Discursive and visual semiotic analysis of Saudi cartoons

Little research has been done on how ideology and identity are reflected within pop culture in Saudi Arabia. This thesis analyzes a set of comics created by Saudi artist Abdullah Jabber. These comics are notable for discussing some issues in Saudi community. The artist chose to offer some messages in a humorous frame that actually focus on presenting the old and new information in most of the cartoon, which is proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996). Fifteen comics from Abdullah Jabber's Instagram page that have religious, social and entertaining content provide the data for this analysis. Each of the comics includes the following Saudi cultural content: gender differences, economic concerns, and media use. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, humor theories, and visual semiotics, I analyze the comics for how their linguistic and visual content project identities and ideologies of Saudi as well present the message in humorous way. The survey given to 21 Saudis asks about interpreting the meaning of the message and presenting their agreement status with each cartoon. In the responses, all Saudis reflect their religious identity as well as their gender and ethnic identities. Their responses show that their ideologies are Islamic. Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) analysis of spatial distribution is useful for interpreting Saudi cartoons. However, I have revised this model as a result of the Arabic writing system. The cartoonist represents the Islamic identity and ideology through some of his cartoons. He also tends not to generalize bad behaviors to all Saudi by presenting 'offer' images. These images convey some behaviors and some social issues that have to be changed for improvement of Saudi society.