Strategies of Verbal Irony in Visual Satire: Reading the New Yorker 's “politics of Fear” Cover

Abstract

This paper analyzes The New Yorker's July 2008 cover, “The Politics of Fear”, as well as reader responses to it, using a model for satirical discourse proposed by Simpson (2003). This cartoon, representing Barack Obama as a Muslim and Michelle Obama as a Black militant, was at least ostensibly intended to satirize various beliefs and rumors circulating about the Obamas during the 2008 presidential election. The analysis shows how strategies of verbal irony related to Simpson's model are manifest in this visual satire. Additionally, it investigates the satirical uptake of the image, analyzing how participants in an online discussion account for their interpretations of whether the image succeeded or failed as satire. Most participants did not perceive the image to be successful and their responses are explained in terms of Simpson's model of satirical discourse processing in conjunction with rhetorical accounts of irony. In sum, this analysis show that pragmatic theories of verbal irony and Simpson's discourse model of satire can be applied fruitfully to purely visual, as well as verbal and visual-verbal, ironi satire. © 2013, [2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston. All rights reserved.

Publication Title

Humor

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS