Humor gráfico como herramienta de crítica sociopolítica: aplicación de la TGHV al análisis de las viñetas de prensa

Abstract

The present paper aims to comment on some of the cognitive mechanisms involved in the creation and interpretation of political cartoons and to explore the possibilities of their description using the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo, Raskin, 1991; Attardo, 1997, 2008, 2017). Firstly, the characteristics of press cartoons as a multimodal and humorous discourse genre are exposed. Afterwards, taking into account the assumption that the GTVH provides a flexible theoretical perspective applicable to the study of graphic humor, attention is paid to the main analytical tools of the aforementioned theory. The paper also discusses a recent genre-specific model for the understanding of political cartoons, proposed as a new approach for the study of their humorous messages and critical stances (Agüero Guerra, 2016). Finally — the above mentioned method is illustrated by applying it to the multimodal analysis of the examples of two Spanish press cartoons, which have been extracted from digital newspapers and dedicated to current socio-political issues.