Abstract:
This article integrates national and international levels of political humorous
discourse and proposes a multimodal analysis of the discursive dimension
of the Russian–Ukrainian war and its implementation in political humour. The
author analyses the distribution of supportive/subversive humour in world,
Ukrainian and Russian political cartoons targeting Ukrainian President
Zelensky and Russian President Putin and representing the conflict parties,
with special attention to the presentation/setting. The distribution of sup portive vs subversive political humour is based on an analysis of the target,
focus and setting of political cartoons depicting Putin and Zelensky, and on
the interaction of verbal and nonverbal elements in the cartoons. Political
cartoons can be defined by their goals, frames of reference and means.
These corresponding parameters (goal–target, frame of reference–focus,
means-setting) as well as the correlation between self-image/external image
and supportive/subversive political humour provide the analytical framework
for the article
