An Exploration of Dialogue Characteristics by Editorial Cartoons in the First Decade After Constitutional Rrevolution

Editorial cartoons, as critical-artistic expressions functioning in media contexts, potentially can enrich our understanding of the cultural aspects in a society. Through methodological integration of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s social semiotics framework and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis methodology, this study aims to explore those characteristics that are associated to dialogue in editorial cartoons in the context of first ten years after Constitutional Revolution. Furthermore, the article intends to identify different aspects of the pattern of verbal communications between Iranians.
We selected 25 editorial cartoons were from three satirical newspaper namely Bohloul, Tanbih and Ayine-e-ghaib Nama as our samples. Our analysis shows that while changing throughout the course of time, the pattern of verbal communication in this decade had been monological. Our findings indicate that in this decade dialogue should be characterized with a variety of elements including eliminating the “other”, imposing silence by using violence against the “other”, extremism (by excommunicating, accusing and spreading rumor). Hypocrisy, conformation, flattering and prejudicing, and questioning the oppressor are other dialogue characteristics