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POLITICAL CARTOONS AND SYNECDOCHE: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 1984 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
Abstract
The political cartoon medium has existed for thousands of years. Its ability to simplify and crystallize complex ideas across a variety of situations has played a significant part in how the public responds to political ideas, issues, and images. The purpose of this study is to examine the rhetoric of political cartoons, with particular emphasis on cartoons from the 1984 Presidential campaign. After a brief discussion of the literature available on political cartoons, the study analyzes the specific techniques involved in creating effective cartoons. Consideration is given to the key components isolated by the cartoonists themselves, style and message, to the interaction of the visual and verbal aspects of the medium, and to the resources artists draw from to create their ideas. Moving toward a more specific theoretical understanding of these visual political missives, the rhetorical method then examines the master trope of synecdoche and its use in political cartoons. Four aspects of synecdoche prove useful to this examination: naming, associational clusters, scapegoating, and foreshadowing. Together, these aspects help to explain how this rhetorical trope--highlighting a part-to-whole and a whole-to-part relationship--serves to draw connections between certain images, and how these images may work to create vivid impressions for the viewer. Analysis of the 1984 Presidential campaign, including specific candidates, issues, and the campaign process itself, is incorporated throughout the larger discussion of theoretical and pragmatic foundations of the medium. Names and clusters of images associated with Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, Geraldine Ferraro and others, are detailed, along with more general practices of scapegoating and foreshadowing participants and events of the campaign. Drawing upon these practical and theoretical bases for understanding how political cartoons work, implications for the role of political cartoons in shaping perceptions of the political process are discussed. The powerful images available to cartoonists allow these artists to crystallize, legitimate, debunk and mythologize parts of the political process. Analysis of this shaping process offers interesting insights into both visual symbolism and the political system itself.
Subject Area
Communication
Recommended Citation
MUIR, JANETTE KENNER, "POLITICAL CARTOONS AND SYNECDOCHE: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 1984 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN" (1986). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8701204.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8701204