The image of Africa through caricatures in Jeune Afrique (2000-2010) : A semio-rhetorical approach

Abstract

A caricature is a drawing which belongs to the journalistic genre of comments functioning as a visual editorial. However, as a semiotic object, it has never received the analytical attention it deserves. The thesis that we are defending supports the idea that caricatures use a particular visual language distinct from other images to relay their message. To illustrate our thesis, we used caricatures published between 2000 and 2010 in the news magazine Jeune Afrique. We started from the hypothesis that these caricatures "say" something about sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in a certain way. According to the questions and objectives of our research, we sought to know the structure of the language of the caricature, the discourse strategies the caricatures employed to convey their message, the thematic issues they addressed and the image of SSA they portrayed. As a semiotic object, the caricature has a tabular syntactic structure composed of five components, namely the iconic figure, the plastic figure, the temporal component, paratexts and speech. The informant (cartoonist) chooses to deposit messages in one or more of these syntactic units while using appropriate and effective discourse strategies to manipulate the cognitive observer to see, know and believe in what he observes. To find the structure of the language of caricatures, we were inspired by several theoretical proposals of Group μ (1992), Töpffer (quoted by Gombrich, 1996), Genette (1987), among others. Several themes emerged, but those on electoral practices, humanitarian aid, civil war, financial corruption and moral portrait of African leaders were used as a sample. So what is the image that the caricatures in J.A. give about SSA - its territory, its people, their situation, and their leaders? Various proposals came forth from the analysis in chapters four to nine. First, it emerged that the caricatures in J.A. tell small tales that are distinct from media stories though they get inspired by the