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Exploring the Ambivalence of Liquid Racism: In between antiracist and racist discourse
Edited by Argiris Archakis and Villy Tsakona
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 341] 2024
► pp. 118–142

Chapter 5
Liquid racism, metaphor and the visual modality

| University of Malta
| National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
The extant literature on liquid racism has focused primarily on the rhetorical impact of humor. In this Chapter, we shift the focus to the role of metaphor as a means of conceptualization. Drawing on ideas and tools from the fields of critical discourse studies, conceptual metaphor theory and multimodal communication, we discuss how metaphorical framing can correspondingly constitute a vehicle for liquid racism, by zooming in on Greek political cartoons on the refugee ‘crisis’ in the Mediterranean Sea. To wit, we argue that, in this setting, the use of visual metaphor to refer to migrants can give rise to ambivalent evaluative imports that allow for racist undertones to enter the picture.
Keywords: visual metaphor, conceptualization, political cartoons, migrant representations, ambivalence
Article outline
  • 1.Liquid racism: From humor to (conceptual) metaphor
  • 2.The critical study of discourse
  • 3.Metaphor and the discursive (re)production of racism
  • 4.Metaphor, liquid racism’s ambivalence, and the visual modality
  • 5.Visual metaphor in Greek political cartoons on the refugee ‘crisis’
    • 5.1Criticizing the authorities
    • 5.2Inducing sympathy towards migrants
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.341.05ass
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