A multimodal analysis of the representation of Saudi women in selected caricature images from Cartoon Movement: A global platform for editorial cartoons

Abstract

AbstractThis paper exercises a multimodal discourse analysis approach to explore the visual representation(s) of Saudi women in a small cartoon corpus published on a global online platform, Cartoon Movement. More specifically, the present study aims to identify the visual communicative functions, thematic foci and discursive practices adopted by caricature producers when representing SW issues in the post-driving era. Ten caricature drawings published online between 2017 and 2020 have been purposively selected for semiotic analysis. Applying social-semiotic approach to multimodality reveals that understanding the three aspects of meaning—representational, interactive, and compositional—is a prerequisite to grasping the cartoonists’ implicit messages. There are three thematic foci that emerge in representing SW in the selected caricature images: male guardianship, the end of the driving ban, and dress code. These themes are used to depict a typical and negative image of Saudi society and SW. Official Saudi efforts to empower women, such as ending the driving ban and allowing women to vote in elections, are depicted as being superficial and controlled by the male guardianship system. Furthermore, the discursive strategies manipulated in the visual compositions are applied in accordance with the cartoonists’ tacit ideologies to represent SW, including visual metaphor, stereotyping, victimisation, comparison, exaggeration, and normalisation.

Keywords

• multimodal discourse analysis
• Saudi Arabia
• Saudi women
• visual modality
• social-semiotics