Visual representations of the idealized cognitive model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie

Abstract

The conceptual metaphor program launched by Lakoff and Johnson [Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980] attempts to chart and describe the Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs) that govern human thinking. The manifestations of these models studied hitherto, however, are almost exclusively verbal ones. In the interest of enriching insights into ICMs, non-verbal and multimedial representations need be investigated as well. In turn, picture theory can benefit from instruments developed in the cognitive linguistics paradigm. Kövecses [Metaphors of Anger, Pride and Love, Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1986; Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 2000] has demonstrated that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited number of conceptual metaphors. This paper investigates non-verbal manifestations of anger in the Asterix comics album La Zizanie in the light of Kövecses’ findings. It is argued that (i) the representations of anger found here are, at the least, compatible with the most dominant anger metaphor found by Kövecses, ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, and are probably motivated by it; and (ii) the medium of comics may privilege aspects of ICMs that are less dominant, or even absent, in its linguistic manifestations. Furthermore, the method of analysis employed is reflected on, since it is intended to be applicable beyond the questions addressed here.