This study is an attempt to describe the expressive means used in American political cartoons covering the most prominent events before and during Donald Trump’s presidency. Political cartoon as a type of political text is widely adopted in political communication with the aim to manipulate people’s minds. The results of the study show the functioning of verbal units at all language levels and nonverbal means (visual metaphors and symbols) that help cartoonists show the Trump’s presidency in a humorous way and shape public opinion about the 45th president of the United States. The graphical means comprising capitalization, font and red colour captivate the reader’s attention by emphasizing the key issues in the cartoons. Phonetic means which are sound effects and sound repetitions stress Trump’s emotional condition, underlying his immediate reactions to any criticism. The lexical means such as comparison and antithesis draw the parallel between Trump and other political actors stating Trump’s role in American politics as a leader. Syntactic techniques (exclamatory, interrogative, and rhetorical sentences) point at Trump’s problem solving skills, and his original ideas. Symbols, hidden in the cartoons, contain extra linguistic information that is necessary for understanding the cartoonist’s message. Visual metaphors transmit the information through easily recognized vivid images and comparisons.

This article attempts to analyze means of communication such as euphemisms and dysphemisms in a political cartoon. Free expression of personal and public opinion, political humor and political cartoon became an important part of the information sphere. This makes the genre of political cartoon more relevant than ever. The cartoon consists of verbal and visual components, which make the choice of communication tools in the text especially difficult. This determined the problem of our study. We have analyzed political cartoons published in the American media. Using the method of content analysis, we selected 174 euphemisms and dysphemisms, which we divided into lexical-semantic categories. As a result, euphemisms are used frequently in political cartoon than dysphemisms, which, is caused by the genre specificity, thus, the ironical effect is achieved by the contrast between the verbal and visual components.

The current study tries to investigate approaches to communication, including dysphemism and euphemisms in political cartoons. Free expression of public opinion and personal, political cartoon humor and got an essential part of the information and data arena. That makes the political cartoons genre more related and remarkable than before. This given cartoon comprises visual and verbal components, making the selection of communication means in the text particularly challenging. That defines the problem of our survey. The paper has investigated political cartoons published in the USA media. Making use of the content analysis method, we chose 174 dysphemisms and euphemisms, split into lexical-semantic classifications. As a consequence, euphemisms are utilized more commonly in political cartoon than dysphemisms, which stemmed from the genre specificity; hence, the ironic impact is attained by the contrast between the visual and verbal components.

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