Mental model theory as a model for analysing visual and multimodal discourse

Abstract

Mental model theory is taken by scholars like Teun van Dijk as the fundamental idea of epistemic representations about the situations, events, and actions of the natural and social world. Modified by dynamic as well as situationally variable cognitive context (communication) models, the structures of such models, and therefore of the world knowledge, are claimed to multiply affect the production and interpretation of text and talk— e.g., in storytelling, argumentation, expository discourse, the level and specificity of characterisation, (non-)metaphoric blends, etc. Hence, the theory of context models also forms the basis of pragmatics. In this article, it is argued that visual and multimodal discourse will benefit from adopting van Dijk's mental model theory as the basic model for analysis. This will demand adaptation of the model, which has hitherto been primarily employed to examine verbal mass-communication or interaction, to multimodal mass-communication. The article offers tentative suggestions on how this can be done, using a corpus of political cartoons and Internet memes.