Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics & Cognition
Vol. 27:2 (2020) ► pp.474–499

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

Metaphor and metonymy in Chinese and American political cartoons (2018–2019) about the Sino-US trade conflict

 | Northeast Normal University
 | University of Amsterdam
Published online: 6 October 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.20013.zha
Abstract
Political cartoons make meaning by drawing on scenarios that must be immediately recognizable by their intended audience. Crucial meaning-making mechanisms in these scenarios are verbo-visual ensembles of metaphors and metonymies. In this paper we investigate 69 Chinese and 60 American political cartoons published in 2018 and 2019 that pertain to the two nations’ trade conflict. By examining the cross-cultural similarities and differences between metaphors and metonymies, we chart how Chinese and American cartoonists portray this trade conflict. We end by showing how a complete interpretation of the cartoons requires enrichment with insights provided by yet other analytical instruments.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metaphor and metonymy: A very brief characterization
  • 3.The Sino-US trade conflict
  • 4.Data and method of analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Conceptual metaphorical source domains recurring more than five times
      • 5.1.1trade conflict is war/fight
      • 5.1.2trade conflict is game/sports/play
      • 5.1.3trade conflict is an interrupted journey
      • 5.1.4trade conflict is a natural disaster
      • 5.1.5world is a person
    • 5.2Other conceptual, and creative, metaphors
    • 5.3Recurring metonymies for the US and China
      • 5.3.1flag for country
      • 5.3.2uncle sam for us; trump for us; american citizen for us
      • 5.3.3xi for china; chinese citizen for china; panda/dragon for china
      • 5.3.4spiked cudgel for aggressive trade conflict measures
  • 6.Discussion of metaphors and metonymies in the cartoons
  • 7.Methodological issues and meaning-generating mechanisms beyond metaphor and metonymy
    • 7.1Multimodality: Interaction between visuals and language
    • 7.2Intertextuality
    • 7.3Idioms and expressions
    • 7.4Themes and topoi
    • 7.5Pictorial runes and other stylistic resources from comics
    • 7.6An example of a cartoon combining different meaning-making resources
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (69)
References
Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed. 2019. Pictorial framing in moral politics: A corpus-based experimental study. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Al-Masri, Hanada. 2016. Jordanian editorial cartoons: A multimodal approach to the cartoons of Emad Hajjaj. Language and Communication 501. 45–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barcelona, Antonio (ed.). 2000. Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: A cognitive perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1986 [1964]. Rhetoric of the image. In Roland Barthes, The responsibility of forms, 21–40. Translated by Richard Howard. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bergen, Benjamin. 2003. To awaken a sleeping giant: Cognition and culture in September 11 political cartoons. In Michel Achard & Suzanne Kemmer (eds.), Language, culture, and mind, 23–35. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Black, Max. 1979. More about metaphor. In Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and thought, 19–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolognesi, Marianna & Paola Vernillo. 2019. How abstract concepts emerge from metaphorical images: The metonymic way. Language and Communication 691. 26–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bounegru, Liliana & Charles Forceville. 2011. Metaphors in editorial cartoons representing the global financial crisis. Visual Communication 10(2). 209–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brzezinski, Mika. 2018 (13 June). Morning Joe. [URL], accessed 14-12-2019.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2019. Metaphors of Brexit: No cherries on the cake. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cienki, Alan & Cornelia Müller. 2008. Metaphor and gesture. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dancygier, Barbara & Eve Sweetser (eds.). 2012. Viewpoint in language: A multimodal perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dirven, René & Ralf Pörings (eds.). 2002. Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Đurović, Tatjana & Nadežda Silaški. 2016. Multimodality and the construal of reality in political cartoons: The case of Serbia-EU relationship. Facta Universitatis, Series: Linguistics and Literature 14(2). 117–128.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2003. Understanding visual metaphors: The example of newspaper cartoons. Visual Communication 2(1). 75–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Multiliteracies: How readers interpret political cartoons. Visual Communication 8(2). 181–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. 2002. The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forceville, Charles. 1996. Pictorial metaphor in advertising. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Review of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. Metaphor and Symbol 191. 83–89.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. The source-path-goal schema in the autobiographical journey documentary: McElwee, Van der Keuken, Cole. New Review of Film and Television Studies 4(3). 241–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Metonymy in visual and audiovisual discourse. In Eija Ventola & Arsenio Jésus Moya Guijarro (eds.), The world told and the world shown: Issues in multisemiotics, 56–74. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Pictorial runes in Tintin and the Picaros. Journal of Pragmatics 431. 875–890. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013b. Creative visual duality in comics balloons. In Tony Veale, Kurt Feyaerts & Charles Forceville (eds.), Creativity and the agile mind: A multi-disciplinary exploration of a multi-faceted phenomenon, 253–273. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Visual and multimodal metaphor in advertising: Cultural perspectives. Styles of Communication 9(2). 26–41.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Visual and multimodal communication: Applying the relevance principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forceville, Charles & Eduardo Urios-Aparisi (eds.). 2009. Multimodal metaphor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forceville, Charles, Elisabeth El Refaie & Gert Meesters. 2014. Stylistics and comics. In Michael Burke (ed.), The Routledge handbook of stylistics, 485–499. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forceville, Charles & Nataša van de Laar. 2019. Metaphors portraying right-wing politician Geert Wilders in Dutch political cartoons. In Encarnación Hidalgo-Tenorio, Miguel Ángel Benítez-Castro & Francesca De Cesare (eds.), Populist discourse: Critical approaches to contemporary politics, 292–307. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. (ed.). 2008. The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2015. The allegorical character of political metaphors in discourse. Metaphor and the Social World 5(2). 264–282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2016 (ed.). Mixing metaphor. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2017. Metaphor wars: Conceptual metaphors in human life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guan, Yue & Charles Forceville. 2020. Making cross-cultural meaning in five Chinese promotional clips: Metonymies and metaphors. Intercultural Pragmatics 17(2). 123–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hartmann-Mahmud, Lori. 2002. War as metaphor. Peace Review 14(4). 427–432. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jansen, Sue Curry & Don Sabo. 1994. The sport/war metaphor: Hegemonic masculinity, the Persian Gulf War, and the new world order. Sociology of Sport Journal 11(1). 1–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kashyap, Usha & Neha Bothra. 2019. Sino-US trade and trade war. Management and Economics Research Journal 51. 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2010. Metaphor: A practical introduction. 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán & Günther Radden. 1998. Metonymy: Developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive Linguistics 9(1). 37–77. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kwon, Iksoo. 2019. Conceptual mappings in political cartoons: A comparative study of the case of nuclear crises in US-North Korean relations. Journal of Pragmatics 1431. 10–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1991. Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. Peace Research 23(2/3). 25-32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Chunding, Chuantian He & Chuangwei Lin. 2018. Economic impacts of the possible China-US trade war. Emerging Markets Finance & Trade 541. 1557–1577. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Minghao, Edward J. Balistreri & Wendong Zhang. 2019. The U.S.-China trade war: Tariff data and general equilibrium analysis. Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University. [URL], accessed 9-12-20.
Lin, Tiffany Ying-Yu & Wen-Yu Chiang. 2015. Multimodal fusion in analyzing political cartoons: Debates on U.S. beef imports into Taiwan. Metaphor and Symbol 30(2). 137–161. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Littlemore, Jeannette. 2015. Metonymy: Hidden shortcuts in language, thought and communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marín-Arrese, Juana I. 2019. Political cartoon discourse: Creativity, critique and persuasion. Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación 221. 117–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Master Metaphor List. 1991. 1st edn compiled by George Lakoff, Jane Espenson & Adele Goldberg; 2nd edn compiled by George Lakoff, Jane Espenson & Alan Schwartz. [URL] (last accessed 9-12-20).
Mittelberg, Irene & Linda R. Waugh. 2009. Metonymy first, metaphor second: A cognitive-semiotic approach to multimodal figures of thought in co-speech gesture. In Charles Forceville & Eduardo Urios-Aparisi (eds.), Multimodal metaphor, 329–356. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2016. Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Negro Alousque, Isabel. 2013. Visual metaphor and metonymy in French political cartoons. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 261. 365–384.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peirsman, Yves & Geeraerts, Dirk. 2006. Metonymy as a prototypical category. Cognitive Linguistics 17(3). 269–316. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prendergast, Muireann. 2019. Political cartoons as carnivalesque: A multimodal discourse analysis of Argentina’s Humor Registrado magazine. Social Semiotics 29(1). 45–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radden, Günter & Zoltán Kövecses. 1999. Towards a theory of metonymy. In Klaus-Uwe Panther & Günter Radden (eds.), Metonymy in language and thought, 17–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rojo López, Ana María & María Ángeles Orts Llopis. 2010. Metaphorical pattern analysis in financial texts: Framing the crisis in positive or negative metaphorical terms. Journal of Pragmatics 421. 3300–3313. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco. 1997. Metaphor, metonymy and conceptual interaction. Atlantis 19(1). 281–295.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. The role of mappings and domains in understanding metonymy. In Antonio Barcelona (ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads, 109–132. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silaški, Nadežda & Tatjana Đurović. 2019. The journey metaphor in Brexit-related political cartoons. Discourse, Context & Media 311. 1–10. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 2017. Metaphor and metonymy in advertising: Building viewpoint in multimodal multi-space blends. Journal of Pragmatics 1221. 65–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wales, Katie. 2001. A dictionary of stylistics, revised edn. London: Pearson Education.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wawra, Daniela. 2018. Multimodal literacy: Meaning negotiations in political cartoons on the refugee crisis. System 771. 10–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wikipedia. 2020. George Armstrong Custer. [URL], accessed 9-12-2020.
Zhao, Xiufeng & Dezheng Feng. 2017. Multimodal metaphtonymy and the construction of China image: A case of China-related political cartoon discourses in the Economist. Journal of Xi’an International Studies University 25(2). 31–36.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (24)

Cited by 24 other publications

Alsaedi, Hayder Tuma Jassim
2025. Social Media Cartooning: Visual and Multimodal Metaphors in Iraqi Newspapers Cartoons. Kufa Journal of Arts 1:64 ► pp. 306 ff. DOI logo
Boakye-Yiadom, George
2025. We move: a journey metaphor in selected Ghanaian political cartoons. Language and Semiotic Studies 11:3 ► pp. 317 ff. DOI logo
Echitchi, Raymond
2025. Multimodal metaphors, political activism and Anglophone nationalism in Cameroon. Metaphor and the Social World 15:1 ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo
Forceville, Charles
2025. Metaphors in Stand Up 2 Cancer animations. Metaphor and the Social World DOI logo
Forceville, Charles
2025.  The JOURNEY metaphor in Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s graphic novel → ( Sens ) . Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics DOI logo
Forceville, Charles
2025. Comics and Graphic Novels: Stylistic Aspects. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo
García Romero, Margarita
2025. Manuela Romano (2024). Metaphor in Socio-Political contexts. Berlin and Boston: De Grouter Mouton. 340 pp. ISBN 9783111001258. Complutense Journal of English Studies 33 ► pp. e101966 ff. DOI logo
Gebraad, Nina & Charles Forceville
2025. Facing cancer: metaphors in medical animation films. Visual Communication 24:4 ► pp. 866 ff. DOI logo
Hu, Ying & Hongfei Li
2025. Reframing China in U.S. Trade policy discourse: a context-deictic space model for ideological positioning. Frontiers in Communication 10 DOI logo
Li, Jin
2025. A Diachronic Transitivity Analysis on China Daily’s Coverage of the 2018 and 2025 China-US Trade Disputes. Social Sciences and Humanities 1:2 ► pp. 38 ff. DOI logo
Xi, Rui
2025. A boon or a bane: multimodal figurative framing in Chinese and foreign BRI-themed cartoons. Social Semiotics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Yaru & Jiayu Wang
2025. “Brides as unaffordable commodities”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics DOI logo
Zhou, Han
2025. Metaphernanalyse in der multimodalen Kommunikation. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 2025:83 ► pp. 387 ff. DOI logo
Jia, Zhangjingwen
2024. The journey metaphor in Huawei mobile phone commercials. Metaphor and the Social World 14:2 ► pp. 233 ff. DOI logo
Tan, Xiaojuan & Alan Cienki
2024. A dynamic metaphor perspective on Trump and Xi's trade negotiation in governmental discourse. Language & Communication 96 ► pp. 42 ff. DOI logo
Wei, Ping
2024. Metaphorical Interpretation of Early Works of Art Using Symbolization Methods. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences 9:1 DOI logo
Ye, Lan & Lei Zeng
2024. Grammatical demetaphorization in the title translation of Chinese political cartoons: a multimodal discourse analysis. The Translator 30:4 ► pp. 471 ff. DOI logo
Yuan, Xiaoben
2023. Metaphors and metonymies in the multimodal discourse of whaling. Metaphor and the Social World 13:2 ► pp. 293 ff. DOI logo
Yuan, Xiaoben
2025. ‘Tiny canvases, big tales’: deciphering the concept of tax through Japanese children’s postcard drawings. Visual Communication DOI logo
Yuan, Xiaoben
2025. Various ways of supporting society. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 12:2 ► pp. 322 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Xiufeng & Yuxin Wu
2023. Oil as narcotic or as medicine: the DISEASE metaphor in political cartoons on energy crisis. Language and Semiotic Studies 9:1 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Xiufeng & Yuxin Wu
2025. Multimodal Metaphorical Constructions of Climate Change in Chinese and American Political Cartoons. Critical Arts ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Mo, Yongyi, Rong Zhou & Xi Chen
2022. The effect of incongruous contextual cues on pictorial metaphor processing. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Zhang, Cun
2021. The Sino–US trade war in political cartoons: A synthesis of semiotic, cognitive, and cultural perspectives. Intercultural Pragmatics 18:4 ► pp. 469 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 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