Spoiling or the Saving Faces in Pakistani Newspapers: A Multimodal Discourse Perspective on Analyzing Political Cartoons

In this paper, an attempt has been made to discuss in detail the face saving and face spoiling nature of the political cartoons in Pakistani newspapers. Besides giving an overview of multimodality and political cartoons first, findings of different researchers in contexts other than that of Pakistan have been documented in order to give the reader a broad outlook on the connotations of political cartoons. It is asserted that the area remains unexplored in the Pakistani context. This is followed by a study of political cartoons in Pakistani newspapers using Kress and Van Leeuwen's (2006) Visual Social Semiotics. In the end, it is suggested that the political cartoons aim to spoil the face of one participant while saving that of another depending on the political affiliation of the media group.