba (2014) notes that during the military era, cartoons played major roles in the quest for the democratization process in Nigeria.

Cartoons were used in the creation of social awareness and mobilization of the polity for national political emancipation. This politics of visualization is rooted in the concept of the ability of visual images to provoke deeper feelings in people than spoken or written language. Therefore there is the general belief that visual resources can stir people to more required actions than verbal language. Political cartoons have played and will continue to play significant roles in Nigeria’s social, economic, and political lives

Over the years, cartoons have shaped public opinions on societal issues either positively or negatively not only in Nigeria but globally. A case study is an incident that transpired in Nigeria in 2005 where over 300 people were killed in the Northern part of Nigeria as a result of a Danish Editorial Cartoon publication in a Danish newspaper (Jyllands-Posten) which satirized Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic religious leader. This buttresses the fact that editorial cartoons are consequential.

Today in Nigeria, political cartoons are still a means of effecting a social and political change.

In a research conducted by Ademilokun (2015, online) on the 2015 election in Nigeria, it was observed that the producers of political cartoons artistically constructed visual resources either to project their political aspirants for acceptance by the Nigerian electorate or present the opposition negatively so that the electorate would not be favorably disposed towards them. A substantial quantum of the political office seekers’ utterances was strongly enhanced by multimodal resources. Thus, political cartoons became a viable means of arousing sentiments, winning sympathy, and triggering a sense of submission and followership amongst the citizenry.

The 2015 election in Nigeria involved an unprecedented raw contest of power as opposing parties especially the two dominant parties Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressive Congress (APC) stressed on issues of strengths and weaknesses in governance, personality qualities, and deficits among others which were deployed forcefully and strategically as marks of positive and negative self-representations, determinants in the political process for the execution of vital social and political functions. The appeal to history for the enlightenment of the electorate on the previous deeds of certain political contestants, making the campaigns evidence-based, the foregrounding of credibility matters, and the emphasis on change served as useful rhetorical appeals in the discourse upon which the multimodal resources are anchored and which allow for their effective interpretation by the populace. The image below is an example of the cartoons that were created during that period.

The importance of visual images in emphasizing political agenda and campaigns can never be overemphasized. That notwithstanding, the full potentialities of cartoons are not being well utilized in the Nigerian setting. The growth of social and political cartooning in Nigeria which has been steady is disturbingly slow. Olaniyan (2002) acknowledges the fact that there has been significant growth in the use of cartoons as a tool for communication through the patterning is yet to be solidified. Desousa and Medhurst (1992) described cartoons as a “neglected genre of political communication.  They also emphasized that “The reason behind this problem is the perplexing position of this genre whether to consider it as a work of art or an expression of humor” (cited in Jabbar, 2001, p.48).

Therefore, there is a need to create more awareness of the potentialities of cartoons in adverts, textbooks, health, instructional materials, safety codes, etc. Cartoons should also be used more in the campaigns against women trafficking and prostitution, child trafficking, and labor, bad governance, abusive security force, poverty, lack of basic hygiene, harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation, early marriage, widow inheritance, HIV/AIDS, gender discrimination, corruption, unemployment, injustice, terrorism, violence, pollution, deteriorating education, etc which are among the social ills and problems eating deep into the foundational fabrics of the nation. Thus cartoonists and cartoon analysts should see it as part of their business to find a solution to these social problems through newspaper media.

More importantly, the socio-political environment of the nation is full of conflicts as a result of social, political, religious, and economic biases. There are accusations of marginalization, economic sabotage, religious intimidations, abuse of rights, etc. considering such an unstable situation in the country where words are used with utmost carefulness to avoid intimidation and persecution, there is a need for a better mode of communicating the people’s feelings and situations. Political cartoons become the mode as it makes use of color, shape, images, depth, illumination, size, and other graphical materials imbued with information, ideologies, and properties which enable effective conveyance of implicit and explicit meaning to the target audience.

Most times, messages of cartoons are so subtle that readers cannot easily decipher their meaning thereby leading to debates on the cartoon language and symbols and their possible meanings. This work intends to bridge the gap between semiotics and the art of cartooning as it attempts to project the relationship between cartoons and the semiotic resources utilized. The need to assess and analyze Political cartoons pragmatically arises from the fact that Cartoons depend on contexts and symbols for the determination of their meaning. So, intense analysis of the multimodal semiotic elements inherent in cartoons through pragmatic and social semiotic approaches will ameliorate the problem people face while interpreting such artistic work. These approaches used in analyzing the political cartoons in the selected Nigerian dailies will enable readers to interpret to understand the meanings construct of the cartoons as intended by the cartoonist.

This paper thus seeks to fill a gap by analyzing some political cartoons ahead of the 2019 general elections in Nigeria from a pragmatic and socio-semiotic approach which will prove that political cartoons are indirect means of power resistance and propaganda as well as historical documents and ‘snapshots’ of the political climate of a given period’.

1.2       Statement of the Problem

Political cartoons in Nigerian Newspapers are known for their satirical commentaries on the state of the nation. Hence, Cartoonists in the past have used political cartoons as veritable tools in creating social awareness of problems in the society, discharging information in a captivating manner, motivating and mobilizing the populace towards the making of informed decisions,s, and well-executed actions. This is where editorial cartoons play an important part in shaping social reality. The impact of editorials in effecting cognitive change among individuals by structuring their thinking can never be overemphasized. It mentally shapes and organizes our world for us by using cartoons as effective tools for setting the agenda for public discourse. It becomes necessary that cartoon focuses on one or two out of many news events in the country as the political or social issue focused on usually enjoys more prominence and becomes an “agenda” for public discourse. Editorial cartoons have very strong impacts given opinion steering and anchoring. Editors and the general populace need to understand that the editorial cartoon does more than attention-grabbing of the audience rather it sets the agenda on the matter arising as put forth by the newspaper. There is a need for the general populace whether educated or not to view cartoons not just as mere comic stunts meant for humor but as serious logical, coherent and veritable communicative means of socio-political advancement in the democratic processes and power.

Most times, problems people encounter are that unskilled and skilled cartoonists sometimes enshroud meanings in their cartoons in such a way that semiotic modes and resources used make the interpretation of these cartoons so difficult that people tend to misinterpret or lose interest in trying to understand them, thereby missing out the vital information. This is because most Nigerians lack the patience and knowledge necessary for the interpretation of visual images and exaggerated metaphoric words used in ambiguous cartoon works. So, there is also a need for the populace and cartoonists to be educated on the meaning construct and significance of aspects of multimodality such as gesture and gaze, special character modulations such as color, space, texture as well as simple fundamental components of visual language such as dots, lines, circles, squares, and triangles.

1.3       Aim and Objectives of the Study

This study aims to analyze selected political cartoons from Nigerian Newspapers through a pragmatic and social semiotic approach to showcase political cartoons as subtle weapons for exposing the hidden agenda of political power controllers and reflecting the political scene of a given period. The dissertation intends to achieve the following objectives:

1. To show how satirical messages are encoded and decoded in political cartoons.
2. To show that political cartoons are an indirect means of power resistance and propaganda.
3. To portray political cartoons as a conveyor of political parties’ ideologies and agenda.
4. To show how cartoonists manipulate signs and symbols with the addition of little or no verbal language to convey a specific meaning.

1.4       Research Questions

The following research questions guided the study

1. How are satirical messages encoded and decoded in political cartoons?
2. How are political cartoons utilized as an indirect means of power resistance and propaganda?
3. How do political cartoons portray the political party’s ideologies and agenda?
4. How does a cartoonist manipulate signs and symbols with the addition of little or no verbal language to convey specific meaning?

1.5       Significance of the Study

The dissertation is significant in several ways. It is significant because it identifies and analyzes some selected cartoons to enable readers to understand the implicit meaning embedded in the selected cartoons.

The research emphasizes the importance of political cartoons as tools in effecting political change and amendment of social ills.

The dissertation enumerates things a skillful cartoonist should look out for to create a good cartoon that will instantly communicate to the audience.

The research encourages people afraid of confrontation to indirectly pass across their messages through cartoons thereby raising more cartoonists in the country.

1.6       Scope of the Study

This study is restricted to the analysis of political cartoons from two Nigerian dailies such as the Punch and Business Day Newspapers from 2016 to 2018. Ten cartoons with diverse themes were used for the analysis.