Figuras retóricas verbales y visuales en la conformación de un estilo de autor: Las caricaturas políticas del semanario satírico Francés Le Canard Enchaîné

Abstract

This work focuses on the study of verbal and visual rhetorical figures, which are basic resources that operate in the political cartoon satirical sub-genre. The corpus consists of 405 political cartoons published by the French weekly satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaǐné, the oldest in that country, dealing with the actions and statements of the then President Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) over four periods of analysis selected for their relevance in the socio-political context of France. Based on a methodological approach that articulates a rhetorical-stylistic analysis, and descriptive statistics techniques, we have identified the rhetorical resources in use on the political cartoons considered, paying attention to their interaction; and we have detected stylistic preferences in some of the regular cartoonists of the weekly newspaper. The significantly higher presence of verbal over visual rhetorical figures indicates that the figurative language of Le Canard enchaî né is built mostly from the titles of the cartoons and the dialogues of the characters represented, having a less significant role the graphical representation of the scenario, the objects that compose the image, or even the characters' actions. Our analysis also reveals an independence in the resources used on the represented socio-political context.