Abstract
Political cartoon is a humorous way of communication that can convey a harsh meaning in a witty manner but its drawing is not as simple as it seems. Rather it is a multifaceted assembly of signs, codes and symbols to create a meaning. This paper aims at identifying the groups of signs and symbolic techniques to construct the image of the United States in the political cartoons of Pakistan. Therefore, political cartooning from three English mainstream newspapers of Pakistan the Nation, The News and the Dawn is selected from 1991 to 2013. Though the scope of this paper is neither to discuss the Pakistan-US relations nor the foreign policies of Pakistan. Rather, this paper intends to highlight various techniques adopted by the selected Pakistani political cartoonists with the reference to the United States under the light of Barthes’ model of Semiotics. It concludes that political cartooning in Pakistan involves the complex process of gathering various signs and symbols in a single drawing to create a desirable message. With special reference to the U.S., Pakistani political cartoonists mostly emphasized on the physical body structures to depict power, control and monopoly. Zoomorphism and assigning different controversial roles in the political cartoons are other commonly used techniques in political cartooning of Pakistan.
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