TRANH LUẬN bầu cử TỔNG THỐNG mỹ năm 2012 QUA TRANH BIẾM họa CHÍNH TRỊ

ABSTRACT
The 2012 American presidential debates have been one of the events attracting
great attention from people both inside the United States and outside its borders.
Besides the large number of related editorials that report and share critical comments
and judgments of well-known statesmen and scholars, political cartoons are considered
the most popular channel to express public opinions on the debates in a rhetorical way
thanks to striking visuals together with stylistic elements within a single frame. Though
interpreting hidden messages conveyed by cartoons is a challenging work, it can help
readers understand more deeply about the American political culture, especially how
politicians in the U.S. are criticized through images together with just a few words. The
study has been an attempt to find out how political cartoons viewed the 2012 American
presidential through the use of rhetorical devices and the issues reflected.
A qualitative analysis was employed as the method to analyze 25 cartoons about
debates. The analyses examined the political cartoons based on two main points: public
attitudes towards the candidates as well as debates and the criticisms of the proposed
policies by the President and the former Governor, which reflected that the American
people seemed to favor Obama over Romney under the eyes of cartoonists. Moreover,
both dosmestic and foreign policies of the two candidates were giving great cause for
Americans’ concern.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACCEPTANCE PAGE...................................................................................................ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...............................................................................................i
ABSTRACT................................................................................................................... ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS..............................................................................................iii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...................................................................................1
1.1

Rationale and statements of the research problem............................................1

1.2

Aims of the study and research questions.........................................................3

1.3

Significance of study.........................................................................................3

1.4

Scope of the study.............................................................................................4

1.5

Methodology.....................................................................................................4

1.6

Struture of the study..........................................................................................4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW........................................................................6
2.1 Political cartoons and their purposes....................................................................6
2.2

Understanding visual literacy, visual rhetoric and visual metaphor.................10

2.2.1

Visual literacy and Visual rhetoric...............................................................10

2.2.2

Visual metaphor...........................................................................................13

2.3

Understanding of the Medhurst and DeSousa Taxonomy...............................16

2.4

Background knowledge about the 2012 American presidential election.........18

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY................................................................................21
3.1

Data collection method...................................................................................21
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3.2

Data analysis method......................................................................................21

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION............................................................22
4.1

Public attitudes towards the candidates and the debates..................................22

4.1.1

Public attitudes towards the candidates........................................................22

4.1.2

Public attitudes towards the debates............................................................27

4.2

Criticism of the proposed policies by the candidates......................................28

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS...................................................................................33
5.1

Major findings.................................................................................................33

5.2

Limitations of the research..............................................................................34

5.3

Suggestions for further study............................................................................35

LIST OF REFERENCES..............................................................................................36
APPENDICES..............................................................................................................40
APPENDIX 1:..........................................................................................................40
TRANSCRIPTS OF 2012 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES....................40
APPENDIX 2: POLITICAL CARTOONS REFERENCES.....................................41

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
GAO

Government Accountability Office

IVLA

International Visual Literacy Association

UK
U.S. / USA

The United Kingdom
The United States of America

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This initial chapter justified the reasons for this study to be carried out. Research
questions, the significance of the research, scope of study and thesis structure would be
presented.
1.1 Rationale and statements of the research problem
For more than 200 years since the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration
of Independence in 1776, the United States of America has become the most powerful
country in the world among other superpowers such as the UK, France, China, Japan,

Germany (Rogers & Simón, 2011) and been exerting its massive influence all over the
world through not only political, economic and military power but also education and
culture. Therefore, in the reverse direction, this country is at the center of the world’s
attention, especially its politics that includes the American presidential election. This
quadrennial event is considered unique as while choosing the country’s new leader, the
American people concurrently elect someone who will have a significant impact on the
world’s economic, political and social situations. Perhaps, no other country's leadership
change is followed so closely as that of the American. Unlike the previous presidential
election which has been considered as the most remarkable and impressive event in the
history of the U.S. regarding the turning point when the bi-racial African-American,
Barack Obama, became the 44th president of the United States, the 2012 campaign of
the two candidates paid close attention to a large number of issues that the States have
been coping with, consisting of the still relatively high unemployment rate (at 7.9% in
October 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), public debt (over 16,000
billion as of September 30th, 2012 reported by the U.S. GAO), federal deficit, foreign
policy regarding Arab Spring uprisings and the Iranian nuclear threat, the rise of China,
and so on. Furthermore, according to a short summary with graphs, charts and numbers
posted on The Washington Post on December 7th last year, it has become the costliest
election on record in American history as more than 2 billion US dollars was spent on
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the presidential election campaign. Moreover, whilst several people have yet made up
their minds as to whom they will vote for, the presidential and vice presidential debates
might help them decide whether Barack Obama and Joe Biden of the Democratic Party
or Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan of the Republican Party would be selected. In fact, it is
the only time American people, especially undecided voters, have a chance to evaluate
two Democratic nominees and two Republicans side by side to match them up against
each other. Therefore, what happened in debates, especially the performance of each
candidate, has been kept under observation of both the U.S. itself and other countries in

the world since they want to know whether the Americans are favorable or unfavorable
towards whom as well as what and how much will be accomplished in the next four
years. This inspired the researcher to carry out a study about this interesting topic.
One among the most suitable ways to have a good answer to this interrogation is
through media eyes since the presidential debates themselves traditionally attract heavy
press coverage, especially political cartoons. Political cartoons, which are often found
on the editorial page of almost every American printed newspapers or magazines, have
always been an integral part of American political life since the very first published
cartoon named Join or Die, a strong message to the American colonies to unite, was
drawn by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 (Burns, 2006, cited in Matthews, 2011). Thanks
to the rocket development of the information technology and especially the advent of
the Internet, besides printed editions, this type of cartoons can easily be found on many
blogs, websites, or online newspapers and magazines. Flourishing and penetrative as it
is, political cartoons become an organic part of daily life through people’s enormous
everyday exposure to them. Without doubt, as a means of political communication and
socialization, these political cartoons have been exercising an overwhelming impact on
various aspects of American society. They not only do “visually symbolize, satirize or
caricature some topic, action or person” (Feldman, 2005, p.152) but also are preferably
exploited to point out defections within the political system or force a vote of censure

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on any politics-related events. As a result, it might be highly anticipated to provide the
readers with sound general American view about the given issues.
All above mentioned, the researcher made a decision to carry out a study named
“2012 American Presidential Debates through American Political Cartoons”.
1.2 Aims of the study and research questions
Broadly speaking, the study is aimed at political cartoons about 2012 American
presidential debates as they are considered “a key source of political learning for voters

and present candidates largely in terms of their personal images and stances on key
issues” (Holbrook, 1999; Benoit, McKinney & Holbert, 2001; Benoit & Brazeal, 2002;
Benoit, Hansen & Stein, 2004, cited in Speedling, 2004, p.8). To be clearer, this study
are focused on two following research questions:
 How were the 2012 American presidential debates represented through the
political cartoons in terms of the rhetorical devices exploited?
 How were the 2012 American presidential debates represented through the
political cartoons in terms of political contents elaborated?
1.3 Significance of study
Once finished, the study might partly provide the readers with the portrayal of
modern American society, especially this country’s political life and culture. With an
in-depth rhetorical analysis of the selected American political cartoons during and after
the time of these debates along with the most-mentioned issues, on the one hand, the
study will examine the focal point of the selected political cartoons on the presidential
debates this year and their intended messages. On the other hand, those interested in
this field might be equipped with the tools that have been used by cartoonists so as to
have American political cartoons interpreted. In addition, American politics, let alone
its presidential elections, is always a matter of concern to other countries in the world
since each political party and its representatives pursue their own goals, or to be more
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specific, their own development strategies and policy priorities over domestic affairs
and foreign relations. American political cartoons, besides other media productions, are
one way to look for a better understanding about this topic. Thus, the researcher would
love to acquire a wider knowledge of an interesting but urgent issue. More importantly,
the result of this paper can be used as useful references for America Studies classes and
similar future studies in this research area.
1.4 Scope of the study
Since the given research problem is about the U.S. politics, it is rather terribly

extensive and complicated. Indeed, it ís also quite complex to a foreign-politic amateur
student. Therfore, conducting this study in a large scale was challenging and ambitious
for the researcher. Within limited knowledge and scope of a research paper conducted
by a fourth-year student, the researcher wants to find out the most outstanding political
contents and rhetorical devices exploited in the American political cartoons that have
been retrieved from and published after 3 October until 30
October, 2012.
1.5 Methodology
In this study, data was collected online and the researcher adopted a qualitative
approach based on the Medhurst and DeSousa Taxonomy.
1.6 Struture of the study
This research consists of five chapters, a list of references and appendices.
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter deals with the rationale, scope of the study, the research questions,
and the structure of the study.
Chapter 2: Literature review

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This chapter provides definitions of key concepts in the research. In addition,
the theoretical framework used to analyze selected political cartoons is also put in this
section.
Chapter 3: Methodology
This chapter includes the data collection and analysis method.
Chapter 4: Results and Discussion
This chapter presents and discusses major findings obtained from the analysis.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Summary of the major findings, the limitations of the study and suggestions for
further research will be presented in this chapter.

List of references
The list is of works consulted to conduct this research.
Appendices
This part is to present the transcripts of 2012 American presidential debates and
the selected cartoons.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter was constructed to set the theoretical background for the whole
research. In this chapter, key concepts of political cartoon, visual metaphor and a short
review on the 2012 American presidential debates would be thoroughly discussed.
2.1 Political cartoons and their purposes
On hearing the word “cartoon”, people may be most familiar with an animated
movie made by photographing a series of gradually changing drawings and models
rather than real people and objects so that they look as if they are moving (e.g., Tom
and Jerry) or a comic book (e.g., Batman). However, these are just some other types of
cartoons, which usually seek to entertain their audience through the combination of
imagination and humor. In fact, another meaning can be found in the Oxford Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary, in which cartoon denotes “an amusing drawing in a newspaper
or magazine, especially one about politics or events in the news”, or in other words,
political cartoon. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at a more detailed definition from
Britannica Online Encyclopedia that sounds more direct and fashionable.
A pictorial parody, almost invariably a multiply reproduced drawing, which by
the devices of caricature, analogy, and ludicrous juxtaposition (frequently
highlighted by written dialogue or commentary) sharpens the public view of a
contemporary event, folkway, or political or social trend
Cartoons or political cartoons, stated in Britannica Encyclopedia, are not simply
drawings created for a laugh or make fun of an event or an individual. They are always

entertaining, however, often exploit stronger devices such as scornful skepticism or
negativity, satire, stereotypes … to address the current issues. They reflect the reality
by abstracting, distilling and presenting it back in an ironic way, striving to educate the
viewers about many issues. Whereas a typical newspaper article is mostly filled with a
large number of words to relay the information and ideas, a political cartoon reduces an
entire article down to simple pictures. And a picture is, sometimes, worth a thousand
words. Guy Hansen, the curator of a political cartoon exhibition in Australia in 2009,
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stated “Cartoons are now one of the most important weapons in a newspaper's armory
of political analysis. […] Unlike a news article or column, the cartoon has the capacity
to almost instantaneously dissect a political issue. It [a cartoon] can often have more
veracity and insight than hundreds of words of text-based analysis.”
Though political cartoon can be clearly understood from the definition above,
there is sometimes confusion in the use between this concept and “editorial cartoon”.
In fact, the latter can refer to the former. This stems from the fact that political cartoons
often appear on editorial pages of newspapers all over the United States of America.
Nonetheless, cartoons printed on them are not always about politics. Their topics can
range from environmental and social issues to arts, culture and education, or it might
concern the economic matters or views such as depression, inflation, stock market, etc.
Figure 1, for instance, is a cartoon drawn by Tom Toles depicting Santa Claus, who is
reading a series of books titled “Economic Recovery” with a letter “Dear Santa …”
beside. Through this picture, the cartoonist wants to satirize about the 2009 American
economic recovery plan that requires more actions to be taken rather than tax cuts for
the rich only. Figure 2 draws a grim picture of the final decision of the American AntiDoping Agency banning the U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong for life and stripping him of
his record seven successive Tour de France titles. For that reason, the two terms would
be appropriately treated equally in this study. However, the researcher prefers to label
these selected artifacts “political cartoon”.

7


Figure 1: “Economic recovery: Assembly required”
(Source: />
Figure 2: “U.S.A.D.A. strips Armstrong of all cycling titles”
(Source: />
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Besides its content, from the perspective of a graphic designer, Matthews (2011)
classifies the editorial cartoon into two main types: one that is made up of “hand-drawn
images that occupy a single visual frame” along with texts in the form of a sentence, a
group of sentences or a dialogue, and the other which is created with multiple panels,
making drawings or models seem to move to create animation. Within the scope of this
study, only single-frame, and non-animated cartoons were taken into consideration. A
sample illustration of a single-frame political cartoon is shown below. (See Figure 3)

Figure 3: “Obama Claus”
(Source: />When people come to investigate editorial cartoons, it is a must to have subjects
of their argument well-recognized, including “political commonplaces, character traits,
literary/cultural allusions, and situational themes” (Medhurst & DeSousa, 1981, p.200).
As “a drawing of pictorial parody,” “caricature, analogy, and ludicrous juxtaposition”,
“sharpen[s] the public view”, they are primarily exploited to “attack an idea, a person,
or a party in the hope that the images will inspire a laugh or a smile at the expense of
the subject” (Duus, 2001, cited in Bigi et al., 2011) and especially, visually give direct
comments on political issues to make a meaningful point by constructing and putting
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forward arguments and creating humor thanks to visual metaphor together with other
rhetorical techniques and stylistic elements such as captions and labels, exaggeration,
caricature, satire, and irony. Hence, elements of rhetorical study need to be explained
further with an aim to getting the intended messages that cartoonists want to convey to
the audience.
2.2 Understanding visual literacy, visual rhetoric and visual metaphor
2.2.1 Visual literacy and Visual rhetoric
Visual literacy was firstly defined in 1969 by John Debes (Avgerinou a Ericson,
1997, p.280) and then revised later for more inclusive language (Fransecky & Debes,
1972, cited in Brill, Kim & Branch, 2007, p.49), which can be found on the website of
IVLA.
Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision competencies a human being can
develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory
experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal
human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to
discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, and/or symbols, natural or
man-made, that are [encountered] in [the] environment. Through the creative
use of these competencies, [we are] able to communicate with others. Through
the appreciative use of these competencies, [we are] able to comprehend and
enjoy the masterworks of visual communication. (p.7)
Nonetheless, this definition does not really cover the whole meaning of Visual
Literacy in itself since that of Debes just mentioned about the factors drawing people’s
attention to visuals in terms of “a sensory modality” instead of “a symbolic modality”
(Levie, 1978, cited in Brill, Kim & Branch, 2007, p.49). Moreover, it seems that “these
visible actions, objects and/or symbols that are [encountered] in [the environment]”
could be taken in naturally through people’s naked eyes or, generally speaking, without
any other competencies and experiences but sensory ones.
In fact, visual literacy is more than that. It requires both vision competencies
and other learned abilities. In a study by Brill, Kim and Branch conducted on a number
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of 229 authors from the Journal of Visual Literacy, selected readings of IVLA, books
and book chapters, as well as presentations at professional meetings within the realm of
Visual Literacy to find out its consensus definition among published scholars in this
area, it is coined as:
A group of acquired competencies for interpreting and composing visible
messages. A visually literate person is able to: (a) discriminate, and make sense
of visible objects as part of a visual acuity, (b) create static and dynamic visible
objects effectively in a defined space, (c) comprehend and appreciate the visual
testaments of others, and (d) conjure objects in the mind’s eye.
From that definition, visual literacy is comprised of a collection of competencies
which need to be learned and acquired. It also suggests the ways these competencies
can be absorbed in through not only “reading” visuals but also “writing”, which is
literally meant “creating”, images that represent our viewpoints, ideas, or concepts of
a person, object, event or even those of others as well as the level of our analyzing in
our mind. Suggested by Maes and Schilperoord (2007), we need to distinguish whether
these images are rhetorical or not based on background knowledge and experiences
first. Then comes an analysis of meaning transferences as well as design patterns and
features before “grounding hypotheses concerning viewer’s responses to the various
conceptual and structural configurations” at last. On looking back, Brizee (2003) also
shares the same ideas through his diagram modified from Sandra Moriarty’s (1997) in
her essay A Conceptual Map of Visual Communication (See Figure 4). The umbrella
term visual literacy consists of three main subcategories, successively named visual
thinking, visual learning, and visual communication.

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Figure 4. Relationships of Areas of Study in Visual Literacy

Through this diagram and explanation of each subcategory, Brizee (2003) wants
to lay emphasis on the close relationship among visual thinking, visual learning and
visual communication, all of which encompasses visual rhetoric. Notably, it is visual
thinking and visual learning that are the contributors to “create documents that convey
information using visual cues, graphics, and elements of document design to promote
access, understanding, and action.” In addition, being part of visual communication,
visual rhetoric plays an important role as not only a communicative artifact but also a
perspective on visual data. (Foss, 2004)
In sense of a communicative artifact, it speaks of a totally purposive creation
which is made up of many symbolic images. On the other hand, aesthetic factors such

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as colors, position, image size and texts are also exploited to establish communication
between rhetoricians and the audience.
In the latter meaning, Foss considers visual rhetoric the audience’s viewpoints
when they analyze the imagery or visual artifacts thanks to their learned abilities. It is a
tool for people to discuss, consult, debate, or impart deliberate and purposeful message
to others. Here the focus is put on how the audience responds rhetorically rather than
aesthetically. Besides that, Foss constantly concerns with the effects of visual artifacts
that have on the so-called “lay viewers” – those without much background knowledge
about arts or artistry related fields. Their own original reactions to these striking visuals
are formed, based on past experiences they gained from observing events happening all
around the world. Talking within the area of politics, it is any daily political or politicrelated events people come across everyday: 2003 Iraq War, the American presidential
debates between Obama and Romney to the diplomatic strategies and policies of Japan
to China on their sovereignty dispute about islands. Also, visual rhetorical figures,
especially visual metaphor, have been an attractive topic for researchers who work on
communication and cognitive linguistics. “A large number of studies focus on visual
rhetoric in relation to persuasion or consumers' responses, with a special focus on

visual metaphor (e.g., Forceville 1996; Kenney and Scott 2003; McQuarrie and Mick
1999; Phillips 2003; Scott and Batra 2003; Teng and Sun 2002; Van Mulken, Van
Enschot-van Dijk, and Hoeken 2005).” (Maes & Schilperoord, 2007, p.3)
2.2.2 Visual metaphor
Metaphor is a pervasive feature of language helping us to say what is unsayable.
Our everyday language is peppered with metaphor so it is not difficult to recognize its
appearance and influence, from logocentric perspective, in daily life. Below is a short
poem that exploits this powerful tool to compare the subway to the coffin.

Subway!
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"Every day I step into a coffin with strangers
Nailing hurriedly my own coffin
I go towards the city to be buried alive"
(Etsuro Saxamoto)
In the early 1980s, metaphor drew much attention as a cognitive phenomenon,
especially “the poetic way of saying or writing something that could also be expressed
in a literal way” (Refaie, 2003, p.76). Mish (1984, cited in Williams, 1998, p.1) defined
metaphor as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind
of idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them”,
which clearly states that the meaning of metaphor lies mostly in the verbal or auditory
means of delivery. As a result, metaphor which was seen in other modes rather than
verbal was set aside and received little concern. Nevertheless, it is limited to the
metaphor itself when researchers work on editorial cartoons if they only see it from the
linguistic view (Refaie, 2003). It [metaphor] should be extended from the verbal into
visual realm. Refaie used cognitive metaphor theory, in which visual thinking, or the
metaphorical thinking from Brizee’s diagram, was applied to build up the metaphorical
understanding based on the visual concepts so as to “provide a tenuous bridge between

the logocentric and visuocentric metaphorical distinction”. She assumed “many of our
common thought patterns are really based on figurative processes” and also proposed
that “expressions that arise from such conceptual metaphors can actually be considered
literal in that they emerge from a direct connection between language and the way we
think”, which does purport to show that metaphor should be analyzed through “nonverbal modes of communication such as pictures, music, sound and body language”
(Coëgnarts & Kravanja, 2012, p.2). Thus, as far as the study in political cartoons was
concerned, a simple but sound definition of pictorial metaphor by Williams (1998) was
adopted. According to Williams, visual metaphor, based on the point of “metaphors
referring to one thing in terms of another” referred from that of verbal one, is a
14


metaphor in which “one image or set of images used in place of another to suggest
an analogy between the two images or sets of images” (p.1). This occurs, according to
Forceville (1996, cited in Norgaard, Busse & Montoro, 2010), when a “tenor” is
compared to a “vehicle” that “belongs to a different category or frame of meaning”.
However, it needs to be stressed that underlying the substitution on an image for
another is the vital role of visual thinking in shaping visual metaphor (Refaie, 2003,
p.90) as:
It is more appropriate to identify a visual metaphor by referring to the thoughts
or concepts that appear to underlie it.
Moreover, seeing as metaphor is suggested to be “a matter of thought and not
language” (Coëgnarts & Kravanja, 2012, p.97), socio-political context is a factor which
needs to be taken into consideration to deepen our understanding of the exploitation of
visual metaphor
While cognitive metaphor theory seems to offer a promising approach to the
study of visual metaphor, my study of newspaper cartoons indicates that
researchers working within this paradigm must be more sensitive to the sociopolitical context of metaphor use and that they must give more attention to the
form in which metaphors are expressed - be it verbal, visual, or a combination
of both (p. 92).

(Refaie, 2003, cited in Matthews, 2011, p.15)
Regarding the vital role of editorial cartoons as a tool to satire and criticize on
political events, it is not a vengeance to claim that visual metaphor is their very heart to
both create humor and form arguments of editorial cartoons. According to Edwards
(1997, cited in Matthews, 2011, p.16), the role of visual metaphor in editorial cartoons
has been mentioned as:
Because cartoon images condense meaning through metaphor, allusion, and
metonymy, they create new worlds of understanding - a President becomes a
tiger (or pussycat), a political campaign is described as a sinking ship, a
televangelist sells snake oil. The literal recasting of familiar and true events into
imaginative settings, incongruous yet coherent, creates a drama or story offered
for acceptance as a viewpoint on the true nature of events. In creating fictional
15


worlds, cartoonists offer assessments of a collection of facts, forming a
meaningful whole. It is the dramatistic creation of such understandings that
forms the rhetorical core of many visual images, including political cartoons
(p.8).
2.3 Understanding of the Medhurst and DeSousa Taxonomy
Considered “a key tool of the political cartoonist used in defining terms and
issues” (Speedling, 2004, p.12), before the readers want to draw the intended messages
from political cartoons, visual metaphor is what they need to understand first. As a
result, how visual metaphor is constructed through visuals and texts, or more
technically, the forms of graphic arrangement and the stylistic elements should be
clearly presented. Thus, to achieve this target, the research employed the Medhurst and
DeSousa Taxonomy authored by Martin J. Medhurst and Michael A. DeSousa in 1981,
which was recapitulated in detail and clearly explained in Alan Matthews’ (2011, p.29)
thesis. According to Matthews, this important work emphasizes on the use of “both a
visuocentric and logocentric analysis of rhetoric”:

(1.) "the general framework for producing effective oral rhetoric is, with some
modifications, applicable to the production of graphic discourse"; and
(2.) "the specific techniques used by graphic artists to invite audience response
are significantly different from those of the oral persuader"
Specifically, it pays much attention to forms of graphic arrangement and the style of
visual rhetoric presented. The former consists of contrast, commentary, contradiction
while the latter deals with six stylistic elements, namely the use of line and form to
create tone and mood; the relative size of objects within the frame; the exaggeration or
amplification of physionomical features (caricature, in the narrow sense); placement
within the frame; relation of text, both caption and balloon, to visual imagery; and the
rhythmic montage arising from the interaction of invention, disposition, and stylistic
elements (Medhurst and DeSousa, 1981, p. 212, cited in Matthews, 2011, p.31).

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 CONTRAST: situating one element, whether it be a person, event, idea or
statement, in contrast with another element
 COMMENTARY: presenting a subject in true form or representing an "obvious
fact" about the subject
 CONTRADICTION: A more aggressive form of CONTRAST, wherein distinct
judgments about the subject are made based on contrasting an element of the
subject with another element
 USE OF LINE AND FORM: Various drawing and shading techniques in the
cartoon
 RELATIVE SIZE OF OBJECTS: How a cartoon draws attention to particular
visual depictions
 EXAGGERATION: the cuing and critique of popular figures
 PLACEMENT WITHIN THE FRAME: eliciting focal points, announcing
what is important and why it is important in relationship to the other depictions

 RELATION OF TEXT TO VISUAL IMAGERY: the placement and
magnitude of the labels or dialogue balloons, as well as the message of the
words themselves
 RHYTHMIC MONTAGE: the importance of viewing the cartoon as a whole
Another framework to examine political cartoon was provided by Morris (1993)
in which he categorized the rhetorical elements into six rhetorical devices, including
condensation, domestication, opposition, carnivalization, hypercarnivalization, and
combination. The difference between Morris’ rhetorical elements and that of Medhurst
and DeSousa is his application of “linguistically-based rhetorical theory to the study of
the editorial cartoons” (Matthews, 2011, p.32). Moreover, rather than putting focus on
small details of the cartoons and approaching them from the specific visual depictions
17


before being viewed as a whole to construct the arguments like Medhurst and DeSousa,
the Morris Elements “provide a more helpful way of understanding editorial cartoons
as comprehensive rhetorical texts”, in which he looks the editorial cartoons in a general
view without getting rhetorical artifacts isolated from each other in order to see how
the cartoonists’ ideas are expressed (Matthews, 2011).
Besides the researcher’s interest in looking political cartoons from the angle of
both language and visual, as the researcher wants to dig deeper in how the arguments
of political cartoons are built up by investigating “the minute elements of an editorial
cartoon individually”, Medhurst and DeSousa Taxonomy was exploited in this study.
2.4 Background knowledge about the 2012 American presidential election
About Barack Obama
Barack Obama, a "loyal Democrat" characterized by CQ Weekly and “the most
liberal" ranked by the National Journal, was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu,
Hawaii, to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father, Barack
Obama Sr.. When Barack Obama’s parents eventually divorced and after his mother
remarried an Indonesian oil manager, he moved to Jakarta for a time before returning

to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. He first attended
Columbia University and then went on to Harvard Law School, where he was elected
the very first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review – a prestigious
law review published by an independent student group here.
After graduation from Harvard Law School in 1991, Obama went on to lead one
of the most successful voter registration drives in state history, which attracted a huge
black turnout altering Chicago’s electoral landscape one year after and then continued
his legal work practicing as a civil rights advocate and a teacher of constitutional law at
the University of Chicago. Since that historical milestone, he has been raised as a new
political star from a little known 31-year-old lawyer. In 1996, he was elected to the
Illinois State Senate, serving three terms as the 13th district representative. During the
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time there, some of his economic and social policies were passed, which includes the
first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded
health care for children and their parents. Eight years later, his keynote speech given at
2004 National Democratic Convention, in which there was a combination of his brief
biography, his view on the American future and explanation why he had supported
John Kerry – the preceded presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, drew most
concern of the American people as well as made him overnight be paid much attention
to within the party itself and elevated his status. He became the 44th president of the
United States in January 2009 and re-elected in 2012 election.
(Source: />About Mitt Romney
Born in Detroit, Michigan on March 12, 1947 to Lenore LaFount and three-term
Michigan Governor George W. Romney, Mitt Romney is an American businessman
who served as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. He started his
education at the Roosevelt Elementary School and at the seventh grade, he went on to
the Canbrook Academy, a prestigious boys-only private school, which was claimed to
be one of the most educative experiences in his young life, helping him to develop his

social and critical-thinking skills. In 1971, he attended Brigham Young University and
earned a Bachelor degree here. Four years after, Romney obtained both a MBA and
law degree from Harvard university, finishing in the top 5% of his class.
After graduation, in pursuit of his dream to become a businessman, he worked
as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and later on became the vice
president of Bain & Company, another Boston-based consulting firm. In 1984, Mitt
Romney and other consultants from the Bain & Company founded an alternative asset
management and financial services company. Besides that, his political career can be
briefly summarized through some of his beacons. Romney served as the governor of
Massachusetts for one term until 1999 and came back to this position in 2002 after
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defeating Shannon O’Brien in the general election. After the end of his term as
Massachusetts Governor in January 2007, he formally announced his candidacy for the
Republican presidential nomination running for the race next year with no success.
Three years after, Romney sought to reclaim his public identity as a ready-to-lead
executive in the second run at the presidency.
(Source: />About the 2012 presidential debates
The 57th American presidential election between Democratic President Barack
Obama and Republican Governor Mitt Romney drew the nationwide and international
attention since there are many domestic affairs and global issues needed to be solved,
including still high unemployment rate, national deficit, social policy, immigration and
foreign policy. Being part of the presidential election this year, four debates were held
by the Commission on Presidential Debates, in which three of them involve the major
party presidential nominees. The official presidential debates took place on the 3rd,
16th and 22nd of October at respectively University of Denver, Hofstra University and
Lynn University. Each one last for 90 minutes.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1 Data collection method
In selecting the cartoons, no attention was paid to generalizability, which means
analyzed political cartoons do not need to be representatives of those published during
the same time, however, they were rather chosen based on the understanding ability of
the researcher when analyzing them. The online database is
the main source that provides the researcher with political cartoons published during a
timeframe ranging from 3 to 30 October in 2012. The catchwords for searching were
“2012 United States presidential election”, “2012 American presidential debate”, and
“political cartoons”. Then, selected political cartoons would be analyzed to discover
their arguments and how they were constructed by using visual metaphor together with
other rhetorical elements in the next chapter. There are 25 political cartoons chosen in
total, named from Cartoon 1 to Cartoon 25 for the readers to refer. (See Appendix 2)
3.2 Data analysis method
The data analysis method of this study was qualitative, in which the rhetorical
elements of editorial cartoons were analyzed to identify how the presidential debates
were viewed. The researcher put focus on analyzing the actors depicted (e.g., Barack
Obama, Mitt Romney, a debate moderator, etc.), describing the rhetorical devices
expressed (e.g., metaphors, contrast), identifying the location of the scene (e.g., hall,
home), and summarizing the key messages expressed by the cartoons. These cartoons
were also evaluated to determine whether they addressed any specific political issues
reagarding either foreign or domestic policy. Additionally, they were analyzed for any
evaluations (positive or negative) of each candidate’s performance. This was based on
the Medhurst and Desoussa Taxonomy presented in the previous chapter.

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