Grammar of Visual Design: an analysis of representational metafunction in cartoons about racism

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the representational visual metafunction in cartoons which portray racism. In view of this, Grammar of Visual Design (GVD) is a theory that focuses on the systematic and multimodal study of images. In this sense, we begin doing a brief discussion about racism based on Almeida (2019); in order to discuss the visual analysis, we used mainly the theoretical contributions of Almeida (2009), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and Silva and Almeida (2018); to address the theme of the textual genre cartoon, our study was based especially on Alves (2016), Bakhtin (2003), Bazerman (2005), Marcuschi (2008), and Swales (1990). Thus, we proceeded with a qualitative investigation of five cartoons by the illustrator Junião, seeking to verify the representational structures, the narrative processes of action, reactional, verbal and mental, the conceptual processes categorized as classificational, analytical and symbolic; as well as to critically reflect on the contributions of cartoons to the fight against racism. In view of the results obtained, we verified that the narrative structure is present in all of the cartoons, while the conceptual structure is present in only two. Regarding the processes, we identified the narrative processes of action, reactional, and verbal; as we found only the conceptual classificational process. That said, we conclude that cartoons are critical genres and, in the researched corpus, they show and denounce racist practices that are naturalized in our society.