Multimodal metaphors and sexism in Arabic cartoons depicting gender and gender relations during COVID-19

Abstract Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, extensive research has been done on how the pandemic has been metaphorised. However, little research has focused on how the pandemic is associated with the depiction of gender relations in political cartoons. Therefore, this study showcases sexism and gender relations by examining how both gender and gender relationships have been expressed metaphorically. It draws on conceptual metaphor theory as well as concepts related to visual metaphors in multimodal discourse, covert sexism, and dehumanisation to analyse a corpus of 100 Arabic cartoons depicting men and women alone and as couples that were published during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate that typo-pictorial metaphors and those related to body modification, dehumanisation, and the coronavirus are associated with prevalent covert sexism during the pandemic. In short, the findings suggest that COVID-19 has contributed to how women in relationships have been negatively portrayed in Arabic political cartoons. In terms of theoretical implications, the study results show that a more general theory of multimodal sexism in political cartoons should be used to address various types of identifiable sexism in multimodal contexts; this approach is useful for both multimodal scholars and discourse analysts in various disciplines.