In this paper, we analyze a large-scale corpus of Arab cartoons to measure the correspondence between grammatical
gender in Arabic and personified gender in images. The results show that the effect is very strong for males (a near-perfect
relationship between the two, grammatical and visual depiction), but the reverse is the case for females (the grammatical
description is almost the opposite in perceived meaning of the graphical depiction). It can be a substantive cartoon effect. That
is, there is more ambiguity in images depicting females due to some implicit cultural effect (i.e., males/gendered maleness
dominates even in the text in ‘male-centric’ cultures). We look at the implications of this androcentric behavior for
understanding the complex set of relationships linking language, thought, and culture. Such research will aid both gender studies
and cognition scholarship based on multimodal stimuli.
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Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed
2023. Where Covid metaphors come from: reconsidering context and modality in metaphor. Social Semiotics 33:5 ► pp. 971 ff.
Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed
2024. Taboo metaphtonymy, gender, and impoliteness: how male and female Arab cartoonists think and draw. Social Semiotics 34:3 ► pp. 331 ff.
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