THE MULTIMODAL METAPHOR IN MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF DISPOSSESSION

Communicative interaction frequently takes place by resorting to multiple sign systems significantly supported by technologies and targeted at unforeseeable interlocutors. From this perspective, language is merely a sign system whose ways of creating meaning have expanded. In this paper and in conformity with cognitive theories, metaphor, as a semiotic resource, is understood to go beyond language use since it is structured on the basis of different sign systems and it formulates knowledge, thought, and social action. The article studies metaphors produced and understood in diverse semiotic modes in order to apply them in an ongoing research project aimed at analyzing four caricatures from the digital newspaper eltiempo.com and three from elespectador.com, which form part of a larger body of materials compiled from digital media. The paper offers some reflections on the multimodal metaphor, its relation to verbal metaphor, and the processes of expansion of meaning deriving from a possible interpretation. Finally, it draws some conclusions regarding the media representation of dispossession.