One Wall Many Voices: Framing the U.S.A.-Mexico Border Fence in Editorial Cartoons from the two countries - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學國際傳播英語碩士學程 International Master’s Program in International Communication Studies College of Communication National Chengchi University. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. 碩士論文 Master’s Thesis. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 論文題目 One Wall Many Voices: Framing the U.S.A-Mexico Border Fence in Editorial Cartoons from the Two Countries. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Student: Liliana Arrieta Rodriguez Advisor: Leonard L. Chu. 中華民國 99 年 6 月 June 2010.

(2) 論文題目 One Wall Many Voices: Framing the U.S.A-Mexico Border Fence in Editorial Cartoons from the Two Countries 研究生：李莉指導教授：朱立. Student: Liliana Arrieta Rodriguez Advisor: Leonard L. Chu. 立. 政治大國立政治大學. ‧ 國. 學. 國際傳播英語碩士學程. ‧. 碩士論文. n. Ch. A Thesis. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. i Un. v. e nMaster’s Submitted to International g c h i Program in International Communication Studies National Chengchi University In partial fulfillment of the Requirement For the Degree of Master in International Communication Studies 中華民國 99 年 6 月 June 2010.

(3) ONE WALL MANY VOICES: FRAMING THE U.S.A-MEXICO BORDER FENCE IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS FROM THE TWO COUNTRIES. A Master Thesis. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學 National Chengchi University. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in International Communication Studies. by Liliana Arrieta Rodriguez June 2010.

(4) TABLE OF CONTENTS. Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... v List of Cartoons Analyzed in Text ................................................................................................. vi. 政治大. 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1. 立. 1.1 Walls Have Meanings............................................................................................... 2. ‧ 國. 學. 1.2 The U.S.-Mexico Wall.............................................................................................. 5. ‧. 2. Review of Literature............................................................................................................... 11 2.1 Walls as Barriers..................................................................................................... 11. y. Nat. sit. 2.2 Understanding and Conceptualizing about Cartoons ............................................. 13. al. er. io. 2.3 Cartoons Researched in Cultural Studies and Semiotics........................................ 21. n. 2.4 Frames and Framing Research ............................................................................... 24. Ch. i Un. v. 2.5 Research Questions ................................................................................................ 27. engchi. 3. Method ..................................................................................................................................... 29 3.1 Collection of the Cartoons for Analysis ................................................................. 29 3.2 The U.S. and Mexico Press Systems ...................................................................... 33 3.3 Determining the Frames in Cartoons...................................................................... 34. 4. Findings.................................................................................................................................... 37 4.1 Symbols .................................................................................................................. 37 4.2 Frames .................................................................................................................... 40. i.

(5) 4.2.1 Death and Skulls.................................................................................................. 42 4.2.2 Economy and NAFTA ......................................................................................... 44 4.2.3 Freedom and the Statue of Liberty ...................................................................... 46 4.2.4 Division and the Berlin Wall ............................................................................... 48 4.2.5 Employment and Migrant Workers ..................................................................... 50 4.2.6 Immigration Reform and the American Senate ................................................... 53 Conclusion and Discussion ......................................................................................................... 57. 政治大. References .................................................................................................................................... 64. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Appendices of All Cartoons Collected for Analysis.................................................................. 78. sit. y. Nat. A. Death: Mexican Cartoons......................................................................................................... 79 B. Economy and NAFTA: Mexican Cartoons .............................................................................. 81. io. er. C. Freedom and the Statue of Liberty: Mexican Cartoons............................................................ 82. al. n. iv n C h e Cartoons D. Division and the Berlin Wall: Mexican 85 i U n g c h.................................................................... American Cartoons............................................................................................................... 84. American Cartoons................................................................................................................. 86 E. Employment and Migrant Workers: Mexican Cartoons ........................................................... 87 American Cartoons................................................................................................................. 88 F. Immigration Reform and American Senate: Mexican Cartoons ............................................... 92 American Cartoons................................................................................................................. 95. ii.

(6) Abstract One Wall Many Voices: Framing the U.S.A-Mexico Border Fence in Editorial Cartoons from the Two Countries By Liliana Arrieta Rodriguez. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Walls provide not only physical but also ideological boundaries between neighbors.. ‧. They can be seen as a symbol of protection or segregation. Using as stimulus the. y. Nat. security fence between Mexico and the United States, this study aims to identify. io. sit. the main frames in American and Mexican political cartoons to decode the. a. er. different messages and symbolism towards the border wall through which one can. n. understand the U.S.-Mexico l border issue as seen ini vthe newspapers from the two countries.. Ch. n engchi U. Using a qualitative analysis, the thesis studies 34 American and 69 Mexican cartoons from dailies that are representative of the press in the two countries. The cartoons evidence the use of six frames and symbolism: Death of migrants and the renegotiation of NAFTA were exclusively used by the Mexican papers. The freedom issue and the divisive nature of the wall balanced in both countries’ cartoons and the main preoccupations of the United States cartoons concerned the. iii.

(7) country’s double standard of hiring illegal migrant laborers while at the same rejecting an immigration agreement with Mexico. This study’s original contribution serves as a small step in the long road of empirical database expansion in framing political cartoons and the symbolism behind the portrayal of barriers.. 立. 政治大. Keywords: framing, political cartoons, walls, symbols, barriers, U.S.-Mexico fence. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iv. i Un. v.

(8) Acknowledgements. 治政 First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor 大 Professor Leonard L. Chu for his 立 support, patience, time, dedication and literally borderless enlightening guidance, unconditional ‧ 國. 學. assistance in the realization of this thesis. It is an honor for me to have him as a mentor.. ‧. I would also like to express my entire appreciation to the members of my Advisory Committee, Professor Wen-Ying Liu and Professor Sewen Sun for every valuable comment and suggestion.. sit. y. Nat. er. io. Last but not least, I want to thank my mom Doris Rodriguez and my fiancé Casper Pohlmann for their encouragement, aid and love. Without your support, I would not be here.. n. al. Ch. engchi. v. i Un. v.

(9) List of Cartoons Analyzed in Text M1. “Frontier”. Created by Angel Boligan and published on June 5, 2003 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Universal”.. 53. M2. “Technology in the Wall”. Created by Dario Castillejos and published on November 8, 2006 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Imparcial”.. 53. M3. “U.S. Mexican Border”. Created by Obi and published on January 25, 2006 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Norte”.. 53. M4. “NAFTA”. Created by Angel Boligan and published on April 26, 2004 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Universal”.. 政治大 “Renegotiation”. Created立 by Obi and published on March 4, 2003 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Norte”.. 55. 學. ‧ 國. M5. “Liberty Wall”. Created by Angel Boligan and published on October 27, 2006 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Universal”.. M8. “Recycled”. Created by Nerilicon and published on October 6, 2006 in the Mexican Newspaper “Milenio”.. M9. “Migratory Workers in the Wall”. Created by Nerilicon and published on January 24, 2006 in the Mexican Newspaper “Milenio”.. sit. 60. er. io. al. iv n C U published on May 20, 2007 in the “Immigration Reform” Created h bye Angel Boligan i and h n c g Mexican Newspaper “El Universal”. n. M10. 58. y. M7. 55. ‧. “Bush wall head”. Created by Obi and published on April 23, 2003 in the Mexican Newspaper “El Norte”.. Nat. M6. 55. 63. 66. A1. “Guest Worker Statue of Liberty”. Created by RJ Matson and published on March 28, 2006 in the American Newspaper “The St. Louis Post Dispatch”.. 58. A2. “Exactly Alike”. Created by Trever and published on October 31, 2006 in the American Newspaper “Albuquerque Journal”.. 60. A3. “Illegals Stay Out”. Created by Kal and published on November 30, 2005 in the American Newspaper “Baltimore Sun”.. 63. A4. “Tear down this Wall” Created by RJ Matson and published on June 15, 2007 in the American Newspaper “The St. Louis Post Dispatch”.. 66. vi.

(10) Chapter 1 Introduction. As a journalist, I have documented the desperation of families who are not able to pay 30 Mexican pesos (USD $ 2.30) to settle a medical bill. I have also documented the high rates of. 政治大 family made to provide them with education to become an engineer or an architect, as soon as 立. unemployment and the yearly migration rates of young people that, in spite of the sacrifices their. they graduate from college they start their journey to the border to work picking up the crops. So. ‧ 國. 學. even that I personally disagree with the moving of people from Mexico to the United States, I can understand their anxiety and their vision of working illegally in the U.S. to reach the quality. ‧. of life its own country has denied them.. y. Nat. As a Mexican citizen, I have lived different stages in the Mexico-United States relations:. sit. before the American government approved the build-up of the border wall and after it. I feel. er. io. curious about the politicians’ way of thinking and how in their imagination, the so-called security. al. n. iv n C any consideration to realize a legal,hpractical and feasible e n g c h i U solution for the migrants and its American employers. For that reasons I am questioning what the wall is telling us in the Mexican fence could aim to solve a migration problem that has been there already for a century; without. side of the border? How is it seen in the American side? We believe the political cartoons from both perspectives will exhibit differing visions and interests of the two main actors as well as some universal values shared by all. This thesis shall begin with how people look at walls in history and contemporary times. We will also give some snapshots of the U.S.-Mexican wall before delving into the meanings of this barrier in the newspapers’ cartoons and the symbolism used to represent the meaning in the cartoons in the following chapters.. 1.

(11) 1.1 Walls Have Meanings In 2005, the publication of 12 cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in unappropiated ways for the majority of Muslims resulted in an enormous controversy around the world leading to further boycotts, riots, violent acts against the Danish embassies in Islamic countries and several death threats to its cartoonists. How simple caricatures can cause such reaction in people? As an integral part of many newspapers, editorial or political cartoons are tools for criticizing, evaluating and making people. 政治大 which have been built to provide 立 ideological and physical boundaries between neighbors.. reflect about current issues and social phenomena. Within this social phenomena are the walls. Originally, the walls were conceived to protect people against the rough weather, they were built. ‧ 國. 學. at strategic locations made from locally available materials and later, entire nations started using them as a resource to protect themselves against enemies.. ‧. The most famous example is the Great Wall of China, which includes a sequence of. y. Nat. barriers built and maintained between the 5th century B.C. and the 16th century A.D. to protect. io. sit. the northern borders of the Chinese Empire from barbarian attacks during various successive. er. dynasties. In contemporary times, the most prominent example would certainly be the Berlin. al. n. iv n C only to demarcate its border with the h Federal e n gRepublic c h i ofUGermany (FRG) or West Germany, but Wall built by the socialist state of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany not. also to control the national movement and restrict people’s migration. In 1952, East German leaders met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow, where he advised them to build up their border defense, telling them that “The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border – and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defense with their lives” (Harrison, 2003: 240). As a result, the inner German border between the East and West German states was closed and a barbed-wire fence erected. Later, the construction included guard towers placed along 96 miles of large concrete walls of 11.8 feet high circumscribing a wide area later known as the “death strip” because it contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses.. For West Berlin it was the concrete wall that marked. 2.

(12) the border and only in that side was officially a mere and plain “wall”. Nevertheless in East Berlin it was called “antifascist protective rampart” and the use of the word “wall” was strictly forbidden (Ladd, 1998:18). The Berlin wall, after being erected for 28 years, fell down along with the Eastern European Communist regimes in 1989. But despite the hopes it evoked, its collapse did not result in an end of walls. Mark Ehrman observes:. In the heady aftermath, watching Berliners hugging in the streets, it was easy to believe that walls would become another absurd relic of a barbaric past.. 政治大 Europe’s last barrier, would become more porous. Israel and Palestine seemed 立 at the cusp of a solution. One could even imagine Korea’s DMZ, the last Beirut’s barriers came down the same year as Berlin’s. Cyprus’s Green Line,. ‧ 國. 學. remaining Cold War barrier, crumbling in the aftershocks. Walls seemed headed for museumdom.. ‧. Instead, a new generation of border barriers began crisscrossing the planet.. y. Nat. Bill Clinton, who came to power promising ‘a bridge to the twenty-first. er. io. sit. century’, gave us a wall with Mexico instead (Ehrman 2007, p. 40).. al. n. iv n C political beliefs. In the case of the Berlin it cameUto denote “all the consequences of the h e nwall, hi c g division of Berlin and of Europe” (Ladd, 1998:16) as known by Winston Churchill’s metaphor of Walls not only signify an artificial or physical structure but also connote ideological and. an “iron curtain”. The Berlin wall became most famous as the preeminent cold war symbol. In this concern, Manghani (2008) writes “The wall became the signifier of the Cold War scenario. Thus, the Berlin wall was never simply a concrete edifice, but actually a panoply of symbols, myths and images; indeed, a textual and intertextual phenomenon” (p.36). In 2001, Israel started planning a barrier to be four times as long and in places twice as high as the Berlin Wall, in order to divide the State of Israel from Palestine. Since the beginning, this barrier was highly controversial because while the Israelis most commonly refer to it as the “Separation fence” or “Anti-terrorist fence”, the Palestinians point at it as the “Racial segregation. 3.

(13) wall”. Following a Palestinian violence outbreak in 2002, Israel began the construction of a barrier that would separate most of the West Bank from areas inside Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court made reference to the conditions and history that led to the building of the barrier. In the September 2005 decision, it described the history of violence against Israeli citizens and cited the attempts Israel had made to defend its citizens, including military operations carried out against terrorist acts, and stated that these actions:. ...did not provide a sufficient answer to the immediate need to stop the severe. 政治大 end. The attacks did not cease. Innocent people paid with both life and limb. 立 This is the background behind the decision to construct the separation fence. acts of terrorism. . . . Despite all these measures, the terror did not come to an. ‧ 國. 學. (Supreme Court of Israel, 2005:815). ‧. Still under construction, Israel's barrier is expected to reach at least 403 miles long and is. y. Nat. planned to be completed this year. In addition to the concrete wall and fencing materials used in. sit. the construction of the structure, sections of Israel's Separation Barrier additionally include. er. io. electrified fencing, two-meter-deep trenches, roads for patrol vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles,. al. n. iv n C There is general agreement that improved h ethenbarrier i U Israeli security concerning suicide h c g bombings (Nissenbaum, D., 2007). However, there is debate over how effective the wall has sniper towers and razor wire.. been in preventing other attacks. While this is happening, the blockade construction had other effects for Palestinians including reduced freedoms, road closures, loss of land, increased difficulty in accessing medical services in Israel, restricted access to water sources and economic effects.. 4.

(14) 1.2 The U.S.-Mexico Wall In North America, there is another wall. One built by the United States of America to delimit its border with Mexico. The abysmal differences in wages between both countries when the minimum salary in Mexico is the equivalent to US$0.48 dollar cent per working hour and US$5.15 or 7.25 dollar per working hour in the U.S., makes the immigrants flow coming from the South difficult to stop. Therefore, due the high proportion of illegal cross-border stream in this frontier, in 1993 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection. 政治大 is still under construction and立 as of January 2010 had completed 643.3 miles of fencing.. (CBP) announced the construction of a wall along 698 miles of American-Mexican border which. The U.S.-Mexico border wall not only includes the physical barrier, but also aerial. ‧ 國. 學. vehicles and a virtual fence together with infrared equipment, cameras, electronic ground/fence sensors, thermal imaging and video cameras, radars and the deployment of more than 18,000. ‧. Border Patrol agents. The American CBP’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Program Management. y. Nat. Office (PMO) had supervised the deployment of technology and tactical infrastructure. io. sit. construction at the border since it was authorized by the Secure Fence Act of 2006. This approval. er. “incensed public opinion in Latin America like no other issue in recent years” (Morley, 2006a).. al. n. iv n C West Berlin is “rather more precise. With h ebillions i U worth of technology, the presence of n g cofhdollars’. Comparing the border between Mexico and the U.S. to the old situation between East and. some 10,000 Border Patrol agents –in addition to Customs, Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal officers- we are finally indeed what restrictionist politicians have envisioned with their rhetoric: Fortress America”(Martinez, 2004:52).. In addition, discussing the extent and costs of the Secure Fence, Philip Caputo writes:. Close the border with walls both virtual and real? Well, the physical wall proposed by the Secure Fence Act, which President Bush reluctantly signed last year, will cover just 700 of the Line’s 1,950 miles. Count on it, ways will. 5.

(15) be found to get around it, or over it, or under it. True, the gaps in Fortress America’s fence are supposed to be covered by sensors, cameras, and other high-tech surveillance equipment, but some legislators have begun to shy away from appropriating the funds after the inspector general of Homeland Security warned that costs, first estimated at $8 billion, could soar as high as $30 billion (Caputo 2007: 25).. In this concern, La Jornada, a Mexican newspaper, wrote “The walls have served as sources of. 政治大 costly in political and economic terms, and very inefficient, though some of its toll has to be paid 立 with the blood and pain of those who have tried to cross them. Thus, they are historically intense and bloody friction between armored countries. Its erection and operation are extremely. ‧ 國. 學. unsuccessful, disgraceful and degrading” (Carrillo, 2005). The Mexico City daily Excelsior denounced the push for a border wall as a sign of “The new Apartheid” in the context of an. ‧. institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over. y. Nat. another.. sit. The American SBI program was established by the department in early 2007 to carry out. er. io. the Congressional mandate and had determined the goal to build roughly 670 miles of fencing by. al. n. iv n C economic and environmental effects h as for example, announced in September 2007 by the U.S. engchi U Fish and Wildlife Service, 60 to 75% of the protected lands and refuges in the Rio Grande Valley 2013. The diverse consequences about this barrier construction diverge from land loss to. of Texas would be affected by the border wall because it would block river access preventing animals from reaching water, disturb animal migration patterns and destroy essential vegetation for many native and migratory species. However, without a doubt, one of the most serious effects has been the increase of deaths in the Mexican-American border. According to Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights, from 1994 to 2007, about 4,745 migrants died trying to cross the U.S. border. In December 2009, when the promoter of the U.S. immigrant cause through the foundation “Border Angels”, Enrique Morones Careaga was awarded the National Prize for Human Rights, he declared that. 6.

(16) before the U.S. - Mexico wall construction, one or two people were dying per month across the border but after the wall, one or two people die on a daily basis.. That wall has caused deaths more than anything else. It's incredible that since 1994 when they built the fence between San Diego and Tijuana, the north migration flow has decreased 20% but even that fewer people are crossing, more are dying because the Border Patrol and the wall forced them to cross in more dangerous areas (Hernandez, S. 2009).. same traffickers to ask the migrants’ families for ransom.. 學. ‧ 國. 政治大 In addition, the construction of the U.S. – Mexico border wall has also increased the business of 立 human trafficking and spread a new phenomenon: the rising of migrants’ abduction done by the The Guatemalan indigenous leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú,. ‧. described as an offense the U.S. decision to build a fence along the Mexico border to stop. y. Nat. immigration: “Putting fences I do not think they [Americans] can stop immigrants, whereas. sit. especially poverty, unemployment and inequality exists” (ABN, 2005). For Paterson (2008), in. er. io. Mexico and Latin America, the wall is viewed as a symbol of racism, xenophobia, and militarism.. al. n. iv n C administration’s wall to the historic failures of the Great heng i UWall of China, the Maginot Line, and h c the Berlin Wall.. Critics such as New Mexico scholar Felipe Ortego y Gasca have compared the Bush. The comparison of the U.S. security fence with other borders around the world has been imminent. In his visit to Midland, Texas in 2006 no less than Mikhail Gorbachev compared the American barrier with the Berlin wall: “You remember President Reagan standing in Berlin and saying, ‘This wall should be torn down’. Now the United States seems to be building almost the Wall of China between itself and this other nation with which it has been associated for many decades and has had cooperation and interaction with” (Scott, 2006). In this concern, longtime CNN correspondent Charles Bierbauer stated: “I’ve seen walls around other countries, most. 7.

(17) notably East Germany and East Berlin, and they didn’t work. In fact, they became symbols of oppression rather than anything positive” (Noyes, 2008). In 2009, Texas State Representative Aaron Peña called for the tearing down of the U.S.Mexico border wall to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall: “most Americans see it [Berlin Wall] as a symbolic end of tyranny. Here in the borderlands of this country, on the edges of my legislative district, Americans forget that a similar wall was constructed separating family members and a singular community” (Peña, 2009). Discussing the U.S.-Mexico wall, border expert David Shirk, political science professor at the. 政治大. University of San Diego and director of the Trans-Border Institute, refers:. 立. For me, the fence symbolizes the past. From the Mongols to the cold war,. ‧ 國. 學. people have tried to contain their fears and enemies with walls. At the end of the last century, we thought all the walls were going to come down. Indeed,. ‧. building walls and fortifying borders in the era of globalization and economic. y. Nat. integration holds inherent contradictions and promises little in the way of. sit. effectiveness. Walls may be useful for blocking large, land-based armies, but. n. al. er. io. are probably useless for combating terrorism. We’re in a new era with new. v. problems, but we keep coming up with old solutions (Reno 2006).. Ch. engchi. i Un. Also, religious leaders have discussed the walled borders, such is the case of Renato Martino, head of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, who condemned the building of walls between countries to keep out immigrants: “Speaking of borders, I must unfortunately say that in a world that greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall with joy, new walls are being built between neighborhood and neighborhood, city and city, nation and nation”. In reference to the U.S.Mexican fence he qualified it as “an inhuman program, which is what the construction of that wall and all others is” (Reuters, 2006). What other meanings can this wall have? What other messages is sending to society? For Tobar (2009) the fence is a symbol of the great social distance between Latin America and the. 8.

(18) United States being “just a few hours’ drive away” (Los Angeles Times, 2009). For vendor Jose de Jesus Hernandez in Eagle Pass, Texas: “This is a wall of shame. I can't look at it any other way” Schwartz (2010). U.S. Federal bureaucrats call it the “border fence.” Governor Humberto Moreira of the Mexican state of Coahuila has dubbed it a “wall of hate” and many activists as “the wall of death” (Hylton, 2009; Paterson 2008). Although border fences can be politically popular in the nations that build them, they are often viewed as a harsh and expensive symbol in neighboring countries. Constructing new fencing to keep out unauthorized migrants, cross-border terrorists, insurgents and smugglers has. 政治大 used by human beings. As symbols they represent something visible that by association or 立 convention characterize something else that is invisible, they are open to interpretation by remained as a priority in various parts of the world. But walls are much similar to other symbols. ‧ 國. 學. different people in accordance with their individual interests or ideologies.. ‧. The Mexican-American border wall thus offers a good example for analysis. The problem. y. Nat. at hand can of course be approached from several perspectives. This thesis intends to focus on an. sit. examination of the U.S. – Mexico border wall as has been portrayed in editorial cartoons in the. er. io. major newspapers of both countries.. al. n. iv n C or non-existent. Other than a collection h e nof gthec Berlin i Uwall cartoons presented in the global h television network TV5 in 2009 to celebrate the 20 anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall Previous literature specifically linking editorial cartoons and the border walls seems little th. and the article “Cartoon Roundup: Walling Off Mexico” published in the Washington Post (2006b) by Jefferson Morley in which he presents four political cartoons made by renowned Mexican cartoonists. For the researcher’s knowledge, there is no other than the present study. Therefore, the significance of this analysis is to be an original contribution for a better understanding of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and the interests behind and towards it as seen by the North American neighbors and discussed by “cultural studies”, “framing” and “semiotics” scholars.. 9.

(19) This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter outlines the background behind building the U.S.-Mexico border wall and research questions this study intends to answer. The second chapter covers the review of literature regarding cartoon studies, walls as barriers, cultural studies, semiotics and framing theory which serve as theoretical framework for this analysis. The third chapter describes the methodology, the search and data gathering process. Chapter four presents the findings of analysis and interpretation. Discussions and propositions that can be explored in future research are presented in the final chapter.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 10. i Un. v.

(20) Chapter 2 Review of Literature 2.1 Walls as Barriers Review of existing body of research about border walls, fences or barriers revealed an extensive. 政治大. amount of literature in the areas of sociology, psychology and political science such as the. 立. analysis of the representations and symbolism manifested on the Berlin Wall and their meanings. ‧ 國. 學. before and after the fall of the Wall to measure the level of social distress (Rieber,1997), analysis of the main reasons for the closure of the East-West sectoral border in Berlin (Maddrell, 2006), patterns of remembrance relating to the Wall and the GDR border which emerged in Berlin after. ‧. German unification (Saunders 2009) and life style confrontation in citizens from East and West. sit. y. Nat. Germany after the Berlin Wall fall (Achberger, Linden and Benkert,1999). Also, the development within the field of Israeli-Palestinian socio-politics and social movement studies, such as the. io. er. analysis of activism around the building of the Wall dividing Israel and Palestine (Pallister-. al. n. iv n C Wall among both neighbours (Falah, h 2004); of material walls as artifacts of e nthe hi U g cconceptualization. Wilkins, 2009) and the examination of land expropriation cases for the building of the Separation. globalization to bring together a diversity of barriers that share similar attributes including the separation fence in Israel-Palestine, the fence at the U.S.-Mexico border, the fences surrounding immigration detention centres and the fences fortifying the temporary sites of global superpower gatherings (Feigenbaum 2008). However, little has been done from the perspectives of communication and cultural studies. For instance, a visual study made by Semmerling (2004) presents the semiotics and discourse analysis of picture postcards in Israel and Palestine in order to expose their national self. He found a “sign war” in their struggle for “the power to produce reality” revealing another level of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that one over visual signs (p.7-8). Also dealing with. 11.

(21) semiotics is the research elaborated by Ladd (1998) in which he presents the picture of a postcard sold in Berlin in the 1980’s with the picture of the Great Wall of China simply reading “greetings from Berlin“. He argues how in semiotics, the wall is the signifier and Berlin the signified showing as an irony the relatively insignificance of the wall as a physical barrier. In his research, Stratton (2007) is concerned with the semiotics of the Israeli wall, and how the wall fits into Israeli ways of thinking that we can identify as “modern”. He argues that the actual wall that is being built is overdetermined by the meanings associated with the wall in the Israeli cultural imaginary, including the impact of the Holocaust on the way Israeli-Jews. 政治大 anxiety. It bears connotations not only of modern ghetto walls but of the walls of the ghettos the 立 Nazis created, and of the fences of the concentration and death camps. It is no wonder, then, that. think as he suggests, this wall “needs to be understood through this culturally-based Holocaust. ‧ 國. 學. Israeli-Jews would rather the wall went around the Palestinians than around themselves” (p.4). Schürer, Jenkins and Keune (1996) covered the use of literary imagery referring to the. ‧. wall by German authors in their poetry, stories, novels and plays in both the FRG and the GDR.. y. Nat. They concluded the Berlin Wall has been one of the most powerful phenomena, visible and. sit. decipherable text of the 20th century. Several essays concentrate on the representation of the. n. al. er. io. wall in popular culture, in contemporary songs and ballads, in the cinema and even through the. v. graffiti on the wall itself; however the wall symbolism in editorial cartoons as concerning to this study, was not included.. Ch. engchi. i Un. Also, taking the Berlin wall as a rhetorical resource, Bruner (1989) presented four examples from public discourses during the period 1961-1989 to reveal four symbolic uses of the Berlin Wall: (1) the Wall as a sign of the failure of the West; (2) the use the divisiveness of the Wall as a means for building identifications between West Berliners and the West; (3) use the Wall as a vehicle for challenging the Soviet system and (4) the Wall as the device of dismissing the Wall as something out-of-step with contemporary European life (p.326). In his book “Image critique & the fall of the Berlin Wall”, Manghani (2008) presents the role of images in critical thought taking as case study images of the fall of the Berlin wall. He does not offer a hermeneutic or historical analysis of visual representations of the Berlin wall presenting. 12.

(22) what he calls “image critique”: “a double procedure of both a critique of images and their critical engagement” (p.31). Plenty of previous research has studied the frontier between both countries from an anthropological perspective that literally describes Mexican-American border locales to explore the concepts of inequality, power, global economics, and connections among cultures and societies (Alvarez 1987; Alvarez & Collier 1994; Chávez 1992; Fernández-Kelly 1983; Greenberg 1987; Heyman 1991; Kearney 1991) as well as theoretical works (Gupta & Ferguson 1992; Rosaldo 1988) concerning the relationships between Mexicans and the United States. 政治大 as an evaluation of the enhanced U.S. border enforcement measures (Cornelius 2001; 2004; 2007; 立 Emmott 2007; Hinkes 2008). However, the U.S.-Mexico border wall is a phenomenon that conceived broadly (Behar 1993; Rouse 1991). Also, the border wall has been previously studied. ‧ 國. 學. warrants further academic research because of its current impact on relationships between the two countries.. ‧. Nat. io. sit. y. 2.2 Understanding and Conceptualizing about Cartoons. er. Cartoons are a specific media form which tends to use humor and satire to convey messages. al. n. iv n C h e 1999). to the promotion of stereotypes (Templin, h i U are capable of communicating “subtle, n g cCartoons about the social world (Kris & Gombrich 1962). It can be racist and sexist and it can contribute. complex, multilayered messages about people and events in the details of how they are drawn messages that would be difficult or impossible to express verbally”. Moreover, a political cartoon allows the cartoonist to express views that would be too “extreme, mean-spirited”, or “politically incorrect” to express in an essay column (Gilmartin & Brunn, 1998: 536) and “to be most effective, a cartoon must have three characteristics: sparkling wit, a basic element of fact, and a didactic or editorial purpose” (Cuff, 1945: 87). The word “cartoon” is derived from the Italian word Caricatura, meaning to charge or load. An early definition is found in Sir Thomas Browne’s “Christian Morals” published in 1716: “When men faces are drawn with resemblance to some other animals, the Italians call it, to be. 13.

(23) drawn in Caricatura”; making inference to Caricatura as a “loaded portrait”. “Cartoon” as a term was first used in its current meaning in the mid-19th century, when the British satirical monthly Punch used it as a title for a series of humorous illustrations lambasting the government’s plans for a new lavish Parliament building and contrasting this lavishness with the extreme poverty of many ordinary people (Kleeman, 2006). The antecedents of the editorial cartoon were anonymously produced woodcuts, which typically depicted scenes of a political or religious nature and were hawked around the streets of 17th century Europe. Many of these woodcuts contained words as well as images and there is evidence that some artists even. 政治大 and, in the mid-1800s, of facsimile reproduction facilitated the mass production of more detailed 立 images, and the early cartoons became increasingly humorous and satirical.. employed speed lines and word-balloons (Sabin, 1996). The invention of copperplate engraving. ‧ 國. 學. At a time when the newspaper was still a predominantly verbal medium, cartoons created a visual sensation and many cartoonists of the late 19th century and early 20th century came to. ‧. be regarded as influential and highly respected political commentators (Walker, 1978). In 1981. y. Nat. Horn stated that “any draw that encapsulates a complete thought can be called a cartoon” (p.15). sit. while Dovifat (1960) claimed that cartoon is the satirical exaggeration of the own peoples’. er. io. particularities or circumstances shown in an accurate or impressive form and Geipel (1972). al. n. iv n C exaggerated facial expressions, speech hballoons i U of framed strip is likely to be called e n g cor hsequences a cartoon, whether or not it is supposed to be defamatory or humorous. pointed out that any illustration which makes use of such conventions as physical distortions,. In 1968, Dunn classified cartoons according to their purposes: comic cartoons are for amusement; social cartoons comment in the problems of everyday life and attempt to entertain while editorial cartoons attack a point of view or political figure. In the last classification, the editorial cartoons represent the newspaper’s views and provide readers with condensed information on complex issues. The tone is generally concerned with a political event or revealing a political true motives or behavior (Tyson 1989). They are selected by an editor or an editorial board with only a few elected out of an average of six panels that cartoonists create each week (Buell & Maus 1988).. 14.

(24) The editorial cartoon then, developed from the Caricatura which in the theoretical sense represents the basic concepts of today’s cartoon studies. According to Harrison (1981), editorial cartoons focus attention on current issues and they can be analyzed for their portrayal of social trends, attitudes and culture. Morrison (1969) emphasized the importance of visual aspects in this discourse, arguing that non-verbal symbols can transmit meaning more directly than verbal symbols and Cahn (1984) suggested that cartoonists should rely on visual properties that are universally understood. Cartoons and caricature aim at those without time to read or who prefer visual news to understand a certain issue by just taking a look into the cartoon. As Streicher. 政治大 the news or a pictorial summary of a current power constellation”. Furthermore, he emphasized 立 the aspects involving the cartoon understanding when he affirmed that the caricature analysis. (1966) noted, “caricature is a way of catching in a glance the meaning of an event, a person in. ‧ 國. 學. “require at least materials from the history of the fine arts, political history of the areas concerned and the sociology of public opinion and mass communication” (p.427). The editorial. ‧. cartoon expresses criticism or disagreement in a social issue and simplifies the diverse links. y. Nat. between the events, the power and the civil society, aiming “at a purposeful condensation of. sit. sometimes complex meanings into a single striking image” (Morrison, 1969:253).. er. io. From the fundamental conception of Caricatura in regard of it as a “loaded portrait”,. al. n. iv n C in which are deformed, -to excel themmost peculiar h ethe i U characteristics, the factions and the h n c g aspect of a person or thing” and Bergson indicated “catching a sometimes imperceptible some features can be exaggerated, Mogollon and Mosquera (1983), for example, stated “a draw. characteristic and making it visible to the eyes when enlarging it” (Columba, 1959). Buell and Maus (1988) argue that “exaggeration and distortion” are the cartoonist’s “stock-in trade”. They conclude their analysis of the cartoons about the 1988 elections in the USA with the observation that most cartoons in the sample depict “frontrunners and oddities, and most of these were unflattering to the candidates” (p. 856). In addition, Nelson (1975) emphasized “today’s cartoon means a drawing usually humorous that stands by itself as a work of art” (p.5). A political cartoon is “a satirical comment, usually humorous . . . about a political person, event, institution. 15.

(25) or idea, and reflecting the cartoonist’s own values or opinions on that issue” (School Programs Section, National Museum of Australia, 2002: 4). What makes political cartoons unique is the way in which they typically use a fantasy scenario to comment upon an aspect of topical social, political, or cultural reality. In LeRoy’s (1970) apt words, they are “complicated puzzles mixing current events with analogies” (p. 39). If readers are willing and able to solve the mental puzzle that every cartoon poses, this can give them a real sense of satisfaction and sometimes provoke a humorous response (Smith, 1996). The editorial cartoon then, offers a new manner to observe a social issue by the use of. 政治大 historical events of great transcendence, such as the case of the U.S.-Mexico border wall 立 construction analyzed in this study.. transformation or exaggeration and when it embraces a social criticism, it can take part in. ‧ 國. 學. Nevertheless, cartoons have not received the academic research attention they deserve despite of their power and popularity. Carrier (2000) insists on the traditional partition between. ‧. high and low art forms and does not allow “comics” to be part of art history. No discipline has. y. Nat. truly dedicated to the study of editorial cartoons, yet at the nexus between several disciplines. sit. there is little academic literature on political cartoons (De Sousa, 1981, and 1984; DeSousa &. er. io. Medhurst, 1982; Edwards, 1992, 1997; Gamson & Stuart, 1992; Hess & Kaplan, 1975; Medhurst. al. n. iv n C increasingly diminishing with more and academic U h emore i work on caricature and cartoon, as borne h n c g out by the references of this study, the publications devoted to humor and cartoon and the & Benson, 1984; Paletz, 2002) with its main focus in humor and satire. However, the split is. expansion of disciplines and approaches such as semiotics, framing, visual and critical discourse analysis to include semio-linguistic work on cartoon texts. These texts can cause not only amusement, claim or reflection but also conflict and clash as was briefly mentioned in the introduction chapter, the controversy with the Danish cartoons published in 2005 in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten depicting the prophet Muhammad in inappropriate ways for the majority of Muslims, resulted in diplomatic problems between Arab countries and Denmark, in addition to a general boycott on Danish products in Arab-Islamic societies (Rustomji, 2007).. 16.

(26) A cursory review of literature can tell us that most cartoon studies are qualitative, often of anecdotical nature, compiling cartoonist experiences or criticism of the media and news. Such studies make interesting reading. Their journalistic approach also offers insights into the everyday life of cartoonists and editorialists, besides these studies may be useful as data for more systematic and explicit analyses in news production. The quantitative approaches included time serial analysis of a few editorial cartoonists (Belk 1987, Beniger 1983, Kasen 1980), time series analysis of a variety of news media in editorial cartoons on a single issue (Gamson & Modigliani 1989), and analysis of an icon such as. 政治大 1997, 1998), the recognition of pictorial images is based on people’s ordinary, everyday visual 立 perception and does not require any special competences. It is precisely because images are so Fischer’s (1986) Statue of the Liberty in American cartoon art. According to Messaris (1994,. ‧ 國. 學. close to our real-world perceptions that they can be used as “an especially elusive means of audience manipulation” (Messaris, 1998: 74); however, editorial cartoon involves a degree of. ‧. abstraction, or, as McCloud (1993) specifies: “amplification through simplification” (p. 30).. y. Nat. Cartoonists generally rely on widely shared cultural symbols and metaphors from popular. al. Thus, Raskin (1985) takes prior. er. io. processes (Edwards, 1997: 29; El Refaie, 2003: 83).. sit. culture which often seem so natural that we accept them through barely conscious thought. n. iv n C script which is essential for the accomplishment h e n g c hofi theU cartoons’ humorous effect. However, Pogel and Somers (1989) pointed out that “the indexes are incomplete; independent knowledge to be part of a social scenario selected by the cartoonist and reorganized to form the. bibliographical guides appear in limited numbers; and serious critical analysis of editorial cartooning and cartoonists stylistic political, historical, remains in its infancy” (p.368) and Rothman and Olmsted (1966) stated, “knowledge about the characteristics and effects of newspapers cartoons is not based on research evidence but consists predominantly of assumptions, hypotheses and speculations going not far beyond the adage that one picture is worth a thousand words” (p.67). Some Spanish literature has been written about cartooning in Mexico but is mostly by cartoonist compilations such as “La Caricatura Política [The Political Cartoon]” (Gonzalez,. 17.

(27) 1995), “La Caricatura Política del Siglo XIX. Colección Alfredo Guati Rojo [The Political Cartoon of 19th Century: Alfredo Guati Rojo collection]” (Acevedo, 2000; Daumier, 2000), “La historia de un país en caricatura. Caricatura Mexicana de combate 1829-1872 [The history of a caricature country. Mexican combat cartoons 1829-1872]” (Barajas, 2000) or studies of political campaigns such as “Análisis del Discurso: El cartón político en dos periódicos de la ciudad de Puebla durante un mes previo y uno posterior a las elecciones para la gubernatura [Discourse analysis: The political cartoons in two newspapers of Puebla city, a month before and a month after the governor elections]” (Aguilar, 2007).. 政治大 in Mexico, like the retrospective “The Mexican Revolution and the Cartoon” (Alba, 1966). 立 However, a political cartoon analysis of the border walls and specifically boarding the fence. In the English language, very little research literature has been written about cartooning. ‧ 國. 學. between Mexico and the United States, although there are studies on cartoons or humour in the academic journals on media and communication, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge,. ‧. seems non-existent. Therefore, the significance of this research is to be an original contribution. y. discrepancies between the American and Mexican press.. sit. Nat. for a better understanding of the border wall and the identification of framing similarities and. er. io. We have reviewed literature which is available from the main library and libraries of. al. n. iv n C Central Library in Taipei. Online libraries as Questia h e nsuch i U and Google Books, also served as h c g important tools in identifying pertinent literature in Spanish and cartooning as well.. communication and social sciences of National Chengchi University in Taipei as well as National. The periodical search included Journalism Quarterly, Studies in Visual Communication, Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Mass Communication, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, Revista Sala de Prensa and Global Media and Communication, Journalism, Mass Communication Quarterly and Global Media and Communication. There is already a rich amount of humor research. Specifically on political cartoons, for instance, Cuff (1945) and Lee and Goguen (2003) wrote about the history of political cartoon on the two sides of the Atlantic. Some studies deal with the relationship between editorial cartoons. 18.

(28) and reality, for example, Streicher (1967) argues that they are grounded in reality. They are somewhere between what something or someone is and what it is not (Belton, 2000) while Mulkay (1988), points that humor in general derives from patterns of serious political discourse. It is an inversion of the serious world – a response to the difficulties occurring in the course of “socially coordinated production of the serious domain” (p. 197). Some studies showed the relation between editorial cartoon and its role in persuading the audience about a certain topic. In 2002, Josh Greenberg pointed out that political cartoons are both informative and persuasive because they render normative judgments about social issues by. 政治大 (p.185). As Savarese (2000) noted, persuasive techniques are used either “deliberately or 立 unwittingly to convince the public of a certain point of view (for or against something) without employing a variety of journalistic conventions such as figures of speech, metaphors and irony. ‧ 國. 學. being explicit” (p.365). However, studies conducted by Cooper and Jahoda (1947) and Carl (1968) demonstrated that the persuasive potential of cartoons might not change readers. ‧. perceptions since they found evidence to proof that the interpretation of the individual reader was. y. Nat. divergent from the cartoonist’s mind. In addition, is difficult to empirically prove a direct causal. er. io. (Morrison, 1969).. sit. relationship between the editorial cartoon and the corresponding behavior in the real world.. al. n. iv n C news photography (Hall, 1973; Banks, 1994; Kress & Van he i U Leeuwen, 1998; Huxford, 2001) and h n c g press (Emmison & McHoul, 1987; Gamson & Stuart, 1992) have shown the prevalence in the. Related to news discourse, research on political cartoons (Morris, 1989; Gombrich, 1978);. research of written or verbal discourse while visual news discourse has obtained less attention. Other studies explore the relationship between the level of satire in political cartoons on the one hand, and the political realities surrounding them on the other. Press (1981) believes that cartooning depends on the political system. In a totalitarian regime, it must praise the system and denounce its enemies. In an authoritarian regime, there is some dispraise, and when the regime becomes brittle, cartooning exposes “their rigid foolishness” (p. 53). In a Western democracy during peacetime, cartoonists are “watchdogs”, keeping power-holders “honest” and “accountable” (p. 56). Morris (1992) continues to examine the status of political cartoons as low,. 19.

(29) medium or high satire. He tests two competing high and medium satire hypotheses by studying cartoons of civil servants and the British royal family, arguing that if they too are portrayed mainly in comic terms, cartooning has become high satire, critiquing politics as an institution. One conclusion Morris arrives is that royalty occupy an intermediate position as targets of cartoon. They are often portrayed as the victims and servants of politicians. The study supports the medium satire hypothesis: most political cartooning targets the democratic and public segments of decision-making processes in the contemporary state. On the other hand, several studies focused on the role of symbolism to influence in a. 政治大 emotional theme of the humor stimulus, be it a joke, a cartoon or a situation” (More & Roberts 立 1957:236). Thus, to enhance the social aspect of humor, providing society with a channel to. cartoon humorous interpretation “reducing the individual’s tension in the area depicted by the. ‧ 國. 學. liberate tension, just as DeSousa & Medhurst (1982) point out, is “Merely the adult’s way of displacing aggression through the adoption of a symbolic substitute” (p.84). In this sense, an. ‧. editorial cartoon can be cathartic, resulting in an Aristotelian purgation, recognition or relief. Can. y. Nat. also be adjustive, resulting in behavioral or material change. Thus, relief can happen upon. sit. beholding a negative object or entity being ridiculed, or dysphemized (Lively, 1942).. er. io. But symbols are not only seen as a means for stress release. Scholars and observers have. al. n. iv n C different social groups and their common h e perspective. i InU1966, Victor Alba pointed out that “the h n c g cartoon that uses symbols is found particularly in societies or social groups of less cultural noticed the value of condensing the reality, like for example, when editorial cartoons simplified. refinement: it is the most common form of cartoon” (p.122). Besides, the cartoon replicates cultural values and norms that might induce the readers to think and reflect about certain topics. As a means of visual discourse, editorial cartoon uses particular symbolic expressions to transform ideas into pictorial symbols, which, according to Berger (1990), can have a “conventional meaning that often carries a great ideal of emotional baggage with it” (p.148). DeSousa and Medhurst (1982) observed, the strength and the impact of an editorial cartoon lies not only in the cartoonist’s intent of success but also “in the degree and the manner by which the cartoonist taps the collective consciousness of readers and thereby. 20.

(30) reaffirms cultural values and individual interpretation of those values” (p.148). Moreover, Carl (1970) concluded that cartoon readers may not interpret cartoons as the cartoonist intended and that no two persons see a single cartoon in exactly the same way, which suggests that cartoons like many visuals, are polysemic. To conclude, the above review shows that political cartoons have been studied from diverse approaches. Nevertheless, they have not been employed as a means of analyzing its message of a major political event such as the construction of the border fence between Mexico and the U.S.A.. 立. 政治大. 2.3 Cartoons Researched in Cultural Studies and Semiotics. ‧ 國. 學. Cultural Studies are a discursive formation that is a cluster of ideas, images and practices, which provides ways of talking about forms of knowledge and conduct associated with a particular. ‧. topic, social activity or institutional site in society (Hall, 1997a: 6). They have no simple origins;. sit. y. Nat. have multiple discourses as a whole set o formations including many different kinds of work. According to Chris Barker in “Cultural Studies, theory and practice” (2003), a good deal of. io. er. cultural studies is centred on questions of representation. That is in how “the world is socially. al. n. iv n C understoodhase the n gstudy c h iof Uculture. constructed and represented to and by us in meaningful ways” (p.8). In fact, the central strand of cultural studies can be. as the signifying practices of. representation. Cultural representations and meanings have a certain degree of materiality, they are embedded in sounds, inscriptions, objects, images, books, magazines, and television programmes. They are produced, enacted, used and understood in specific social contexts. The process of ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ a text, image or symbol is included within the cultural studies grounded in the basic context of semiotics, where ‘decoding’ involves not simply basic recognition and comprehension of what a text or image ‘says’ but also the interpretation and evaluation of its meaning with reference to relevant codes. Hall (1980) referred to various phases. 21.

(31) in the Encoding/Decoding model of communication as ‘moments’. John Corner offers his own definitions:. (1) the moment of ‘encoding’: “the institutional practices and organizational conditions and practices of production”(Corner 1983:266) (2) the moment of the text: “the... symbolic construction, arrangement and perhaps performance... The form and content of what is published or broadcast” (ibid., 267) (3) the moment of ‘decoding’: “the moment of reception [or] consumption by the. 政治大 “construction”... suggested by the term ‘reception’” (ibid.). 立. ‘reader/hearer/viewer’ which is regarded by most theorists as closer to a form of. ‧ 國. 學. Therefore the present study seeks to use some of the main streams of cultural studies, linking the process of encoding or framing the U.S.-Mexico border wall by the two main actors at the same. ‧. time that is decoded by the other thru the use of semiotics.. y. Nat. In 1973, Berger observed the majority of attention was directed towards the impact of. sit. images in television but editorial cartoons are another visual source of information and. er. io. entertainment. He claimed that “any medium that has the continued attention of hundreds of. al. n. iv n C medium denotes criticism of social issues, the editorial h e nas g i Ucartoon does. h c Based on the pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes is the. millions of people deserves serious attention and study” (Berger, 1973:15), especially if the. rethinking of the traditional notion of text. Semiotics deals with signs. A sign is anything that signifies, or has meanings within a certain code and a given context. Thus, all modern and contemporary media texts for example films, clips, ads, television and radio programs, magazine and newspaper articles, cartoons, posters, are legitimate data for semiotic analysis, which can include discourse analysis. Traditional discourse analysis has taken a more critical stance and developed into critical discourse analysis which, according to Van Dijk (2007) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and. 22.

(32) inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context (p.108). According to Mazid (2008) a discursive-semiotic, multimodal version of critical discourse analysis seems to be necessary in handling many modern and contemporary media texts, including political cartoons. The media, Gamson and Stuart (1992) argues, “provide a series of arenas in which symbolic contests are carried out among competing sponsors of meaning” (p.55). Therefore, political cartoon is a subgenre within a broader arena of humor in the media, where verbal jokes, animations, comic strips and non-political cartoons also belong. 政治大 For instance, in her study of cartoon representations of Saddam Hussein, Conners (1998) 立 confidently asserts that cartoons “can often be understood across cultures, ages, and levels of (Mazid, 2008: 434).. ‧ 國. 學. intelligence” (p. 97). This, she believes, is due to the common use in cartoons of metaphors and symbols which “simplify ideas” and thus enable readers to interpret the images “quickly and. ‧. easily” (p. 100). On the other hand, Giarelli (2006) notices that cartoons develop “a subtle. y. Nat. semiotic structure to generate a particular meaning that is humorous”. Based on a study of. sit. cloning cartoons, she concludes that cloning is used in editorial cartoons “as a vehicle to make. er. io. comments about perceived negative social behaviors or events as a way to show guilt by. al. n. iv n C condemnation of terrorists as of cloning” h e(p.n71). i U h c g But editorial cartoons also communicate political symbols. The study of political symbols association. For example, a cartoon that depicts clones of Osama Bin Laden is as much a. bridges political science, sociology and anthropology and has a quite developed literature dealing with subcategories such as the political aspects of signs (Deshen, 1976); names (Burke, 1969); ceremonies (Aronoff, 1989); memorials (Azaryahu, 1995); holidays (Liebman & Don-Yehiya, 1983; Shamgar-Handelman & Handelman, 1986); flags (Firth, 1973); religious doctrine (Asad,1993; Kopelowitz & Diamond, 1998); ritual (Aronoff, 1977; Kertzer, 1988); “political spectacles” (Edelman, 1964, 1988); and election ephemera (Herzog, 1987). All of these diverse approaches distinguish that symbolic constructs contribute to the creation of meaning within a given political context of power relations.. 23.

(33) As political symbols, editorial cartoons employ a range of potential rhetorical tools to define actors and processes of political and societal culture (Diamond, 2002). Furthermore, Kertzer (1988) notes some very important assets for political cartoons when he notes that “three properties of symbols are especially important: condensation of meaning, multivocality, and ambiguity” (p. 11) and Abner Cohen (1979) coincides: “It is the very essence and potency of symbols that they are ambiguous, referring to different meanings, and are not given to precise definition” (p. 87). Symbols are vague, consequently cartoons are meaningful to those who understand something about the larger discourse in which they are constructed. This discourse. 政治大 meanings which can be grouped under the broad categories of caricature and visual analogy 立 (Hou & Hou 1998). Thus, in a world increasingly dominated by visual forms of communication, includes the visual language of signs, conventions and rhetorical devices to convey and interpret. ‧ 國. 學. many scholars believe that the ability to make sense of visual texts is becoming even more important (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001:1). The present study has benefitted from this tradition. ‧. and it will contribute not only to the literature concerning analysis of visuals but also to the. y. sit. io. er. from both nations.. Nat. decoding of the Mexican-American border issue as they are portrayed in the editorial cartoons. n. a. l C 2.4 Frames and Framing Research. hengchi. i Un. v. Goffman (1974) has insightfully noted that human beings organize or “frame” everyday life in order to comprehend and respond to social phenomena. Frames enable individuals to “locate, perceive, identify and label the world around them” (p.10). He also postulated that the context and organization of messages affect audience’s subsequent thoughts and actions about those messages. Gitlin (1980) took a functional approach to framing. He defined frames as the devices that facilitate journalists to organize a vast amount of information and package it effectively for their audiences. He saw frames as “persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion” organizing the information for both. 24.

(34) journalists and their audiences (p. 7). Later, Entman (1991), one of the framing research pioneers, proposed that news frames exist at two levels: (1) as mentally stored principles for information processing (audience frames) and (2) as characteristics of the news itself (news frames). When applied to media framing, the issues can shape the way the public understands the causes of and the solutions to central political problems (Iyengar, 1991). Media frames then, allow the audience to identify the multiple issues of the social world in a way that could be meaningful to them. In this sense, framing essentially involves selecting “some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in. 政治大 and or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993: 52) frames then, define 立 problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments and suggest remedies.. such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation. ‧ 國. 學. According to Gamson and Modigliani (1989), a news frame is the “central organizing idea or storyline that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events… The frames suggest what the. ‧. controversy is about, the essence of the issue” (p. 143).. y. Nat. News organizations use different words, phrases and images, including those mentally. sit. produced through the use of metaphors to define and construct political issues and controversies.. er. io. These depictions may shape people’s reasoning and attitude about these issues (Nelson et al.,. al. n. iv n C recipientsh of the news come e n g c h i U to understand. 1997). The framing and presentation of events and news in the mass media can thus systematically affect how. these events (Price,. Tewksbury & Powers, 1995). According to Hertog and McLeod (2001) frames derive their power from their symbolic significance as they use recognizable myths and metaphors in the narratives. They also carry “excess meaning” as they activate some related ideas or thoughts and they have an accepted, shared meaning within a culture as they resonate with its members. Such attributes become more potent in the case of visuals as framing devices. Images and signs are powerful framing tools because they are less intrusive than words and requires less cognitive load. Thus, some images have international effectiveness and become apparently universal signs owing their widespread use to the international structures of mass communication (Morgan & Welton, 1992). Images used in news, advertising, arts and literature. 25.

(35) have not only a high attractive value but also they often give the first impression of a story, and they are readily remembered (Rogers & Thorson, 2000). Therefore, visuals are good framing devices because, according to Wischmann (1987), they are “capable of not only obscuring issues but [also] of overwhelming facts” (p. 70). Editorial cartoons can be analyzed for the frames they suggest. According to Messaris and Abraham (2001), visuals have three distinguishing characteristics to frame news issues: (1) the analogical quality of images refers to the fact that association between images and their meanings are based on similarity. The authors propose that because images are relatively. 政治大 to understand them. (2) the indexicality of images. Because of their true-to-life qualities or 立 indices, “photographs come with an implicit guarantee of being closer to the truth than other. analogous to the real objects they represent, no grammar or rules of usage have to be learned first. ‧ 國. 學. forms of communication” (p. 217); images then, become evidence for something and due to indexicality, most viewers may not question what they see because they see what they believe it. ‧. exist in the illustration. (3) the lack of an explicit propositional syntax in images refers to the fact. y. Nat. that visuals do not have a set of conventions for making propositions like cause-and-effect. sit. relationships. It offers a clear stumbling block in the identification of frames because claims are. er. io. less likely to be perceived in visual depictions of reality that stand without text. Viewers mostly. al. n. iv n C being presented with pre-selected information, h e n gwhich imayUomit certain visual cues. h c For example, Borah and Bullah, (2006) examined how five newspapers from different. make sense of images with the help of contextual or other cues and might be less conscious of. parts of the world depicted the Indian Ocean tsunami and hurricane Katrina during their first week. The salient frames identified across the five newspapers were categorized in six groups: lives lost, lives saved, physical damage, emotional frame, political frame and other. In a qualitative analysis of newsmagazine photos about stem cell research, Smith (2006) found four themes that emerged as news frames—science, politics, medical and religion. Fahmy et al. (2006) analyzed images of hurricane Katrina, comparing the photo offerings of the Associated Press and Reuters against the pictures on the newspaper front pages and they found. 26.

(36) significant difference in the presence of frames that relate to “timeframe, location, victims, race, emotional portrayal, officials, aerial depictions, death, and portrayals of officials” (p. 12). However, frame studies for visuals have been focused only on photographic evidence in newspapers and magazines. This thesis intends to extend frame studies to cartoons as visuals by identifying the frames and symbols in the cartoon representation of the U.S.-Mexico border wall.. 2.5 Research Questions. 政治大. Essentially, the visual discourse in editorial cartoons provides evidence about a social. 立. issue. Through the use of metaphors, phrases and satires in a rhetorical metalanguage, the. ‧ 國. 學. editorial cartoons frame the information and organize graphically the essence of a current issue. As Gamson and Stuart (1992) have argued, political cartoons “offer a number of different condensing symbols that suggest the core frame” of the event (p. 60). Thus, the editorial cartoon. ‧. helps the audience to condense and process large quantities of information in a faster and. io. y. sit. issue.. Nat. simplest way giving the discursive possibilities a direction to aim the understanding of a social. er. The framing and presentation of events and news in the mass media can thus. al. n. iv n C Powers, 1995). In this sense, Entmanh(1993) e n gpointed c h i outU“Frames call attention to some aspects systematically affect how recipients come to understand these events (Price, Tewksbury &. of reality while obscuring other elements, which might lead audiences to have different reactions” (p. 55). However, the framing theory has been applied mainly in analyzing texts (Berger, 1991). The question of how issues are framed through the images such as cartoons has remained relatively underresearched (Bell, 2001). This disparity has to be corrected considering that just as in textual framing, images as modes of communication have properties that either “enhance or mitigate their consequences” (Messaris & Abraham, 2001: 215) and therefore this thesis intends to contribute in the expansion of literature linking frames and editorial cartoons.. 27.

(37) Despite the historical construction of the separation wall between the United States and Mexico, its portrayal in editorial cartoons has not been analyzed yet. Therefore, this thesis intends to examine the political cartoons established in the following research questions: 1. How did the Mexican press frame the U.S.-Mexico border fence in political cartoons of the wall? 2. How did the American press frame the U.S.-Mexico border fence in political cartoons of the wall? 3. How did the American political cartoons differ from the Mexican political cartoons?. 政治大 In order to answer the research questions this thesis intends to utilize a qualitative approach to 立 political cartoon images published from 2003 to 2008 in major Mexican and American. ‧ 國. 學. newspapers. The purpose is to identify the main frames in the newspapers cartoons’ in order to decode the different messages and symbolisms towards this social issue through which one can. ‧. understand the U.S.-Mexico border as seen in the newspapers in the two countries.. y. Nat. From the review of existing body of literature, we find that political cartoons transform. sit. abstractions into visual symbols. As the main actors in the border wall issue, Mexico and the. er. io. United States will make use of symbols to encode the American Security fence in the editorial. al. n. iv n C process. Each country has the liberty its own h etonexpress i U opinion and concerns towards the h c g American-Mexican border wall, and the political cartoons in this case, serve as evidence of this. cartoons, and both actors will also decode it in a certain manner through the encoding-decoding. fact. In addition, Gamson (1992) refers to a frame as “an implicit organizing idea” which informs and shapes public discussion pointing what is relevant and what is not (p.3). Yet, there is a need to expand the empirical database since little has been done to study the relation between frames and editorial cartoons such as this analysis will address with the case of the U.S.-Mexico border wall because framing constructs the visuals and as a consequence, leads to the idea that different media may present different pictures of reality.. 28.