Metaphorical creativity contributing to multimodal impoliteness in political cartoons

Abstract Using a corpus of mainly Arabic political cartoons, this article investigates the relationship between multimodal impoliteness and metaphorical creativity. It offers an interesting and admittedly tentative argument that many aspects of creativity in language and verbo-visual arts may be related to what I call “frame flouting or exploitation”―a notion compatible with various ongoing research programs, including Rachel Giora and her colleagues’ work on salience, defaultness, and optimal innovation. The concept of frame flouting refers to an overt and blatant infringement of a data structure employed for representing generic or geographical, social and historical or stereotypical knowledge or commonly encountered, stereotyped events or situations. A four-type typology for frame exploitations is proposed: (i) “frame element” exploitations; (ii) script (or scenario) floutings; (iii) “default context” violations; and (iv) inference exploitations. Frame floutings may thus also be the basis for incongruity and humor. This research will aid both cognition studies and creative impoliteness scholarship based on nonverbal and multimodal stimuli.