Oil as narcotic or as medicine: the DISEASE metaphor in political cartoons on energy crisis

1 Introduction

Energy crisis reemerged since the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic and was exacerbated by the Russia’s military action, which has invoked widespread fear and public discussion. Political cartoons have been a key genre in the discussion, playing a significant role in framing the issue of energy crisis and shaping public understanding. As a widespread genre of media discourse on political issues, cartoons conventionally aim at “exposing something bad or shameful rather than to highlight the positive” (El Refaie 2009a: 176). Compared with the verbal account, cartoons, equipped with multiple modalities and metaphors in particular, render a unique way of understanding, and accordingly a positioned interpretation and evaluation of the political issue. Political cartoons, which prompt readers “to map properties from a more tangible area of reality onto one that is more abstract” (El Refaie 2009b: 186), have great potentials to influence and even manipulate public perceptions of certain politicians and their political acts (Popa 2013). Such functions are to a large extent realized by multimodal metaphors, which act as a bridge between the individual and the political by “providing a way of seeing relations, reifying abstractions, and framing complexity in manageable terms” (Thompson 1996: 186).

Multimodal metaphors in political cartoons have attracted wide attention in communication, linguistics, and politics (e.g. Bounegru and Forceville 2011; Đurović and Silaški 2016; El Refaie 2003, 2009a; Forceville 2005; Kwon 2019; Schilperoord and Maes 2009; Zhang and Forceville 2020). Linguistic studies have been concerned with the construction of social and political issues through multimodal metaphors in political cartoons, such as global financial crisis by illness/disease metaphors (Bounegru and Forceville 2011), Serbia-EU relationship by school, sport, journey, and liquid scenarios (Đurović and Silaški 2016), Brexit by journey metaphor (Silaški and Đurović 2019). In addition to critical metaphor analysis on a wide range of political and social topics, many studies focus on the subtle cognitive operations related to multimodal communications, such as image alignment (Teng 2009), conceptual integration (Kwon 2019; Pérez-Sobrino 2017), multimodal fusion (Lin and Chiang 2015), and the dynamic interaction of multimodal metaphor and metonymy (Pérez-Sobrino 2017).

A rapid proliferation of political cartoons concerning the current energy crisis emerged since the event occurred, representing the cartoonists’ conceptualization and critique of such a looming crisis. However, the existing studies are primarily concerned with European energy security (Vaughan 2022), energy policy (Ramos et al. 2022), E.U. or USA-Russia relations (Halkos and Gkampoura 2021). Except for a few critical discourse analyses of the intense EU-Russia relationship provoked by recent energy supply (e.g. Romanova 2021; Tichý and Kratochvíl 2014; Tichý 2019), scant attention is paid to the discursive construction and communication of the energy crisis by political cartoons.

The present study is concerned with the deployment of disease metaphor, which is the most frequent representation found by examining collected political cartoons in constructing the current energy crisis. The present study has two-fold goals: One is to aid the identification of implicit content behind which may involve the ideologies or evaluations; the other is to discuss the feasibility and inter-adaptability of applying a particular metaphor to construct the political issue against a specific backdrop. In terms of theoretical framework, we draw on the subsequent three models into an integrated one, namely, Critical Multimodal Metaphor Scenario Analysis (CMMSA): Multimodal Metaphor Analysis (MMA, Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009), Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA, Charteris-Black 2004), and Metaphor Scenario Analysis (MSA, Musolff 2006, 2016). Particularly, the analysis focuses on disease metaphor scenario and gives priority to the method of treatment, one of the most significant and recurring source elements in the scenario.

The remainder of this study is structured as follows: Section 2 provides an introduction to the theories and analytical tools involved. Section 3 presents data and methodology. The interpretation of the disease metaphor in the current energy crisis will be illustrated in Section 4. Section 5 focuses on one of the most important structural elements in the disease metaphor, the method of treatment, with description, interpretation, and explanation. The discussion of our findings and conclusions will be presented in Section 6.

2 Theoretical framework

Basically, our framework CMMSA follows the three-step model of CMA: identification-interpretation-explanation, but for the combination of metaphor with the scenario. The CMA involves steps of identification, interpretation, and explanation of the cross-domain mapping of metaphor (Charles-Black 2004: 34). It shows the process of conceptualizing one thing into another and tries to expose the ideology underlying that process. Questions such as which elements in the source domain are specifically profiled, what attributes are mapped into the target domain, and what attitudes or stances are conveyed are the focus, which makes it applicable to the analysis of the ideology and evaluative content behind the metaphor. A metaphor scenario creates a narrative in which a cluster of metaphors interact to represent scenes, roles, and actions (Schilperoord and Maes 2009; Stone 1988). MSA is to “refine our understanding of the power of metaphor to ‘frame’ the discourses” (2016: 133). In this way, the MSA can be integrated into the CMA framework: identify metaphor scenarios; interpret the major conceptual metonymies and metaphors underpin the scenarios; and explain them at both semantic level and pragmatic level, such as the feature of the scenario, the component, or the realization of the scenario in discourse. As to the present case, metaphor scenarios in political cartoons are manifested multimodally, in particular, in pictorial and verbal manner.

As a multimodal genre, political cartoons draw heavily on metaphors and metonymies which have “strong evaluative and ethical dimensions and therefore is an excellent instrument to discuss ideology” (Forceville 2017: 38). As argued by multimodal analysts such as Forceville and Urios-Aparisi (2009: 11) and Koller (2009: 48), in the case of political cartoons, the metonymy-based metaphors are further organized into scenario, mini-narrative, containing setting, actor, event or on-going actions, conflict, or resolution. A scenario enables the cartoonist to “not only apply source to target concepts but to draw on them to build narrative frames for the conceptualization and assessment of sociopolitical issues” (Musolff 2006: 36). Different elements in the source scenario may embrace distinct narrative processes or constitute variant mini-narratives or mini-scenarios, implying the latent evaluation and assessment about the issue. In this sense, a metaphor scenario offers an opportunity to better account for metaphors based on highly fictive situations depicted. The representation of a certain situation involves not only the construction of an adequate source domain for structuring the target but also requires adequate association with specific political and social background knowledge, such the identity of actors, cause-effect relationships, etc (Pérez-Sobrino 2017: 124).

With respect to the dynamic interaction of cognitive instruments, we are concerned with the representation and roles of metonymy, metaphor, and scenario in meaning construction. “It is impossible to study metaphor without addressing metonymy” (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009: 12). Metonymy can be used to represent the source domain in the form of its conceptual replacement that has contiguity (Mittelberg and Waugh 2009: 334), as the symbolic prompt for the intended cross-domain mapping. In image-dominated multimodal discourse like political cartoons, a cluster of interrelated metonymies tends to be employed to form metonymic chains, i.e., the chained combination of metonymies in which the expanded or reduced domain that results from an initial metonymic operation constitutes the point of departure for another metonymic shift (Pérez-Sobrino 2017: 57). The metonymies or metonymic chains afford access to one concept by calling up another within the same domain.

3 Data and methodology

The cartoons for the present study are collected via the following three cartoon websites: (1) https://cartoonmovements.com (online platform bringing together professional editorial cartoonists from all over the world); (2) https://www.cartoonstock.com (the world’s largest online database of cartoons); (3) https://blackcommentator.com (A large editorial platform that focuses on African world). The cartoons are selected based on the following criteria. First, they are published in English. Second, the period is from February 24, the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine military conflict, to April 1 in 2022, the date of data collection. Third, the thematic topic is energy crisis, which is excavated by keywords of “energy crisis” plus “cartoons”, and combined with energy substances such as “oil”, “gas”, “fuel”, etc., and with reference terms to the crisis (e.g., “shortage”, “dependency”, “embargo”, “cut-off”, etc.). Fourth, the cartoons have disease metaphor scenarios. To be specific, they represent the following elements related to disease metaphor scenarios: the structural elements method of treatment, ways of multimodal representation, cross-domain mapping from disease domain into the target, energy crisis related domain. The cartoons represent such one or some disease-related elements as sickbed, patient, doctor, medical equipment, symptom, medicine or therapy, which readily activates readers’ association with and knowledge of the disease scenario, but the intended meaning is concerned with the energy crisis issue.

As to the metaphor identification, we follow the criteria proposed by Bounegru and Forceville (2011: 213): (1) Two phenomenon that belongs to different categories emerges connection in a given context; (2) The two ends of the connection that the phenomenon gets involved are defined as source domain and target domain which is normally irreversible; (3) There should be at least one element from the phenomenon in the source domain that is mapped onto the target domain through the connection.

The aforementioned search and identification process resulted in 56 cartoons that explicitly represented a metaphor of ‘energy crisis is a disease’ in the total of 103 cartoons, with one of the structural elements ‘method of treatment’ conceptualizing the variant political responses to fossil fuel energy crisis. Therefore, we acknowledge that the disease metaphor is one of the most commonly occurred metaphor (exceeds a half) for constructing energy crisis events, and intend to focus on the disease metaphor scenario. To realize the goals in Section 1, the following research questions are put forward:

1. What metaphor scenarios are represented within the disease metaphor scenario? And what structural elements in method of treatment are represented?

2. What elements from disease scenarios are mapped into the crisis domain?

3. What evaluative and ideological stance is conveyed by the disease metaphor with regard to the social-political context of the energy crisis?

4 The DISEASE metaphor in energy crisis cartoons

disease metaphor is an instrument in representing socio-political crisis event, hence one of the metaphors that have been frequently employed to construct the topic of crisis (Bounegru and Forceville 2011: 214). crisis is related to disease in that they share some consistent characteristics. For instance, both involve urgency or sense of seriousness, and key elements such as cause, consequence, treatment or solution. The adaptability of employing this metaphor in the construction of crisis is underpinned by such an intrinsic connection between the two domains.

The basic elements of disease metaphor in a crisis discourse may include pathogeny, symptom of disease, and method of treatment, which are mapped into the target domain, respectively referring to the cause, the state of and responsive solution to the crisis. In the case of political cartoons, the pathogeny and symptom of disease are inclined to be visually represented by method of treatment, via metonymy in terms of cognitive mechanism. For example, the symptom can be metonymically represented by the action of taking medicine or injection.

The main metaphor energy crisis is a disease involves the following related metaphors: cause of the energy crisis are pathogenies; state of the energy crisis is symptom; solutions to energy crisis are methods of treatment, and the entities involved in energy crisis are patients/medics. However, these metaphors are not squarely represented in an explicit way. There is often a mismatch between the pathogeny and symptom so that it is normally inaccessible to infer symptoms from the pathogeny and vice versa, which means those two elements may not represent each other when constructed in the scenario. Meanwhile, the perception of symptoms can greatly influence the selection of treatments (Posey 2010: 113), so does the identification of the pathogenies, which underlies the importance and indispensability of the structural element method of treatment in disease scenario. In this way, representations of the pathogeny and symptom elements can be optionally projected into the scenarios rather than simultaneously, as the structural element, method of treatment may probably function as replacement, which could prompt readers’ association with certain result.

5 Analysis

Our data has constructed the energy crisis by means of two recurring metonymy-based metaphor scenarios, namely, narcotic scenario and medicine scenario, represented as method of treatment. The cartoons make up their scenarios by making use of the conventional political metaphor a country is a person, and of its extensions like a country/political entity in energy crisis is a patient, reaction/response to energy crisis is treatment of disease, where the essential fossil energy is conceptualized as means of treatment, either as narcotic, the temporary relief and yet ultimate perilous method of treatment, or as medicine, and where the oil/gas supply countries are conceptualized either as narcotic-dealers or as doctors/medical care suppliers.

Our subsequent analysis will start with the cognitive operations prompted by multimodal cues with a view of illustrating the dynamic interactions of metonymy, metaphor, and the mini-narrative of the scenarios, and proceed with more elaborate analysis of the actors, roles, actions, and relations within the given scenarios, with more focus on evaluations or intended messages or stance of the cartoons.

5.1 The NARCOTIC scenario

The fossil energy is narcotic metaphor targets at the industrial civilization which has been so heavily dependent on fossil energy that paucity of its supply would bring about large-scale suffocation, with mappings shown in Table 1. The political cartoons metaphorically conceptualize the dependence as narcotic. As is it known to everybody, narcotic has two-fold effects: temporary symptom-relief and detrimental addiction. In this line, by cross-domain mapping, heavy dependence on fossil energy is the addiction to narcotic. The energy crisis and other subsequent social crisis are the detrimental consequences of narcotic. The dependents on fossil energy, in the form of nation, region or civilization as a whole, are the narcotic-addicts who take narcotics for temporary relief but have to take its ultimate detrimental effect. On the other hand, this narcotic metaphor suggests that the entities involved in the crisis are virtually manipulated by the narcotic, i.e., the fossil fuel, as the case with the narcotic-addicts’ manipulation by narcotic dealers or providers. The cross-domain mapping of the NARCOTIC metaphor is presented in Table 2.

Table 1:

Cross-domain mappings in the a country/political entity in energy crisis as a patient metaphor.

Person	→	Nation
Patient	→	Nation/institution in energy crisis
Symptom	→	The impact/situation of crisis
Treatment of disease	→	National/institutional reaction/response
Narcotic/medicine	→	Fossil energy/oil/gas
Addiction to narcotic	→	Dependence on oil/gas
Injection/transfusion	→	Actions for getting out of energy crisis
Medical care giver	→	Oil/gas external supplier

Table 2:

Cross-domain mappings in cross-domain mappings in the fossil energy as narcotic metaphor.

Narcotic-addicts	→	Fossil energy dependent
Narcotic	→	Fossil energy(oil/gas)
Narcotic-taking action	→	Energy consuming action
The condition of the narcotic-addicts	→	The effect of dependence on fossil energy

As regards the multimodal representations, the representations of the source and the target domain vary. For instance, one scenario may saliently represent the narcotic-taking action of an actor (e.g. Figure 1), highlighting the agency of the actor, whereas another scenario may profile an actor’s passive narcotic-taking by other’s injection (e.g., Figure 8). In either of the representations, the detrimental toll of the narcotic-taking action would be readily inferred by readers, regardless of the fact that the former largely targets at the narcotic-taker’s ridiculous self-initiative action while the latter at both the narcotic-taker and the narcotic-injector, and critical tone with the narcotic-taker’s deplorable manipulation by double external actors: narcotic and narcotic-supplier or dealer. In this way, the latter shoots more at the manipulation relationship between the narcotic-addict and the provider as well as the passiveness or compulsivity of the narcotic-taking actors.

Figure 1:

Global addiction.

In terms of cognitive operation, metonymies play a primary role in representing either the source or/and the target domain, on which metaphorical mappings, scenario associations, and evaluations are prompted subsequently. For instance, Figures 1 –8 depict fossil fuel as narcotic with the representation of both visual and verbal metonymies, such as the container metonymy: oil barrel (Figures 2, 3, and 5), the oil barrel plus verbal sign of “oil” (Figures 1, 3, and 6), the gas pipeline (Figure 8), or the quality metonymy: the black color for oil plus the verbal sign of “oil and gas” (Figure 7). These visual or/and verbal metonymies serve to represent the target domain fossil energy. Meanwhile, the source domain narcotic is also metonymically represented: the narcotic-taking actions, the acting manners in particular, as sniffing in Figures 1 and 7, injecting in Figures 2 –6 and Figure 8; the color, shape or state of the goals, as black/crimson liquid in Figures 1, 4, 6, 7, as well as the instruments or circumstances, as the sucker in Figure 1, the injection syringe in Figures 2 –6, and Figure 8. These metonymies, in combination with others, jointly constitute metonymy-chains, or networks, which are interwoven into the metaphorical mini-narrative, contributing to the operations of metaphorical mapping.

Figure 2:

Oil-dependent world.

Figure 3:

Oil-addict.

Figure 4:

U.S. oil addiction.

Figure 5:

Oil dependency of U.S.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

On the metonymic realizations of the source and target domains, the political cartoons deploy further multimodal cues for triggering the cross-domain mapping of the disease metaphor. First of all, as far as the mega-metaphor fossil fuel is narcotic is concerned, the situational contexts represented play a predominant role in prompting cross-domain mapping, i.e., yielding contextual metaphor (Forceville 2008: 184). As in Figure 1, the target domain fossil fuel, metonymically represented by visual barrel and the labeling word “oil”, acts as the goal of sniffing action in the pictorial representation of the source domain narcotic-taking, i.e., the narcotic. In this fashion, the attributes of narcotic, the structural relationship of narcotic to narcotic-taking, and the latent consequences of narcotic-taking to the narcotic-addict would be systematically mapped onto the target domain fossil fuel, giving rise to the multimodal metaphor oil is narcotic. In other words, certain metaphoric elements from the target domain take the place of the counterparts in the lsource domain, whereby invoking mapping. Second, in relation to the mega-metaphor, the constitutive sub-metaphors are mostly represented by visual similarity as in the case of Figures 1 –3, the globe standing for the earth share a similar shape with the head of the actor, besides the spatial placement, representing the metaphor the world addicted to fossil fuel is narcotic-addict. The metonymy of the globe for actor may be interpreted as a personification metaphor: the world/fossil civilization is a person/narcotic-taker as in the case of Figure 1, which demonstrates the continuum from metonymy to metaphor and their interaction (Pérez-Sobrino 2017).

Third, the sub-metaphor may also be represented by verbal labeling to a visual image in a manner of symbolic conflation as the word “EUROPE” on the image of a sniffing nose in Figure 6 and “E.U.” on the sleeve in Figure 7. The verbal and visual interplay also works in other Figures like 1, 3, 6, 7, with the word(s) such as “OIL”, or “G.A.S.”, “PUTIN” pasted on the images, invoking cross-domain mapping. Lastly, the symbolic cultural image for a country, i.e., symbol metonymy-based metaphor is frequently employed in political cartoons as in the case of Figures 4 –6, in which Uncle Sam, either a full image or a part of his dressing, stands for the country U.S.A. The personification is also recurringly manifested by visual representation of the political leader of the country, often in a form of caricature as the image of Putin in Figure 8.

In addition to the aforementioned types of multimodal representations of the metonymy-based creative metaphors, the political cartoons are also inclined to deploy primary or conventional metaphors like: degree of dependence is large in size, the peril of energy crisis is unbalance in body parts in Figure 1; the degree of detriment is the size of injector in Figures 2 –6, and 8; the power/dominance/control is big size as in Figures 4, 5, 7 and 8, and also the color metaphors like catastrophe is grey/darkness in color as in Figures 1, 3 –6.

The metaphor scenarios of disease all take personification as an organizing tool. As personification enables the scenario to represent complex issues and relationships in a much more straightforward and easily understandable form (El Refaie 2003: 91), the involving entities, abstract or intangible however they are, can be represented as a person in form, whose action can also be easily represented in a pictorial way, together with the goal or circumstances of the action, from which the outcome or relations among the participants of the event can be triggered. For instance, in Figures 1 –3, the actor represented in the scenario is the earth, with the scenario-related metaphor the earth is person/narcotic addict. In the scenario of Figure 1, the earth is “taking narcotics” with a nasal sucker, “a curled paper money,” represented by a visual metonymy plus the verbal symbol of dollar, which implies energy dependence is not only risky but also heavy in terms of expense. Meanwhile, in this scenario, the element of oil, in the form of visual barrel, black liquid and the word “OIL”, is represented as the goal of narcotic-taking material process, whereby creating the metaphor oil is narcotic. However, this metaphor is not squarely constructed on the ground that there is a mismatch between the liquid oil and powdered narcotic which is the assumed goal element of “nasal suction”. This mismatch constructs the absurdity of the narcotic-taker as well as the irresistibility of the temptation of the narcotic, i.e. the high degree of his addiction. In other words, oil is taken as solution or treatment by the earth-person, whereas it would definitely produce more detrimental outcome in the eyes of competent readers who have the assumptions about the “typical” aspects of a narcotic-taking situation. In addition, within Figure 1, the sharp contrast between the large barrel and the narrow flow line of the black liquid also metonymically stands for the exhaustibility of the oil reserve, thereby highlighting the extent of absurdity of the earth-person’s addiction and predicting the due of the doom day.

Compared with Figure 1, the energy-narcotic metaphor is more complicated in terms of scenario representation in Figures 2 and 3 by highlighting the injecting action and the instrument of narcotic injector. The elements from two domains are mapped by replacing the injector tube with an oil barrel or plus with the verbal sign of oil. Coupled with the representation of the tourniquet, and the exhausted facial expression (Figure 2), the metaphor fossil energy as solution to crisis is narcotic-taking as treatment is explicitly constructed.

While the preceding cartoons are concerned with the earth as a whole, Figures 4 –8 are with specific countries and international relationships around energy. In Figures 4 –6, the actors represented are the U.S. with the related metaphor “us is a person/narcotic-addict”. In Figure 4, the scenario represents an arm instead of a whole person, which is part for whole metonymy, showing the part where the narcotic-injecting action usually takes place. The barrel-shaped tube of the injector strengthens the connection between fossil energy and narcotic, and the representation of a bloody state of the arm represents the harmful effect by injecting oil, thus constructing the energy consuming is narcotic taking metaphor. The element in Figure 6 is similar to Figure 4, with the Uncle Sam, the barrel-shaped tube of the injector plus the verbal sign of “oil”, and the dizziness of the narcotic-addicts representing the ridiculous state of U.S. in the crisis. In cartoon 4 and 6, the detrimental attributes of the oil are saliently mapped. Figure 5 is slightly different in that the oil barrel is positioned at arm side, triggering the interpretation of the source provider of the narcotic for injection. In this scenario, the verbal sign “hooked” explicitly represents the addictive state of U.S. to narcotic.

Figures 7 and 8 involve multiple actors, which focuses more on the relationship between actors. In Figure 7, one of the actors is Europe, realized by verbal metonymy of the written sign “EUROPE” and a part for whole metonymy, which shows the nose of the person, thus representing Europe as a person/narcotic-addicts. Another actor is Russia, realized by the verbal sign “PUTIN”, leader for the nation. The scenario is concerned with representing the image of Europe as narcotic-addicts who is sniffing narcotics from Russia, the provider, signifying the E.U.’s addictive dependence on Russia may cause trouble and would possibly be poisoned or manipulated instead by Russia. In a similar vein, Figure 8 constructs a scenario of power control: E.U. and Russia are represented with personification by leader metonymy, with Russia taking a gas pipeline as the injector to inject the gas/narcotic into E.U./narcotic-addicts so as to relieve its addictive symptom, which is represented by the unsettled facial expression on the E.U.’s face. Though the two cartoons both construct E.U. as a narcotic-addicts and Russia as a provider, the intended metaphorical messages are different. In Figure 7, the absence of visual representation and the allocation of the semantic goal of Russia construct a negative image of E.U. as a provocative actor, a self-destroying narcotic-taker. While in Figure 8, the narcotic-taking action is conducted and dominated by the injector holder Russia, which may highlight the E.U.’s passiveness or perilous compromise in the energy crisis.

Notice that whatever the attributives of fossil energy are represented in each image in this section, the intention behind it is to convey a warning about the possible negative consequences towards the entities who take fossil energy as solution or somewhat cause of the current energy crisis.

5.2 The MEDICINE scenario

Medicine is defined as a treatment for an illness or injury, of which one of the essential attributes is the therapeutic effect. In this scenario, the fossil energy is constructed as medicine with the metaphor energy is medicine in view of its positive effect in dealing with the problems in the target domain, just as the medicine’s function in the source domain. Therefore, the therapeutic attributes of medicine are mapped to fossil energy in the scenario.

In Figures 9 –15, the medicine scenarios construct fossil energy as therapeutic medicine by means of visual and/or verbal representations of metonymies as a significant pointer to the medicine domain, in relation to verbal and/or visual metonymic representations of the target domain fossil energy, i.e., oil/gas. For instance, the infusion set and overall scenario in Figures 9 and 10, the oxygen inhaler and the overall inhaling scenario in Figures 11 and 12, and the blood transfusion set and the overall scenario in Figures 13 and 14, the stomach relief, i.e. named as “Gas-X”, in Figure 15, all are prototypical elements for the scenarios, i.e., metonymies for the source domain therapeutic medicine in medical care scenario.

Figure 9

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figure 14

Figure 15

In the same vein with the above narcotic scenario in terms of cross-mapping mechanism, in these cartoons, built on these metonymies, the metaphor oil/gas is medicine is constructed by means of contextual replacement. For instance, in Figures 9 and 10, the infusion bottle is replaced by the oil barrel by virtue of similarity in shape and of the verbal label “OIL” in an inverted manner in Figure 9 as well, whereas in Figure 11, the oxygen inhaler is replaced by the gas tank labeled verbally as “RUSSIAN GAS”. The metaphor Russian gas is medicine accounts for the ironical pragmatic effect of the cartoon, representing the cartoonist’s critical stance at E.U.’s conceptualization of “RUSSIAN GAS” as lifesaver.

The cognitive operations for Figures 12 –14 are more complicated given the representation of evident narrative conflicts within the scenarios. For instance, in Figure 12, besides the metaphor fossil gas is the inhaled oxygen, the storyline is more evaluation-provoking. On the one hand, the patient, metonymically represented via the emblem of E.U. on the quilt and the footboard, is pointing a gun at the person, who is pulling out the gas pipe, and metonymically represented by the color and pattern of his shirt for RUSSIA, i.e., a metonymy-based metaphor, russia is the person who is threatening eu with cutting off gas supply, a personified metaphor. In addition, the revolver held by the E.U. with a verbal sign of “sanction” can be interpreted as another embedded metaphor: economic sanction is weapon. On the other hand, the gentleman, i.e., U.S.A. stood for by Uncle Sam’s dressing, is calling on the patient to use the oxygen/gas he provides, with less volume and yet higher expense seen from the metonymy of much smaller inhaling machine as well as the long sheet of invoice with the symbol of dollar running on. The scenario reveals the triangle relationship among the three political players around “GAS”, in which both of the two powers in confrontation take their possession of natural gas as an international political weapon to exert control over the others, and E.U. is the party victimized, in a dilemma squeezed by U.S. and Russia. However, the victim still has the power to put up a desperate fight with its sanction “gun”, it may lead to an internecine result whoever the “gun” is shot at. But when referring to the energy crisis event, the final loser may still be the E.U., as it significantly craves to consume fossil energy and completely depend on other countries’ feed, i.e., the Russia or the U.S.

All in all, in the case of Figure 11, the medical care scenario is coupled with contention for international control or hegemony, the combination of which prompts the viewers’ assumption and evaluation of the states-relevant, a better understanding of the essence of energy crisis. In a similar vein, Figure 12 also constructs an ironical conflict scenario of medical care, in which the three international political players are only metonymically represented, either by images of their flags, as the American national flag for U.S.A. and E.U.’s institutional flag for E.U., or by the word “RUSSIA” and “RUSSIAN OIL”, but the divide from confrontation is clearly represented by the primary space metaphor: left versus right, represented by the dividing line, i.e., the arm bestrewed with transfusion apparatus. Beyond this, the divide is more evidently constructed by the verbal expression: “WE WON’T DEPEND ON RUSSIAN OIL”, represented by the speech bubble on the left side of the arm (from the vantage point of the external viewer), indicating the patient’s resistance against Russia, and “NOT RUSSIA” on the right side, the negativity of which profiles E.U.’s abandonment of Russian oil, and his simultaneous submissiveness to U.S.A., an alternative player and yet still a controller. In this cartoon too, the medical care scenario is further coupled with that of a hegemonic contest, in which the ridiculousness or irony intended by the cartoonist is highlighted by the direct connection of oil rigs to blood transfusion as the fatal end of such a care is the common sense of all competent social members. The absurdity of Biden and Boris’ pulling out action in Figure 13 is constructed and triggered in the similar fashion.

The medicine scenarios can also be scrutinized in terms of the number and relationship of the actors or entities represented within the scenarios. Figures 9 and 10 represent mono-actor, including the globe (Figure 9) and the U.S.A (Figure 10), who are visually represented by means of metonymy, and are constructed as patient who is taking oil/medicine infusion. In the cartoons, the evident semantic role conflict within the scenarios, i.e., the barrel of oil in the place of infusion bottle, “OIL” clashing with the assumed semantic role, the medicine instrument in the medical care scenario, triggers not only cross-domain mapping, but negative evaluation over such an abnormal or absurd disease treatment. In Figures 11 –14, more than one actor is represented either by means of a visual image or/and by means of verbal form as RUSSIAN/RUSSIA in Figures 11 and 13. The complexity of the international relationships is constructed with the rising number of actors involved. For instance, in Figure 11, two political actors, the EU and Russia, are represented. The visual representation of the key elements in the scenario like medical wheelchair, the oxygen uptake action, the haggard and worn condition of the patient are combined to construct the image of E.U. as a dying patient, whereas Russia is represented by possessive pronoun as a provider of gas/oxygen. The subtle relationship between the two players is the intended message of the cartoons.

Figure 15 is much more complicated in terms of multimodal representation. First of all, it constructs a shopping scenario, in which two customers are grabbing “Gas-X” represented as “STOMACH RELIEF” commodity. Besides the medicine metaphor, the words: gas prices, war, inflation in the newspaper held by the lady present an additional storyline: the middle line with the bigger sized word “war” in bold and black can be interpreted as the dominant trigger, and the other two smaller words, “gas prices” and “inflation” as the consequences brought by war. From the combination of the two lines, we can know that gas prices are getting higher, one of the manifestations of the energy crisis. The sentence “fill it up” creates a connection between gas energy and gas medicine as the soaring price of gas pushes the actors to hoard the gas as much as possible in case they cannot afford it. This metaphor scenario constructs the panic of the public caused by the current energy crisis. In this scenario, the stomach gaseous distention is mapped into the gas crisis, due to the similarity between the role of gas in solving the energy crisis and the gas-x medicine in treating the stomachache.

From the above analysis, we can find that some prerequisites are required to enable the mapping from disease domain to energy crisis domain. First, they share the essential attributes of severity and perniciousness, thus the similarities are easier to create. Second, they share the same topological structure, including the basic elements, like the pathogenies as the causes, the symptoms as the crisis state, and the methods of treatment as responses or solutions, patients as nations involved, doctors as medical care providers. Third, given elements of the two domains can be represented by means of pictorial/verbal metonymies and/or metaphors in cartoons, which have the capacity to trigger perceptions and conceptualizations of the energy crisis domain in terms of disease domain. Fourth, the represented elements are organized around a storyline to create a min-narrative, i.e., a story-world, in which characters, actions, plots, and instruments are weaved in order to elicit judgment, evaluation, prediction, or emotional response. As in the case of the patient as a narcotic-addict, readers can immediately realize that taking narcotic is a perilous treatment that will inevitably bring about fatal effects. Besides such an evaluation of the key actor’s action, the relations between the main characters within the story world also tend to be part of the spotlight. As in the narcotic scenario, Russia is often conceptualized as the narcotic provider to the E.U. patient, ascribing the responsibility for E.U.’s addiction to Russia as well, hence a stance of imputation and accusation of the two parties: Russia, the powerful controller, EU, the feeble controlled. In the same fashion, in the medicine scenario, both Russia and U.S.A. are constructed as the manipulator and profiteer over EU, the patient who perceives fossil energy as therapy instead. The discrepancy in point of view reveals the nastiness of international relations as well as the imbecility of E.U.

6 Discussion

The analysis of the data shows the disease metaphor is an applicable instrument in constructing energy crisis. Metonymies, metaphors, and mini-narratives all come into play to make up the DISEASE metaphor scenario, where our common experience about narcotic-taking or medical care is employed to construct the complicated energy crisis. The method of treatment from disease metaphor scenario is particularly profiled, in which multiple political actors involved in the energy crisis, such as EU, U.S.A., and Russia, are allocated given roles within the storyline, signifying their international relations and latent future of the current energy crisis and geopolitics on energy.

By largely relying on visual metonymies for the source domain disease and visual and/or verbal representations for the target oil/gas, fossil energy in general, the two recurring scenarios weave the primary actors and key elements into story world, in which the roles of the actors and relevant instruments are evaluated in accordance with the community members’ basic assumptions and beliefs. In this fashion, the disease metaphor is a valid testimony of the instrumental role of conceptual metaphor in shaping an accessible understanding of a complex crisis event. As illustrated by Silaški & Ðurovic (2019: 8), metaphors in political cartoons have “remarkable capacity to simplify things and make them intelligible by enabling people to understand highly complicated phenomena and areas of experience in terms of more concrete ones”. Regardless of the complexity of the energy crisis either in terms of its causes, impacts, or solutions, the cartoons we collected foreground the roles of political actors, actions and their relations at international arena. The data cartoons tend to target at the absurdity of the methods of treatment. The interpretation of the absurdity arises from the shared social cognition ranging from common belief, assumption, to the embodied as well as social experience, which informs the viewers that neither of the treatment, narcotic or therapeutic medicine, is a desirable method to get out of the crisis; instead, by resorting to narcotic and oil/gas medicine, the patients are doomed to debilitation. Thus, the two disease metaphor scenarios elicit negative evaluation of the nations involved.

With regard to cognitive operations, our analysis provides clear lens for scrutinizing the subtle and dynamic interactions of metonymy, metaphor, and scenario. In political cartoons, pictorial/multimodal metonymy acts primer, of which the priming effect on source and/or target domain can be immediately recognized, setting up the stage for metaphor processing. As to the initiator of metaphor processing, our data tend to deploy contextual replacement, with one essential target element taking the place of that in the source, filling the slot in the scenario. This displacement gives rise to semantic conflict, invoking cross-domain mappings. The clusters of metonymies and metaphors are interwoven to build scenarios, in which actors, actions, instruments and their relations are unfolded along the storyline. It is out of multifaceted interplay within the storyline that the communicative purpose of cartoons, such as ironic or humorous stance, attitude, affect, or predictions is realized or experienced by the viewers. In this fashion, multimodal metaphor scenarios are powerful building blocks for the edifice with structured framework, from which lens the given political and social phenomenon can be readily accessible to the common public.

In terms of discursive representation of social practice, the spotlight of these cartoons is largely centered on the actors, i.e., countries or institutions involved in the energy crisis, either as the culprit, manipulator or victim. Either in the narcotic scenario or medicine scenario, Russia is negatively construed, such as a narcotic-provider (Figures 7 and 8), an unreliable therapeutic drug-possessor (Figures 10 –13), suggesting that Russia is a malicious player in this world energy crisis, who is intent on exerting control over EU’s lifeblood, whereas EU and USA are represented as victims (Figures 13 and 14), or as a tricker (Figure 12). It is evident that these political cartoons armed with multimodal DISEASE metaphor scenarios built an ideology square: us versus them, in which the cartoonists are in alignment with the stance of the Western regime, shooting at Russia, ascribing the energy crisis to the provider, a stereotypical Western ideological view which tends to ignore a more fundamental reason of North Alliance’s ever-increasing expansion, a more latent dangerous trigger for the energy crisis.

In a general note, these actors are personified as prototypical members of the scenarios, in which their actions and role relations are commonly expected or stereotypically framed in readers’ mindset, whereby any single violation triggers evaluations and stance-taking. For one example, though it is justifiable for E.U., pictorially represented as a dialysis patient on an armchair, is undergoing lifesaving dialysis, it is against the norm for her to take russian natural gas as oxygen. The contravention elicits negative appraisal of such a treatment or a sense of insanity in the viewers on the ground that natural gas is toxicant itself. In the same vein, none of the actors, E.U., U.S.A., GLOBE, is justifiable in taking oil/gas as narcotic, as lifesaving panacea, as the addiction only leads to the ultimate end of life. In a word, the personified actors, coupled with their actions upon fossil energy and the crisis foreground such essence of the crisis as international political manipulation, a cut-throat battle over survival and hegemony, in which there will be no winner, and neither of the treatment, “elixir” or “toxicant”, will work. The interpretations of the metaphor scenarios in these cartoons are derived from the common world knowledge, which “pertains to an enormous number of facts, beliefs, conventions, and experiences” (Forceville 1994: 13). The knowledge often functions when mappings between two domains occur and require an explanation. The mapping usually defamiliarizes the elements in the domain that can be conceptualized squarely by world knowledge and projected into the other domain. The perceptual immediacy armed with robust emotional impacts facilitates readers’ cognitive processing and conceptualizing of the crisis in reality.

7 Conclusion

In a nutshell, in both metaphor scenarios, the energy crisis is constructed as a disease, with oil/gas perceived as substance for treatment, either as narcotic or medicine. The first metaphor scenario fossil energy is narcotic deliver a message that it would result in more intense addiction and more subjugated to the providers, thereby signifying that it be imperative to reconstruct modernity by resorting to de-centered distributive alternative energy, the only reasonable solution to energy crisis. In the second metaphor scenario, fossil energy is medicine, where oil/gas is perceived by the patients, i.e. the actors involved in the crisis, as medicine for treatment to relieve pain, it seems that the patients were justified in receiving medical care by infusion, transfusion or inhale; however, the readers understand that oil/gas-medicine would bring more detrimental effect to the patient’s health. In sum, both scenarios convey severe criticism of the actors’ ridiculous conceptualizations of and thereupon actions in dealing with oil/gas, which may account for the recurrence of energy crisis. Substantially speaking, it is the fossil-fueled industrialization that constitutes the origin of energy crisis, therefore the only way out of the critical Anthropocene is to utilize alternative energy, to reconstruct our civilization for a sustainable future.

This study uncovers the power of multimodal metaphor scenario in framing such a geopolitical issue as energy crisis in a particular way to facilitate and shape the understanding of the complex relations, on one hand, between E.U. and Russia, or U.S.A., on the other, between man and oil/gas, the fossil energy as a whole.

By reconceptualizing the energy crisis via metaphor scenario, these cartoons present a critical stance at the dominant political actors in dealing with or leading to the severe energy crisis. The disease metaphor in these cartoons serves to delegitimize the energy-based geopolitical manipulations in reality. The present analysis sheds light on the ways in which cartoonists reshape public point of view by enabling a potential shift in the framing of specific event(s).