Satirizing the Nigerian Climate: Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Selected Political Cartoons from TELL Newsmagazine

The study identifies the multimodal discourse features of selected cartoons from TELL newsmagazine. It analyses the features of multimodal discourse in the cartoons, discusses the manners of their deployment in the cartoons and relates the features to the contexts in which they were applied. These are done with a view to discovering their intended implicating messages, especially in the visual images. The study employs both primary and secondary data. The primary data are drawn from cartoons of TELL newsmagazine in Nigeria, while the secondary data are obtained from books, journal articles and the internet. The data are analysed using the frameworks of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) as explicated by Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen 2001. The paper concludes that the cartoons are deployed to enhance easy understanding and comprehension of the messages on sensitive political issues.