DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2016.v04i05.012

Pages: 543-555

Editorial cartoons are a media genre discourse used to express opinions, bring up valuable arguments and function as a running commentary on contemporary social issues. The goal of the genre is to provide information and bring to the readers’ notice current crucial issues. Editorial cartoons function as a form of political journalism that presents messages from specific points of view. The subject matter of editorial cartoons is expressed through visual semiotic forms and linguistic forms. This paper aims at unveiling how visual semiotics and linguistic forms are used in newspapers editorials reporting in Kenya to communicate political view points in the run-up to the 2013 Kenyan general elections. The study focuses on two Kenyan mainstream newspapers viz., The Standard and Daily Nation. Content analysis was used to determine the content of the editorial cartoons produced between 1st January and 3rd March, 2013. A total of 30 out of 91 editorial cartoons that were running commentaries on politics and politicians were analysed. Six out of the 30 editorial cartoon texts analysed are given in this paper for illustration. The thirty formed approximately a third of the total editorial cartoon texts on political issues produced during this period. The findings indicate that mainstream Kenyan newspapers editorial cartoons use mainly narrative representational syntactic patterns to express negative viewpoints about Kenyan politicians and political activities. Editorial cartoonists also use interactive forms of meaning making, mainly distance while compositional meaning is used mainly in form of information value: given and new, salience and framing. This study gives a guide to the readers on possible interpretations of cartoon texts. It therefore creates political awareness thus provides a form of civic education to political cartoon readers.