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Article published In: International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 11:1 (2024) ► pp.123–152

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Metaphtonymy and semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump in the meme discourse of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019)

ORCiD logo with link | Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport
ORCiD logo with link | Misr International University
Published online: 2 April 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00058.ely
Abstract
The current research endeavor extends scholarship on political satire and digital memes proposing a more nuanced semio-cognitive analytical framework for the innovative political image macro memes pertinent to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019). Premised on Martynyuk and Melescchenko’s (2021) conceptualization of metaphtonymy and Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2007. “Legitimation in Discourse and Communication”. Discourse & Communication 1 (1): 91–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar (de)-legitimation strategies, a corpus of 159 image macro meme instances from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’s (January 2016 to December 2019) has been examined to show how the semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump and his administration is materialized through creative meme-inherent metaphtonymies. Key findings include the dominance of four meme-specific metaphtonymic patterns. In tandem, the overlapping semio-discursive de-legitimation strategies of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoeisis are metaphtonymically encoded in the image macro memes of the show’s monologue to: (a) function as highly medium-specific expressions that respond to challenging events based on thematic and structural templates, and (b) provide a timely (and even reactionary) response to political debates, creating a negative view of Donald Trump to reduce his legitimacy as the US president.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
  • Infotainment, late-night satire and The Daily Show
  • Methodology
    • Identification of metaphtonymic patterns
    • Identification of de-legitimation strategies
  • Analysis
    • Multimodal metaphtonymy with a simple metaphoric source
    • Multimodal metaphtonymy with a metaphoric source structured by simple metonymy
    • Multimodal metaphtonymy with a metaphoric source structured by metonymic Chain
    • Multimodal metaphtonymy with a metaphoric source structured by radial metonymy
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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