Abstract
The interests of the United States in the geo-strategic position of Pakistan always determine the realist stance behind the fluctuating nature of the U.S.-Pakistan Relations. Based on this interest oriented relationship, the image construction of the United States has always been one of the significant areas of political cartoons in Pakistan because political cartoon is considered as a rebellious medium to raise voice against absurd realities but its importance is always overlooked in Pakistan. Thus, this paper aims to examine political cartoons published in mainstream English newspapers of Pakistan (The News, the Nation and the Dawn) from January 1991 to March 2013 in five political regimes including four democratic and one military rule. This paper intends to comprehend that how political cartoons remained powerful in representing the images of the United States during pre-9/11 and post 9/11 decades with different internal issues, foreign conflicts and political scenarios. The Barthes’s model of semiotic analysis is applied to analyze the political cartoons to examine the the ‘love-hate syndrome’ of Pakistan-US relations before and in the aftermath of 9/11.
Keyword(s)
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