Cover not available

Article published In: Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 7:2 (2017) ► pp.235–251

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

From metaphor to allegory

The Japanese manga Afuganisu-tan

 | University of Amsterdam
 | University of Amsterdam
Published online: 20 November 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.7.2.04cor
Abstract
Afuganisu-tan is an online manga by Timaking, published in English online in 2005, that presents selected historical events of modern Afghanistan in a series of 29 episodes plus an appendix. An episode consists of a four-panel micro-narrative in which Afghanistan and the countries with which its history is intertwined are consistently personified as young girls. Each manga episode is accompanied by a short, textual ‘memo’ describing historical events in a neutral, factual way. In this paper, we (1) propose that the extended personification of Afghanistan and other countries in this manga can be understood in terms of ‘allegory’; (2) sketch and evaluate how the manga part affects the construal of the country’s history; (3) consider some of the consequences of combining the manga part with memo text for the informative and educational value of Afuganisu-tan.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Afuganisu-tan: Layout and style
  • 3.Personification in Afuganisu-tan
  • 4.From personification to allegory
  • 5. Afuganisu-tan as allegory: implications
    • The age and gender of the protagonists
    • Terrorists as stray cats
    • Politics as a game
    • Lack of specificity of the allegorical form
  • 6.Interactions between manga and memo
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (31)
References
Aalberg, T., Jesper Strömbäck, J., & de Vreese, C. H. (2011). The framing of politics as strategy and game: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism, 13 (2), 162–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Abbott, M., & Forceville, C. (2011). Visual representation of emotion in manga: loss of control is loss of hands in Azumanga Daioh volume 4. Language and Literature, 20 (2), 91–112. .Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bal, M. (2009). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative (3rd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beckson, K., & Ganz, A. (1975). Literary terms: A dictionary. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bounegru, L., & Forceville, C. (2011). Metaphors in editorial cartoons representing the global financial crisis. Visual Communication, 10 (2), 209–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, L., Maslen, R., Todd, Z., Maule, J., Stratton, P., & Stanley, N. (2009). The discourse dynamics approach to metaphor and metaphor-led discourse analysis. Metaphor and Symbol, 24 1, 63–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chatman, S. (1990). Coming to terms: The rhetoric of narrative in fiction and film. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Choo, K. (2008). Girls return home: Portrayal of femininity in popular girls’ manga and anime texts during the 1990s in Hana yori Dango and Fruits Basket . Women: A Cultural Review, 19 (3), 275–296.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cohn, N. (2010). Japanese visual language: The structure of manga. In T. Johnson-Woods (Ed.), Manga: An anthology of global and cultural perspectives (pp. 187–202). London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). The visual language of comics: Introduction to the structure and cognition of sequential images. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crisp, P. (2005). Allegory and symbol – a fundamental opposition? Language and Literature, 14 1, 323–338. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Between extended metaphor and allegory: Is blending enough? Language and Literature, 17 1, 291–308. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). The Pilgrim’s Progress: Allegory or novel? Language and Literature, 21 1, 328–344. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delbaere, M., McQuarrie, E. F., & Philips, B. J. (2011). Personification in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 40 (1), 121–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dörner, A. (2001). Politainment: Politik in der medialen Erlebnisgesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elshtain, J. -B. (1991). Sovereignty, identity, sacrifice. Social Research, 58 1, 545–564.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forceville, C. (2011). Practical cues for helping develop image and multimodal discourse scholarship. In K. Sachs-Hombach & R. Totzke (Eds), Bilder, Sehen, Denken: Zum Verhältnis von begrifflich-philosophischen und empirisch-psychologischen Ansätzen in der bildwissenschaftlichen Forschung (pp. 33–51). Cologne: Von Halem.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Metaphor and symbol: SEARCHING FOR ONE’S IDENTITY IS LOOKING FOR A HOME in animation film. In M. J. Pinár (Ed.), ‘Multimodality and Cognitive Linguistics’ issue, Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 11 (2), 250–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
, (2014). Relevance theory as model for analysing visual and multimodal communication. In D. Machin (Ed.), Visual communication (pp. 51–70). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Visual and multimodal metaphor in film: Charting the field. In K. Fahlenbrach (Ed.), Embodied metaphors in film, television, and video games (pp. 17–32). London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahrt, N. (2011). A comic approach to politics? Political education via comics. Journal of Social Science Education, 7/8 (2/1), 119–131. .Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Musolff, A. (2006). Metaphor scenarios in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 21 1, 23–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nordberg, J. (2014). The Afghan girls raised as boys. The Guardian, 22 September. [URL] (last accessed 6/1/17).
Ortiz, M. J. (2011). Primary metaphors and monomodal visual metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 1, 1568–1580. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Films and embodied metaphors of emotion. In M. Coëgnarts & P. Kravanja (Eds.), Embodied cognition and cinema (pp. 203–220). Leuven: Leuven University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. (1978). The rule of metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language (Trans. R. Czerny, with K. McLaughlin & J. Costello). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance theory: Communication & cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sternberg, M. (1978). Expositional modes and temporal ordering in fiction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Timaking (2003–2005). Afuganisu-tan, scanlation by Hanashi, [URL], last accessed 26/12/16.
White, H. (2014). The history fiction divide. Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, 20 (1–2), 17–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Al Tamimi, Turath Awad & Thulfiqar H. Altahmazi
2025. Tracing relevance beyond codes and across modes. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) DOI logo
Stampoulidis, Georgios & Marianna Bolognesi
2023. Bringing metaphors back to the streets: a corpus-based study for the identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in street art. Visual Communication 22:2 ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo
Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed & Mouna Goubaa
2021. Language and cultural cognition. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 19:1 ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Kashanizadeh, Zahra & Charles Forceville
2020. Visual and multimodal interaction of metaphor and metonymy. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:1 ► pp. 78 ff. DOI logo
Kashanizadeh, Zahra & Charles Forceville
2022. Visual and multimodal interaction of metaphor and metonymy. In Visual Metaphors [Benjamins Current Topics, 124], ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Poppi, Fabio Indìo Massimo & Peter Kravanja
2019. Actiones secundum fidei1. Metaphor and the Social World 9:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue