Representation of Regional Political power through Cartoons: A Semiotic Study

Abstract

Media is an essential tool to describe the current issues from the individual level to international relations. Through presenting images and cartoons, media highlights the occurred situation of the world with specific illustrations. The present research study describes the semiotic analysis of the Pak-India relationship as presented by political cartoons in Pakistani-published Urdu newspapers. As there is an ideological representation of cartoons to present the desired sense through media, so the linguistics and semiotic analysis can counter the meanings and illustrations of such desired ideologies by which meanings are presented. Construction and deconstruction of desired ideologies can be best observed by such loaded semiotics. The discourse approach model of Zubair and Sajid(2011) has been used of semiotic analysis, and for linguistic analysis, the framework of Fairclough's model (2003) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is adopted to manipulate the hidden ideologies as presented in political cartoons. The linguistic and semiotic analysis of such political cartoons, as presented in media, can be used as the best tool to shape public opinion towards desired realities.