Attacks on the cartoonist’s strategic manoeuvring An argumentative analysis of criticism on political cartoons

Political cartoons may be understood as instances of visual or multimodal argumentative discourse. When a political cartoon is a subject of controversy, the criticism of the cartoon may therefore be aimed at the argumentation. For the purpose of a systematic analysis of visual and multimodal argumentation that gives rise to controversy, I make use of insights of the extended pragma-dialectical argumentation theory by van Eemeren (2010). The analysis provides a starting point to determine what aspect of strategic manoeuvring is criticised and to specify the derailment of strategic manoeuvring the cartoonist is accused of. Accordingly, the analysis facilitates a refined evaluation of the accusation in which general soundness conditions are amended or supplemented by relevant institutional conditions. In this study I will concentrate on controversies on political cartoons that make use of visual metaphors to scrutinize politicians’ behaviour or actions.