Impact of Number and Type of Figures ’ Identification on Accessing Caricatures ’ Meaning

The present paper is part of an MA thesis; it aims at quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the objective of the study which reads: examining the impact of the number and type (strip or comprehensive) of figures’ identification on accessing caricatures’ meaning. The first part of the objective is quantitatively analyzed using EXCEL software whereas the second part of the objective is analyzed qualitatively using Tolman’s Theory of MENTAL MAPS (1948). The study ends up with a number of results, such as the percentages of comprehensive thinking or identification are higher than that of the strip way of identification. As a result, the study concludes that there are many factors that affect image reading where both the number of the figures identified and type of thinking are cases in point. However, it has been noticed that the full identification of figures is important, but what is more important is to know which of these figures need to be comprehensively conceptualized, and the sequence by which such figures are mapped and linked.


Introduction
Living in a digital era is not an easy job; it requires laymen to be technologically qualified in order to be regarded as literate (Riddle, 2009).One of these technological qualifications is the visual literacy.In Sinatra's term (1986), this type of literacy involves a visual restoration or recalling of previous information and experiences for the purpose of communication or information gaining.Due to its rising importance, it has nowadays been regarded, as Giorgis et. al (1999) add, a contingent need; especially in the domain of learning, which has recently become majorly visual.Learners nowadays need to know how to understand the visuals that surround them, and derive meanings critically and analytically.In this regard, Cohn (2012) maintains that to understand visual language, one needs to cognitively represent graphics.For Tezuka (as cited in Cohn, 2012), an image is not a picture or a piece of drawing.It is a story that has a special type of symbols.Thus, to understand visuals, as Kress and Leeuwen (2006) state, one needs to investigate the rules and regulations that characterize such a type of language.
Cognitively speaking and as Yeh (2004, p. 243) says, a text might be understood by the cohesive devices it has, "the adjacency of two phrases", or by linking what is written with what is stored mentally in form of schemata.According to the researchers of the present work, why a text is understood, it is not yet clear cut, let alone when the discourse is an image where there are no tangible cohesive devices, and where everything is derived and linked COGNITIVELY and SUBJECTIVELY (the researchers' emphasis).communication, the viewer is capable of construing the visual pieces of an image based on his/her own mental schemas.

Figures Mapping
Liungman (1991;as cited in Cohn, 2012, p. 7) states that in verbal language, there is phonetics and phonology whereas the corresponding fields in visual language are "graphetics" and "photology".The building blocks of verbal words are phonemes while the building blocks of the objects in an image are graphemes, ie., lines, spirals, and dots that are combined differently to form different basic shapes.Later, these graphemes are used to form figures, which will be combined with other figures to present a specific scene.Accordingly, in Liungman's term "figure" means the object of an image.Other scholars, such as Kress and Leeuwen (1996) refer to such objects as "units".
Different scholars highlighted different factors that affect image understanding.For instance, Jamieson (2007, p. 59) states, to understand or interpret an image, one needs to take into account the psychological, social and cultural factors all together.That is; the viewer or reader of an image needs to relate between the apparent objects and the ideas and the concepts highlighted by these objects to generate a harmonious and unified meaning.In other words, meaning is created via a set of relationships.Such a type of relationships is described by Jamieson (2007) as being creative because it implies different ways of relating, filling the gaps, and planning.In other words, signs in the visual mode are said to offer countless options for coding and re-coding than in verbal language.Consequently, to understand an image, one needs to take into account three levels of meaning: syntactic (ie., the relation between the signs); semantic (ie., the relation between the signs and whey they represent), and pragmatic (ie., the relation between the signs and the social/cultural factors of the users).This proves what Jamieson (2007) says in that the process of construing an image is dynamic in nature; it is physically restricted by the brain, socially and culturally as well.That is; there is not one to one correspondence between an object or an image and its meaning; the relationship between an image and its concept is one to many accordingly.This further supports what he states in that "interpretation is not always uniform" (p.34); it might take different directions depending on the receiver's previous experiences and knowledge.Carter (2012), on the other hand, sheds light on another important aspect in image reading, saying that understanding a discourse does not only involve organizing its components.Rather, it involves "the outcome of cognitive processes among text users" (p.108).That is; deriving meaning or coherence is something that is done by the receivers themselves in their minds and has nothing to do with language.Here, Wang and Guo (2014) state that it is people who make significance and sense of what they read or listen to.They fill the gaps that occur in the discourse by creating cognitive meaningful connections.Hilligoss and Howard (2002;as cited in Al-Bahrani & Al-Azzawi, 2017) add that individuals should know what to read and how to read as receivers are selective in their reading to achieve some purposes.In addition, people decode and interpret events and things according to their background knowledge and anticipations.
As to the pattern or way of thinking, Jamieson (2007) argues that the meaning of visual work is based on two levels: the surface and the deep.When the objects of an image mean directly themselves, the type of meaning is called the surficial or "overt" meaning.On the other hand, when they mean something else, it is called the "covert" meaning.In this vein, Valle and Eckartsberg (1989) state that people perceive meanings or think in two different ways: the first mode of thinking is denotative; it represents the prime meaning of a word in a real world without any linkages or connections with other concepts.The second mode of thinking is the connotative meaning, which represents the associative meaning of a word.The latter type of meaning is implicitly derived based on the way one perceives or recalls the background knowledge.Jamieson (2007) calls this kind of meaning "symbolic art where the viewer is required, or indeed expected, to make the necessary mental connection between the image displayed and its reference which is absent" (p.19).Trask (2008) further pinpoints that the process of meaning identification is not an easy job.This is because concepts have either literal or central meaning; ie., denotative or implicitly associated meaning/connotative.Ajay (2014, p. 31) maintains that human mind works in two different ways: "RADIANTLY and LINEARLY.Radiant thinking is our natural way of thinking.Linear thinking is the way we are taught to think".In this context, Cao (2012, p. 28) believes that people tend to think metaphorically as thoughts are "fundamentally metaphorical in nature".Speaking of metaphor, Nayding (2013, p.33) maintains that metaphor is essential since it enables language users to express things that we cannot express without metaphor.For Hazrati, Yousefirad, Rovshan and Ahmadkhani (2016), metaphor represents an unconscious way of expressing one thing in terms of another.In Song's words (2011), metaphor is used for the purpose of understanding emotions, mind, and all other theoretical or abstract notions that cannot be grasped by hands or seen by eyes.

Objective of the Study
There are many factors that affect image reading and understanding.Among these factors are the number and way of figures' identification.Accordingly, the present study aims at examining the impact of the number of the figures identified and the type of figures dentification (strip/linear or comprehensive/radiant) on accessing the intended meaning of caricatures.

Limitations of the Study
The study is only a small part of an MA thesis.It involves examining two factors that affect image reading, the number of figures identified by the participants and their way of conceptualizing these figures whether in a strip way (linearly) or comprehensively (in a radiant way).Not only this, the emphasis is further shed on examining the general and exact meanings of the caricature in question.That is; any other interpretations that are applicable to the image, but reflect neither the general nor the exact meaning are discarded.The study is conducted on third year students of the Department of English/ College of Education for Women/ University of Baghdad.The number of caricatures examined is only one that reflects an Iraqi social issue; it has been drawn by the Iraqi famous caricaturist, Maitham Radhi.

Literature Review
Many studies have been conducted on the denotative or connotative meanings and on visuals like that of cartoons, photos, images, or caricatures, etc., but from different perspectives.For instance, Gaikwad (2013) investigated the impact of visual presentations to explain grammatical concepts on Chinese undergraduate students' writings.The researcher used quantitative method to measure the syntactic complexity and sentence variety of students' writing using pre and post-test interviews as well.The students were divided into two groups: experimental and control groups.Findings revealed that Chinese students who were given and taught the grammatical concepts using visually written instructions (experimental group) did better than the students in the control group who were taught and given similar lessons using traditional approaches.As a result, the experimental group presented syntactically complex and more sophisticated texts in the post-test.Qualitative findings revealed that visual representations increased the students' conceptual understanding of grammatical concepts.This study further emphasized the role of multimodal learning, and recommended that the visual method would not work successfully in cultures that encourage traditional or routine learning where the aim of which is to pass exams only.Mwelwa (2015) investigated the multimodal instructional texts used in road safety signs in Zambia.The researcher explored the coherence derived from associating the choice of words, colors, images in visual forms like posters, billboards, and brochures with their usages.The researcher adopted Halliday's (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistic model and Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) approach to read visual images.The study concluded that visual forms that are incoherently used badly affect the way the message is accessed, and make some signs ineffective.Rababah (2015) comparatively examined the connotative meaning of some terms used in the American media ten years before and after 11th of September attack.The study was quantitative and qualitative at the same time; it involved (450) million words taken from fictions, magazines, academic journals, newspapers and spoken words.Results have shown that the more frequent terms were eight in number with either an Arabic or English origin, such as: "Sunni", "jihad", "Islamist", "fatwa", "terrorism", "radicalism", "militant" and "fundamentalism" (p.113).The study concluded that the connotative meaning of such words have acquired a negative sense after the attack.
Al-Bahrani, Al-Saadi and Yousif (2016) quantitatively and qualitatively investigated whether image language is universal as Gernsheim said, or it is a source of creativity and ambiguity as Fairclough (1992) presumed.The researchers adopted Barthes' model entitled "Mythologies" (1957) together with Langacker's (1987) cognitive semantic model.The researchers chose one social Iraqi caricature and detextualized it to be examined by the participants.A test was designed by them to achieve the objective of the study, which is represented by identifying the denotative objects of the image.The study concluded that the percentage of part identification was higher than the percentage of full identification, which was (19%) only.The participants' failure to grasp the denotational meaning was due to the absence of the captions; a matter that complicated the process of getting the denotational meaning.The study proved that textless caricatures or images were ambiguous for they give the participants the freedom to express their thoughts and creativity.Furthermore, it proved that images do not have a universal language.
Ali ( 2016) conducted a cognitive semiotic study to explore the impact of captions on caricatures understanding.Five images were randomly chosen from the internet and a test was designed with questions to achieve the objectives of the study.The answers of the questions were in a written form in order to highlight students' different responses.The responses were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed using Pierce's model (1931).The researcher concluded that the students cannot deduce any additional messages with the existence of the captions.Furthermore, the images alone without any captions raised more than one connotation; a result that was opposite to the images with captions.This was because the captions restrict the reader or limit the students' imagination.Therefore, the study recommended that more studies need to be conducted on images to enhance people's understanding of non-verbal language.
In what has been stated so far, one can see that the denotative and connotative meaning can be studied in both text and visuals.Speaking of visuals, the focus was on examining the importance of visuals when teaching, the coherence of multi-model texts, the importance of identifying the key signs in detextualized caricatures, and the importance of caption in image reading.Consequently, still much more work needs to be done on visuals in general and caricatures in particular; specifically on topics that deal with the way an image is read or the factors that affect image reading.

Cognitive Linguistics as an Approach
Cognitive linguistics is an innovative branch of linguistics that was launched in 1970s.It focuses on the correspondence among language, human mind (thought) and experiences.It is strongly affected by other sciences, like psychology, anthropology, and philosophy (Lakoff, 1987).Evans and Green (2006, p.3) describe it as a "movement" because it is not a restricted or a specific theory, but it implies different assumptions, perspectives, and principles which lead to diverse, overlapping, and complementary theories.What makes this domain of knowledge different from any linguistic fields is that it deals with cognition.Cognition means as Brandimonte, Bruno and Collina state (2006, p. 3), a "mental" process that involves a range of functions, such as comprehension, memory coding, perception, recalling, attention, decision making, imaging, reasoning, problem-solving…etc.Here, Geeraerts, Kristiansen, and Peirsman (2010) explain that meaning does not exist in isolation; it is rather transmitted and mapped through the interaction between PEOPLE, and CULTURALLY and SOCIALLY situated cognition (the researchers' emphasis).Besides, the basic element of this approach is concept, which is defined by Pesina and Solonchak (2015) as "an abstract unit used by a person in the thinking process" (p.587), and "a combination of information stored in the memory, which ensures adequate cognitive processing of situations, and the system of concepts shapes the routine worldview of the person".Thus, concepts are "the main culture cell in the person's mental world" (p.588).

The Adopted Theory in Data Analysis
Mental map is a kind of mental representation which aids a person to store, decode and recall information about a relative phenomenon in his environment to make spatial decisions (Downs & Stea, 1977).The pioneer of this theory is the cognitive psychologist Edward C. Tolman (1948).He states that learning does not only involve "stimulus-response connections"; however, humans create a map-like representation within the nervous system which is employed to guide their everyday activities (Tolman, 1948, p. 193).Cognitive mapping helps bridge thoughts by employing past experiences to understand present and future situations using background knowledge (Davies, 2011).
Mental maps are depicted as SUBJECTIVE interpretations of spatial reality which are formed based on individuals' perspectives.They embody the world as it appears to the observer.They depict "the world as some person believes it to be"; and they do not need to be correct (Downs & Stea, 1977, p. 6).In Tolman's words, there are two types of maps or ways of thinking, "strip" and "comprehensive".
As far as the present analysis is concerned, the researchers apply this theory to reflect the way the participants connect between the limited figures or objects of the image in question.In addition to the way they radiate some objects; ie., the way they add some more details to access the meaning of the caricature and create a "comprehensive map" accordingly.When the way of thinking is simple; it represents a "single path to the position of the goal" as Tolman (1948, p. 193) says.Thus, this type of mental map is called "strip map" while when the way of thinking involves a wide range of different areas or details, it is said to be "comprehensive", creating as a result a radiant map.Such a type of detailed map is called "context maps" by Fiol and Huff (1992, p. 272) whereas the direct or strip map includes a series of "clear points".
Schemata are regarded as a means to create mental mapping as they represent "the building blocks of cognition"; they are considered the source for all human knowledge processing, for instance, categorization and planning, perception and comprehension, recognition and recall, and decision-making and problem-solving (Casson, 1983, ijel.ccsenet.p.429).

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Main Study
After (5) weeks of conducting the pilot study, the main study was conducted following the same steps followed in the pilot.However, this time, the number of the participants is (30); consider Tables (1 &2):

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Table 1a .
Accessing the exact meaning through figures mapping in the main study

Table 1b .
Accessing the exact meaning through figures mapping in the main study

Table 2a .
Accessing the general meaning through figures mapping in the main study