Abstract:
This paper aims at analyzing rhetorical pragma-linguistic features used in political editorial
cartoons of Kenyan newspapers in the portrayal of their political leaders and communication of
political issues. The study adopted a descriptive design. Twenty political editorial cartoons were
selected from the Daily Nation and Sunday Nation Newspapers from October 2013 to October
2014 and analyzed using a pragma-linguistic model incorporating linguistic pragmatic features
and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework. The findings reveal that editorial political
cartoons not only provide entertainment, information and education but also provide additional
insights on first, language and power relations and second, rhetorical linguistic multimodal
communication strategies used in media discourse. The study has implications on place of
language in the media curriculum and need to incorporate linguistic criteria in research
evaluation methodology on effect of online media content on readers.
