anger-asterix.pdf

Visual representations of the idealized cognitive

model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie

Charles Forceville*

Department of Media Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Turfdraagsterpad 9,

1012 XT Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Received 29 May 2003; received in revised form 24 October 2003; accepted 24 October 2003

Abstract

The conceptual metaphor program launched by Lakoff and Johnson [Metaphors We Live By,

Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980] attempts to chart and describe the Idealized Cognitive

Models (ICMs) that govern human thinking. The manifestations of these models studied hitherto,

however, are almost exclusively verbal ones. In the interest of enriching insights into ICMs, non-

verbal and multimedial representations need be investigated as well. In turn, picture theory can

benefit from instruments developed in the cognitive linguistics paradigm.

Kovecses [Metaphors of Anger, Pride and Love, Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1986;

Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 2000] has demon-

strated that verbal expressions and idioms used to describe emotions can be traced back to a limited

number of conceptual metaphors. This paper investigates non-verbal manifestations of anger in the

Asterix comics album La Zizanie in the light of Kovecses’ findings. It is argued that (i) the

representations of anger found here are, at the least, compatible with the most dominant anger

metaphor found by Kovecses, ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER, and are

probably motivated by it; and (ii) the medium of comics may privilege aspects of ICMs that are less

dominant, or even absent, in its linguistic manifestations. Furthermore, the method of analysis

employed is reflected on, since it is intended to be applicable beyond the questions addressed here.

# 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Anger; Idealized Cognitive Models; Asterix; Picture analysis; Images and cognition; Metaphor

Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 69–88

0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.002

* Tel.: þ31-20-5254596; fax: þ31-20-5252980.

E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Forceville).

1. Introduction

One of the crucial insights spawned by the cognitive theory of metaphor, whose

beginnings can be traced back to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), is that many verbal metaphors

systematically reflect conceptual metaphors, but do not necessarily have the same form as

these conceptual metaphors. That is, ‘‘what she said left a bad taste in my mouth’’ and ‘‘I

just can’t swallow that claim’’ both reflect the underlying conceptual metaphor IDEAS

ARE FOOD, while neither the word ‘‘ideas’’ nor the word ‘‘food’’ occurs in the

metaphorical sentences. The study of conceptual metaphors, in turn, is one of the central

strategies in the project of charting the so-called Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs) or

Folk Models that reveal how human knowledge is organized (Johnson, 1987; Sweetser,

1990; Kovecses, 1986, 2000, 2002; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). Other structuring principles

besides metaphor are propositional structure, image-schemas, and metonymic mapping,

while ‘‘category structures and prototype effects are by-products of that organization’’

(Lakoff, 1987: 68). Proverbs, idioms, metonyms, and irony similarly afford glimpses in the

ordering mechanisms of the mind (Gibbs, 1994), while hybrid expressions that cannot be

explained in terms of metaphors are now being theorized as ‘‘blends’’ (Turner and

Fauconnier, 1995; Turner, 1996; Fauconnier, 1997; Fauconnier and Turner, 1998, 2000,

2002; Grady et al., 1999; Rohrer, 2000; Coulson and Oakley, 2000; but cf. Forceville,

2004). Moreover, scholars have begun to stress that ICMs are not the result of thinking and

reasoning alone but are inevitably shaped in interaction with culture (Emanatian, 1995;

Shore, 1996; Yu, 1998; Gibbs, 1999).

While the cognitivist paradigm is thus broadening its scope in several directions, it

remains limited in largely restricting its attention to verbal manifestations of ICMs. For at

least two reasons this is unfortunate. In the first place, the cognitivist linguist tradition

needs to expand into the realm of the non-verbal in order to break ‘‘the vicious cycle of

saying that verbal metaphoric expressions are evidence of conceptual metaphors, and

then saying that we know that because we see conceptual metaphors expressed in

language’’ (Cienki, 1998: 190). Attesting manifestations of ICMs in non-verbal repre-

sentations would support the claim for their existence and, if found, enrich the notion

itself. Secondly, the cognitive linguistics’ theoretical framework has much to contribute

to theorizing multimedial representations, the latter for present purposes defined as

representations featuring two or more of the following elements: static/moving pictures;

spoken/written language; sound effects; music. I note in passing that specifically in the

cognitivist-oriented branch of film-studies, theory-driven analyses of multimedial repre-

sentations are well under way (e.g., Bordwell, 1985; Bordwell and Thompson, 2001;

Bordwell and Carroll, 1996; Carroll, 1996; Branigan, 1992; Smith, 1994; Simons, 1995;

Tan, 1996; Plantinga and Smith, 1999; Altman, 1999; see also Messaris, 1997). The

overlap in approach between the cognitivist branches in linguistics and in film and image

studies offers opportunities for joining forces (see Forceville, 1996, 1999a,b, 2002a,b,

in press).

In two book-length studies, Kovecses (1986, 2000) has delineated the ICMs, or folk

models, of several emotions, including anger. His goal is to show that, and how, people

conceptualize these emotions metaphorically. His evidence comes from various languages

(see Yu, 1995, 1998 for data from Chinese) and suggests that conceptualizations of

70 C. Forceville / Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 69–88

emotions are to a considerable extent universally shared. A limitation of Kovecses’

pioneering research is that the postulated metaphorical models are based exclusively

on verbal evidence. The present article aims to explore if and, if so, how Kovecses’

characterization of the concept of anger surfaces visually in comics. Comics are a good

source of pictorial data for such a project: unlike, for instance, realistic photographs and

live-action films, which more or less ‘‘naturally’’ mirror real-life manifestations of

emotions, comics and cartoons make use of stereotypical exaggerations and of a rudi-

mentary ‘‘sign-system’’ very much like a language.

It is not enough, however, to examine if and how visual representations of anger in

comics fit Kovecses’ model. As Marshall McLuhan asserted long ago, ‘‘the medium is the

message’’ (McLuhan, 1964: 24 et passim), and a model construed on the basis of language

alone may ignore or downplay information that is more prominent or more readily

available in other sign systems. My second aim is therefore to investigate whether any

aspects of anger which are less noticeable or even absent in linguistic representations are

pictorially highlighted in comics.

Finally, since this paper aims to contribute to the development of a framework for

investigating ICMs in comics, I pay ample attention to the methodology adopted in the

analyses—a methodology that no doubt will require further fine-tuning and adaptation.

2. Kovecses’ delimitation of anger

Kovecses (1986, 2000, 2002) argues the ‘‘folk theory’’ (or ICM) of anger assumes the

following (based on Kovecses, 1986: 12ff):

(1) its physiological effects include increased heat and internal pressure (blood,

muscles), agitation, and interference with perception;

(2) increased anger results in increased physiological effects;

(3) beyond a certain limit, anger’s physiological effects impair normal functioning;

(4) the prototypical anger ICM has five stages, each further subdivisible, which can be

rendered as: offending event, anger, attempt to control anger, loss of control, and

retribution.

On the basis of numerous expressions such as ‘‘he was boiling with anger’’; ‘‘she almost

exploded’’ and ‘‘why don’t you cool down a bit?’’ Kovecses suggests that one very

widespread, possibly universal, ICM of anger can be verbalized as the metaphor ANGER

IS THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER. Important elements in the metaphor’s

source domain are heat, internal pressure, and agitation. The metaphor works as follows:

the container with the fluid is the person who is angry; the fluid in the container is the

anger; the pressure of the fluid on the container is the force of the anger on the angry

person; the cause of the pressure is the cause of the anger force; trying to keep the fluid

inside the container is trying to control the anger; the fluid going out of the container is

the expression of the anger; the physical dysfunctionality of the container is the social

dysfunctionality of the angry person. (Kovecses, 2000: 155)

C. Forceville / Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 69–88 71

These metaphorical entailments can be further elaborated. The rising level of

fluid corresponds to increasing intensity of anger; and intense heat, producing steam

and causing pressure on the container, results in the angry person’s body temperature

rising, which in turn augments the risk of an eventual outburst. Kovecses states that

the container metaphor is a very rich one since it appears that no other conceptual

metaphor associated with anger can provide us with an understanding of so many of its

facets (Ibid.: 147).

Kovecses points out, nonetheless, that THE HEAT OF A FLUID IN A CONTAINER (or

HOT FLUID IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER, as the metaphor is labeled in Kovecses

(2000, 2002)) is not the only metaphorical source domain used to delimitate anger.1 Other

source domains include FIRE (‘‘He’s doing a slow burn’’); INSANITY (‘‘The man was

insane with rage’’); AN OPPONENT IN A STRUGGLE (‘‘I was struggling with my

anger’’); A CAPTIVE ANIMAL (‘‘He unleashed his anger’’); and A BURDEN (‘‘He

carries his anger around with him’’). Furthermore, Kovecses identifies ANGRY BEHA-

VIOR IS AGGRESSIVE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR (‘‘Don’t snarl at me!’’); THE CAUSE OF

ANGER IS TRESPASSING (‘‘Here I draw the line’’); THE CAUSE OF ANGER IS

PHYSICAL ANNOYANCE (‘‘He’s a pain in the neck’’); ANGER IS A NATURAL

FORCE (‘‘It was a stormy meeting’’); AN ANGRY PERSON IS A FUNCTIONING

MACHINE (‘‘That really got him going’’); ANGER IS A SOCIAL SUPERIOR (‘‘His

actions were completely governed by anger’’) (Kovecses, 2000: 21). The vast majority of

these and other metaphors pertaining to emotions, Kovecses argues, can be characterized

by a more general metaphor: EMOTION IS FORCE. Each of the more specific metaphors

pertaining to an emotion emphasizes different aspects of that master metaphor (Ibid.: 64–

65). The everyday manner in which non-specialists conceptualize emotions (i.e., the Folk

Models of these emotions) transpires from a pervasive metonymic principle that can be

labeled THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND EXPRESSIVE RESPONSES OF AN EMOTION

STAND FOR THE EMOTION (Ibid.: 134).

3. Visual signs of anger in comics

Kovecses supports his view of the anger ICM by drawing on ample linguistic

evidence, mainly from English. But signs of course are not necessarily verbal in nature.

1 Kovecses’ varying verbalizations for this metaphor deserve some discussion. ANGER IS HEAT turns the

anger into a quality; ANGER IS A FLUID into a substance. While in both verbalizations the body-container

becomes pressurized from within due to rising temperature, the manner in which released pressure manifests

itself may differ. The formulation ANGER IS HEAT is a reminder that the anger does not necessarily have a

fluid form. In expressions such as ‘‘he spat fire,’’ the substance, for instance, is not fluid (unless one

conceptualizes the fluid as an inflammable one, such as gasoline). Conversely, other emotions can be understood

as fluids in a container: in ‘‘she brimmed with love,’’ and ‘‘he felt a wave of love,’’ LOVE IS A FLUID IN A

CONTAINER—but not a hot fluid. I thank a Journal of Pragmatics reviewer for drawing attention to this issue.

Indeed, Kovecses’ varying verbalizations are a healthy reminder of the fact that no verbalization of a

metaphorical concept is ever neutral; opting for ANGER IS HEATING FLUID IN A CONTAINER WHICH

THEREBY BECOMES PRESSURIZED is both a more dynamic and a more liquid-based formulation of the

metaphor than ANGER IS HEAT (see Forceville, 2002b for some more discussion of the way in which

verbalizations of conceptual metaphors may affect interpretation).


The famous semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce distinguished between iconic, indexical

and symbolic signs. In the Peircean subdivision, iconic signs derive their meaning

from the resemblance they bear to that what they signify. A typical example of an iconic

sign is a holiday snapshot: the photograph ‘‘stands for’’ the person or object photo-

graphed in a manner that is more or less immediately evident. Indexical signs signify that

what they stand for thanks to a metonymic relation they have to these referents. Thus,

footsteps in the sand indexically signify the person who left them; smoke is an index

of fire; and a red face is an index of anger (although it can also index for instance

embarrassment). The category of signs that Peirce, somewhat confusingly, baptizes

‘‘symbolic’’ is characterized by a conventionalized, non-natural link between sign and

referent. The prototypical example of a symbolic sign system is language: children (and

non-native speakers of English) have to learn that ‘‘dog’’ means DOG, and there is no

intrinsic, natural reason why this should be so, which is why French can label the same

animal ‘‘chien,’’ Italian ‘‘cano,’’ German ‘‘Hund,’’ and Dutch ‘‘hond.’’ As holds for all

types of categorization, there are always cases where a sign cannot be unambiguously

attributed to any of the three main types and may feature elements of more than one type.

That is, a specific sign may or may not be a prototypical member of its category, but this

does not invalidate the usefulness of the distinctions itself. (For a manageable introduc-

tion to Peirce’s dauntingly complex work, see Savan, 1988; Danaher, 1998, draws

attention to overlapping concerns in Cognitive Linguistics and Peircean semiotics. Note

that Clark, 1996, draws heavily on Peirce’s threefold distinction in his chapter on

signaling.)

Clearly, comics can feature all three types of signs. Inasmuch as they make use of

language, they contain symbols; inasmuch as they depict familiar objects in a realistic

style, they contain icons; and given that often a picture depicts an element that metony-

mically suggests the whole it stands for (as a head, a hand, the upper part, of a person’s body

is an index for that person), comics abound in indexical signs.

Since anger is an abstract concept, it by definition defies iconic representation, and can

hence only be rendered by means of indexical and symbolic signs. Since the focus of

attention in the present paper rules out linguistic signals, this would seem to entail that all

signs under investigation are necessarily indexical. But what are we to do with the sort of

sign—pervasive in comics—for which the perception psychologist John Kennedy suggests

the label ‘‘pictorial rune’’? Kennedy elaborates:

There may be pictorial devices which are metaphoric but which have no clear

equivalent in language. For these devices the term ‘‘pictorial rune’’ is suggested.

. . . A pictorial rune is a graphic device used in a picture which is a modification of the

literal depiction of an object, making some aspect of the object become easy to depict,

that aspect of the object often being difficult for the literal depiction to convey.

(Kennedy, 1982: 600)

Examples of what Kennedy has in mind are squiggly lines above a turd to suggest its

repellent smell; jagged lines around a thumb hit by a hammer suggesting pain; and spirals

and stars around someone’s head to suggest dizziness. As Kennedy points out, these

‘‘runes’’ do not convey a ‘‘literal depiction,’’ and hence, I propose, they cannot be Peircean


icons. The question is then whether they are arbitrary signs, just as linguistic expressions

are2 (which would make them symbols) or whether they have some sort of metonymic

motivation (in which case they would be indexes). Kennedy leans towards the latter, which

led him to test congenitally blind people, asking them to draw for instance a spinning

wheel. He found that blind people use a limited number of devices to achieve this, one

among them the pictorial rune of ‘‘speed lines.’’ As transpired from their verbal explana-

tions, these runes were motivated, not random, ways to indicate the wheel’s movement

(Kennedy, 1982: 601; see also Kennedy, 1993: 222ff). Interestingly, Kennedy discovered

that congenitally blind children tested in Haiti came up with the same devices as children

tested in Tucson and Phoenix, which suggests this is a transcultural phenomenon.

In a manner analogous to Kennedy’s, I will hypothesize in this paper that pictorial runes

denoting anger in comics are not arbitrary signs, but signs metonymically motivated by one

or more anger ICMs, just as, according to Kovecses, verbal manifestations are motivated by

these models.

4. Background assumptions, selection of comics, and method of analysis

The reason to opt for an analysis of anger rather than either of the two other emotions

Kovecses (1986) investigated (‘‘pride’’ and ‘‘romantic love’’) is twofold: in the first place,

‘‘anger is perhaps the most studied emotion concept from a cognitive semantic point of

view’’ (Kovecses, 2000: 21), and thereby has become a paradigm case for cognitivist

analyses of emotions. Secondly, comics and cartoons portray angry people more often than

proud or romantically involved ones. Conflict, with anger as a concomitant emotion, is a

motor for narrative development and apparently provides an endless source of humor for

comics’ Schadenfreude-prone audience.

Comics rather than animated films were selected as data for analysis, since they appear

to be richer in pictorial runes. That would make sense: since animations have both

movement and (often) sound at their disposal to convey relevant information, they have less

need to resort to pictorial runes than static pictures do. The comics album chosen here is an

Asterix album, one from a French series whose texts were written by Goscinny (until his

death in 1977), and drawn by Uderzo (who since Goscinny’s decease both draws and writes

the albums). The Asterix albums, well-known in Europe, focus on a small Gaul village in

the Roman Empire that refuses to surrender to Caesar. The running gag is that Caesar keeps

trying to conquer the village, but invariably fails, not in the last place because whenever the

villagers drink their druid’s magic potion, they briefly become superhumanly strong. The

2 ‘‘Arbitrariness’’ should here be taken in the Saussurean sense of the usually non-motivated relationship

between a string of sounds and letters (the exceptions are compound words and onomatopoeias). Acceptance of

the cognitive linguistics notion of ‘‘embodiment’’ means that the relation between language and reality is

understood as less arbitrary than a Saussurean framework suggests. While cognitivist linguists do not contest that

Saussurean arbitrariness rules on the level of letters and sounds, many clusters of words and expressions are

taken to be motivated by conceptual metaphors. As Lakoff and Johnson summarize the issue, ‘‘in general, central

senses of words are arbitrary; noncentral senses are motivated but rarely predictable. Since there are many more

noncentral senses than central senses of words, there is more motivation in a language than arbitrariness’’

(Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 465).


two central protagonists are the smart Asterix and his big, fat friend Obelix, the latter’s

strength being of a permanent nature since he fell into the cauldron with the fortifying

potion when he was a baby.

The Asterix album under scrutiny is La Zizanie (Goscinny and Uderzo, 1970), which has

hitherto not been translated into English. Caesar coincidentally discovers a man in his

empire who causes instant quarreling and fighting wherever he happens to be. He

immediately realizes the strategic potential of this man and, hoping to facilitate Roman

conquest, sends him to the resistant Gaul village in order to create havoc among its

inhabitants. Unsurprisingly the story features a lot of angry persons, thus providing ample

opportunities for the proposed analyses.

I first made an inventory of the non-verbal signals used to suggest anger in this album.

Most of these can be uncontroversially classified as ‘‘indexes,’’ that is, as metonymically

motivated signs resulting from anger, although they often take on an exaggerated form. For

instance, the potential of a pink or red face to signal anger derives from our real-life

knowledge that reddening is an often-occurring physical feature of angry people. Similarly,

clamped teeth are recognizable as behavior that may accompany (suppressed) anger. The

status of other signs, as argued above, is less clear: it remains to be demonstrated that they

are indexes rather than symbols.

After completing the inventory, I analyzed each panel in the album featuring one or

more visibly present, unambiguously angry persons to check which non-verbal signs

contributed to the visual representation of anger. It has to be acknowledged that the

decision whether a character is angry was inevitably triggered in part by the very signs

that are the subject of analysis, and that hence there is a degree of circularity in the

argument. However, this circularity was constrained on the one hand by textual

information in the narrative and ‘‘real-life knowledge’’ of situations causing anger

(see Fein and Kasher, 1996: 794, for similar arguments), and on the other hand by an

arbitrary (‘‘symbolic’’) sign that was excluded from the analyses, namely that of ‘‘green

text balloons.’’ When present, these turned out to be reliable indicators of anger (they

occurred with more than half of the characters deemed ‘‘angry’’). In the next section, I

provide a survey of the pertinent signs identified, followed by some examples from the

album featuring them.

5. Pictorial signals of anger in La Zizanie (1970)

5.1. Bulging eyes

Bulging eyes are among the clearest pictorial runes associated with anger in the album.

To be more specific: ‘‘bulging eyes’’ here denote a V-shaped brow combined with an

enlarged, black pupil located against the edge of wide-open eye(s) plus one or both of the

following; (i) an extra line under the eyes (‘‘pouches’’); (ii) one or two vertical lines

between the eyes (‘‘frowns’’). Note that the ‘‘pouches’’ appear to be similar to what Ed Tan

calls ‘‘crow feet at the side of the head, absent in other situations, [which] suggest tension in

the eyelids’’ (Tan, 2001: 35) in his discussion of angry characters in Herge’s Tintin album

The Calculus Affair.


5.2. Tightly closed eyes

Eyes count as ‘‘tightly closed’’ if, apart from being closed, there are lines under the eyes

(‘‘pouches’’) and/or lines between them (‘‘frown’’)—as in the bulging eyes.

5.3. Wide mouth

Expressed anger is often visualized by wide-open mouths. In this paper, a mouth counts

as ‘‘wide’’ if at least two of the following are visibly present: (i) the tongue; (ii) teeth; (iii)

(a) line(s) running over the cheek from the nose to the corners of the mouth.

5.4. Tightly closed mouth

The emphatically closed mouth connotes non-expressed anger. A mouth counts as

‘‘tight’’ (i) when it is closed, droops, and has (a) line(s) on the cheek going from the nose to

the corners of the mouth (the latter as in the ‘‘wide mouth’’), or (ii) when the teeth are

visibly clamped together.

5.5. Red/pink face

Pink or red faces are clear manifestations of anger. This sign allows for a graded scale,

since there is a continuum from pink to very pink to lobster-red.

5.6. Arm/hand position

The position of the arms/hands is highly revealing in connection to anger. Three

‘‘marked’’ arm/hand positions have been identified in this Asterix album: (i) fisted hand

(when not used to punch someone); (ii) hands/arms emphatically close to the body,

sometimes hidden from view (folded arms, hands in pockets or held behind the back); (iii)

pointing toward someone or something with the index finger (note that this is different from

‘‘wagging the index finger’’ by way of warning or reprimanding someone).

5.7. Shaking

Angry people sometimes are depicted as ‘‘shaking.’’ Characters are taken as ‘‘shaking’’ if

one or both of the following conditions apply: (i) in the case of the multiple superimposition

of a character, with minimal variations of position; (ii) when a non-moving person is depicted

as completely or partly ‘‘loose from the ground.’’ Another rune that might be taken to be

indicative of ‘‘shaking,’’ namely the rounded lines parallel to the contours of a character’s

body or body parts, was not taken into account, since such lines are very often used to cue

‘‘movement’’ generically, so their connection with anger proved too tenuous.

5.8. Spirals

A frequently used rune associated with anger, presumably in comics generally, are the

corkscrew-like spirals, sometimes alternating with straight lines, apparently emanating in


fan-shape from an angry person’s head. Another version of the spirals has the corkscrew-

like spirals alternating with elongated droplets. Notice that droplets or straight lines alone,

though regularly occurring around characters’ heads, do not count as a sign suggesting

anger.

5.9. ‘‘Ex-mouth’’

Another signal pertaining to the mouth is the fan-shaped array of straight lines emitting

from the mouth. These lines make clear that something comes out of the mouth with great

force. It is not clear whether this ‘‘something’’ is supposed to be ‘‘fluid,’’ in which case this

sign would be straightforwardly indexical, or rather ‘‘loud noise,’’ or even a generic, non-

specified release of pressure, which would make it a pictorial rune in Kennedy’s (1982) sense.

5.10. Smoke

Smoke is visible above a character’s head which cannot, or not exhaustively, be

interpreted as having a realistic source in the story.

5.11. Bold face/jagged line in text balloons

Both these pictorial conventions are used to convey the expression of anger. In the case

of bold face letters (which coincides with a larger letter font) the ‘‘loudness’’ of the angry

words spoken seems to be the primary effect aimed at. The jagged connections-convention

refers to the angular, lightning-like nature of the connection between the balloon to the

person speaking. Note that both these signs allow for gradations (small vs. large bold;

rounded vs. sharp angularity).

I will subdivide the signs into two categories. I will consider the signs in Category I—

‘‘bulging eyes’’ and their counterpart ‘‘tightly closed eyes’’; ‘‘wide mouth’’ and its

counterpart ‘‘tightly closed mouth’’; ‘‘pink/red face’’; ‘‘arm/hand position’’; and ‘‘shak-

ing’’—as (exaggerated) indexical signs. They are indexical since we recognize them as

symptoms accompanying anger from our everyday experience. ‘‘Spirals,’’ ‘‘ex-mouth,’’

‘‘smoke,’’ ‘‘bold face,’’ and ‘‘jagged line’’ form a Category II, for which I retain the label

‘‘pictorial runes,’’ employing the label more broadly than Kennedy does (1982). These are

signs which are not perceptible in real life, and whose indexicality is therefore less evident

than those in the first category.

Figs. 1–8 (originally in color) are examples of pictures from La Zizanie featuring an

angry person and the signs deployed to suggest that emotion. In view of the fluctuating

number of panels in the ‘‘grid’’ of square and rectangular panels on each page, the

following flexible three-number code is adopted to facilitate identification of specific

panels, somewhat in the manner of identifying the squares on a chessboard: The first

number refers to the page; the second to the horizontal row in which the panel occurs (there

are never less than one, never more than four rows); the third to the position in the row. (In

the case of a panel covering an entire page, say page 42, I would code this as: 42-1-1, since

there is only one ‘‘row’’ on the page and only one panel in the ‘‘row.’’)


Fig. 1. 8-2-1: Roman senator. Signs of anger: (1) bulging eyes; (2) wide mouth (emphasized by a red-colored

tongue); (3) arm/hand position (iii) (‘‘pointing’’); (4) spirals; (5) bold face (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La

Zizanie).

Fig. 2. 9-4-2: Roman sailor. Signs of anger: (1) bulging eyes; (2) wide mouth; (3) ex-mouth; (4) bold face; (5)

jagged line (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La Zizanie).

Fig. 3. 9-4-3: Roman sailor. Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes; (2) tightly closed mouth; (3) arm/hand

position (ii) (‘‘hands/arms close to the body’’); (4) jagged line (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La Zizanie).


Fig. 4. 17-4-1: Obelix (left) and Asterix (right). Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes (O.); (2) bulging eyes

(A.); (3) wide mouth (both, A. with red tongue); (4) pink face (both); (5) ex-mouth (both); (6) bold face (both);

(7) jagged line (both) (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La Zizanie).

Fig. 5. 17-4-2: Obelix and Asterix. Signs of anger: (1) bulging eyes (A.); (2) tightly closed eyes (O.); (3)

arm/hand position (ii) (‘‘hands/arms close to the body,’’ A.); (4) smoke (A.) (from Goscinny and Uderzo,

La Zizanie).

Fig. 6. 26-4-2: Gaul villager (the fishmonger). Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes; (2) tightly closed mouth;

(3) spirals; (4) red face; (5) jagged line (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La Zizanie).


6. Connecting pictorial signs of anger in La Zizanie to Kovecses’ anger ICMs

The straightforwardly (with the exception of ‘‘ex-mouth’’) indexical signs of Category I

are all at least commensurate with Kovecses’ anger ICMs, particularly with the one he finds

most prevalent in linguistic expressions: ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A PRESSURIZED

CONTAINER.

6.1. Bulging eyes

The bulging eyes can be interpreted as a sign of the interior pressure-aspect of the body-

container.

Fig. 7. 32-4-2: Roman centurion. Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes; (2) wide mouth (with red tongue); (3)

red face; (4) arm/hand position (i) (‘‘fisted hand’’); (5) shaking; (6) ex-mouth; (7) bold face (from Goscinny and

Uderzo, La Zizanie).

Fig. 8. 38-2-3: Roman centurion. Signs of anger: (1) tightly closed eyes; (2) arm/hand position (i) (‘‘fisted

hand’’); (3) shaking; (4) bold face (from Goscinny and Uderzo, La Zizanie).


6.2. Tightly closed eyes

Tightly closed eyes can suggest both the pressure on the body-container in the stage of

suppression, or it can suggest a bodily accompaniment of released anger—perhaps

interpretable in terms of Kovecses’ ‘‘physical dysfunctioning.’’

6.3. Wide mouth

The wide open mouth of course resembles people’s physiognomy when they are

shouting angrily at others, thereby releasing pressure.

6.4. Tightly closed mouth

The aperture of the mouth is emphatically closed so as to prevent the anger from coming

out of the body-container.

6.5. Red/pink face

The pink or red face signals the rising, or risen, temperature of the body-container of the

angry person.

6.6. Arm/hand position

Positions (i) and (ii) are particularly associated with attempts at controlled anger, although

the fisted hand can go together with expressed anger as well. Generalizing, one could argue

that the hands/arms are kept close to the body-container, helping to keep the anger ‘‘inside.’’

By contrast, pointing (position (iii)) suggests the notion of something ‘‘erupting.’’

6.7. Shaking

The shaking, in both variants, is a manifestation of the internal pressure to which the

body-container is subjected, and hence squares with the HOT FLUID metaphor.

6.8. Ex-mouth

If the ‘‘something’’ coming out of the mouth is understood as representing spit, this sign

is straightforwardly indexical, just as involuntary ‘‘spitting’’ in real life can be an index of

anger. If it is understood as signaling loud noise, or indeed as a non-physical phenomenon,

this is a pictorial rune, which is explicable as the release of pent-up pressure built up within

the body-container in the HOT FLUID metaphor. The latter interpretation finds support in

the circumstance that sometimes an effect of this release is visible in the environment: both

in 11-2-3 and in 32-4-2 (Fig. 7), the angry person causes his interlocutor’s helmet to be

‘‘blown off’’ by the force of an angry exclamation.

The signals in Category II are at the very least commensurate with the metaphor

discussed below.


6.9. Spirals

The fan-shape of the spirals surrounding the character’s head appears to convey the

effect of its risen temperature, its almost bursting with the exertion of either trying to

suppress the anger, or with its expression.

6.10. Smoke

Smoke (in other comics also often ‘‘fire’’) is clearly an effect of the heating up of the

fluid or gas in the body-container, or can be seen as exemplifying the ANGER IS FIRE

metaphor independently. The smoke in panel 17-4-2 (Fig. 5) is the only occurrence of

smoke/fire in this Asterix album. It is no doubt telling that the chosen sign here is smoke

rather than fire. Smoke is typically something that signals both the onset and the after-

effects of full-blown fire. This particular panel follows immediately upon one depicting

full-blown expression of anger by the two heroes (Fig. 4), and hence indicates the aftermath

of an angry outburst.

6.11. Bold face

Bold face, in combination with a larger letter font, has become a highly conventionalized

sign for ‘‘shouting’’ (note also that writing capitalized sentences in e-mails is considered

‘‘shouting,’’ and hence against netiquette). Bold face and larger fonts can be seen as two

different visual manifestations of Lakoff and Johnson’s MORE OF FORM IS MORE OF

CONTENT (1980: 17–18); equivalent to saying ‘‘he spoke very, very loudly.’’ The large

fonts and bold face, then, cue loudness via a more generic metaphor; and loudness is

metonymically associated with (expressed) anger.

6.12. Jagged connecting lines

The angularity of the ‘‘jagged line connection’’ is a less obvious cue for anger, but if we

characterize it as ‘‘non-smooth’’ as opposed to the rounded and hence smooth way of

connecting balloon to character that is the default, we may hypothesize that it fits in with a

whole category of ‘‘tense’’ behaviors. Specifically, we can be reminded that angry persons

speak ‘‘sharply’’ rather than ‘‘smoothly,’’ that an ‘‘edge’’ in somebody’s voice suggests

irritation, and that a sharp rim in an object, as opposed to a smooth one, can hurt us.

Alternatively, we could interpret the angular text-balloon connection as the manifestation

of a potentially ‘‘explosive’’ body-container.

7. Results and discussion

We can conclude first of all that the pictorial runes signaling anger appear indeed to be

Peircean indexes rather than Peircean symbols, since they are motivated rather than

arbitrary signs. More specifically, the runes are at the very least commensurate with the

metaphor Kovecses found the most dominant in the English language: ANGER IS A HOT


FLUID IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER. Possibly the stronger claim can be made that

the pictorial runes in Category II (plus ‘‘ex-mouth’’ if that sign is taken as loud noise or

generic release of pressure rather than as denoting fluid)—as direct and hence language-

independent manifestations of Kovecses’ anger ICM, provide evidence similar to the

metaphoric gestures identified by McNeill (1992) and Cienki (1998). However, the

possibility has to be countenanced that the runes identified are not direct, but indirect

manifestations of ICMs, having become conventionalized as, somehow, ‘‘visual transla-

tions’’ of verbal manifestations of ICMs. The issue is an important one, requiring further

theoretical and empirical research.

In all, 103 characters in 398 panels were analyzed as angry in La Zizanie. Table 1 shows

the distribution of the anger signs. The fact that the signs are commensurate with (or indeed

motivated by) the ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER does

not mean that each single one can only be interpreted in terms of this specific metaphor for

anger. Individual signs could also be understood as exemplifying other anger metaphors

identified by Kovecses. The clamped teeth variant of the tightly closed mouth, for instance,

could well be construed as signaling ANGRY BEHAVIOR IS AGGRESSIVE ANIMAL

BEHAVIOR. Similarly, ‘‘shaking’’ could also be taken as suggesting that ANGER IS

INSANITY, inasmuch as uncontrolled bodily movement is behavior that is known to

accompany mental instability. This is to be expected inasmuch as different metaphors may

share entailments. Nonetheless, the clusters of pertinent indexical signs of anger favor an

analysis in terms of ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER rather

than in terms of any other metaphor.

It is notable from Table 1 that eyes, mouths and arm/hands play an important role in helping

to cue anger. The mutually exclusive categories of ‘‘bulging eyes’’ and ‘‘closed eyes’’ (Bill

Louw, at the Poetic and Linguistics Association in Budapest, April 2000, proffered the

nomenclature ‘‘allofrowns’’) together cover 85 of the 103 angry persons. The mutually

exclusive categories of ‘‘wide/tight mouths’’ cover a little over half of them (54 times). A

marked arm/hand position also can be identified in about 50% of the cases (52 times).

Many panels in this Asterix album depict anger effects before and after an outburst takes

place. An informal consideration of rising/suppressed anger and of the aftereffects of anger

suggests that these manifestations of anger, when compared to those of expressed anger,

typically comprise a tightly closed mouth, often emphasized by clamped teeth, and the

Table 1

One hundred and three angry characters in La Zizanie (Goscinny and Uderzo, 1970)

Bulging

eyes

Closed

eyes

Wide

mouth

Tight

mouth

Red

face

Hand

arm

Shaking

body

Ex-

mouth

Bold

face

Jagged

line

Spirals

head

47 38 41 13 18 52 5 12 39 32 45

NB: (i) Only visible angry (i.e., no ‘‘offscreen’’) characters were considered; similarly only visible body parts

were counted (the Gauls’ ubiquitous and profuse moustaches, for instance, hide lines from nose-to-corner-of-

mouth). (ii) If a panel displayed more than two angry characters, only those speaking were counted. (iii) Panels

in which characters are fighting were excluded, since it proved impossible to distinguish signs denoting anger

from signs denoting other phenomena (exertion, pain, blows) accompanying fights. Fighting, of course, is a

version of Kovecses’ last stage in the prototype scenario of anger: retribution. (iv) Pictograms in text balloons

denoting anger occur twice (in 27-1-1 and 45-2-2). The ‘‘smoke’’ sign (Fig. 5) occurs only once.


‘‘hidden arm/hand position.’’ Self-evidently, suppressed anger does not feature bold face:

people who (as yet) control their anger or have their outburst behind them do not shout.

Spirals, a pink or red face, and fisted hands, on the other hand, can equally well co-occur

with expressed and controlled anger. An emotion that is arguably a subtype of controlled

anger is ‘‘indignation,’’ which occurs several times (e.g., in panels 9-4-3 (Fig. 3), 17-1-2,

29-2-3). Apart from a closed mouth, closed eyes, and ‘‘jaggedness,’’ another element

appears to play a role here: a head tilted upward. This subtype requires more extensive

research to reveal how it interacts with the emotion of ‘‘pride.’’

It is important to emphasize that no pictorial sign single-handedly cues anger: signs

combine to suggest anger, and the more signs are used, the more clear-cut and/or the more

intense the anger is. Conversely, a particular sign is not necessarily reserved for the

expression of anger alone. It may, in combination with different signs, suggest a different

emotion. In 12-2-1, for instance, Asterix has his hands in his pockets, but here this ‘‘hidden-

hand’’ position does not represent (suppressed) anger. Similarly, in 17-2-2 the combination

of capitals and bold face is used to denote a surprised rather than an angry exclamation. The

findings by Eerden (2002), expanding on the model proposed in the current paper, further

confirm this insight. Tracing Kovecses’ (1986) model of ‘‘romantic love’’ in Asterix et

Latraviata (2001) he finds that various signs (smoke, red face, shaking) that play a part in

the representation of anger as described here also occur in the representations of love. In

this respect, the situation is similar to that in language. As Kovecses observes, after listing a

number of metonymies associated with romantic love, ‘‘no claim is made that they all

exclusively characterize romantic love alone. Some of them can occur in other emotions or

states in general’’ (Kovecses, 2000: 124). The reason for such overlap, Kovecses points out,

is that underlying specific metaphors associated with specific emotions (such as ANGER IS

A HOT FLUID IN A PRESSURIZED CONTAINER) there is a more general metaphor that

can be verbalized as EMOTION IS FORCE.

The above remarks are also pertinent with regard to Fein and Kasher’s (1996) findings.

From an examination of seven Asterix albums, these authors distilled various types of

gestures, all of which, they report, are familiar from real life. The article provides

stimulating ideas on how to analyze gestures in comics, but I suspect that Fein and

Kasher’s exclusive focus on what in the present article is called ‘‘arm/hand position’’ has

led to an impoverished view of the pragmatic force of the gestures identified. For instance

the threat gesture ‘‘consists of folding the arms and turning the head and the upper part of

the body forward’’ (1996: 795). But Fein and Kasher’s Fig. 1 (ibid.), with Obelix

performing this gesture, also shows him with what I have termed ‘‘bulging eyes’’ and

‘‘spirals,’’ and it is, I submit, the combination of these with the arm position that makes up

the ‘‘threat-gesture.’’ When the authors describe their small-scale experiment, they report

that in the manipulated panels presented to subjects, ‘‘the utterance and the background

were erased, and only the ‘performer’ was left’’ (1996: 800). Since it is unclear what was

comprised by ‘‘background’’ we can only know for sure that a rune like ‘‘bold face’’ was

not accessible to subjects. Whether speed lines, spirals and other such runes were still

present in the manipulated pictures cannot be inferred from the description of the

experiment. In any case, the manipulated versions were pictorially impoverished, and

this possibly contributed to the high number of different meanings ascribed to the various

gestures by the subjects (Fein and Kasher, 1996: 803, Table 7). I propose that the chances


that a gesture in a comics’ panel (just like an emotion, with which it is often closely

associated), is correctly interpreted are significantly enhanced when it is considered in

coherence with facial expressions and pictorial runes (and spoken texts, of course, but as in

the present paper these were deliberately excluded by Fein and Kasher). A model for the

analysis of gestures in comics, therefore, must accommodate various signs that have

nothing to do with the hand/arm position per se.

Another thing to bear in mind is that a specific sign need not only be used for signaling an

emotion: it can also suggest other things. In panel 16-4-3 the war-monger (‘‘Detritus’’ in the

original French version, ‘‘Cassius Catastrofus’’ in the Dutch translation) has both the sign

‘‘ex-mouth’’ and bold face in the text balloon, but he is not angry. He has just left Asterix’

house and thanks Asterix loudly for a splendid meal—which in fact he wasn’t served at all—

simply to make the village’s leader Abraracourcix jealous. Similarly, the pink faces in panel

29-1-2 are indexes of fatigue after exertion, not of anger, as the perspiration and hanging

tongues suggest as well. Again, this makes sense: if indexes signaling EMOTION-AS-

FORCE are metaphorical extensions of (literal) forces, they can evidently be simply used to

denote physical states and events with no hint of metaphor as well.

My investigation has pointed up three elements of anger that are arguably somewhat

undertheorized in Kovecses’ work: (1) the aspect of loud verbal expression of anger—an

element that remains implicit in verbal expressions such as ‘‘he blew his stack’’ and ‘‘he hit

the ceiling’’; (2) the marked ‘‘eyes,’’ ‘‘mouth’’ and ‘‘hand/arm’’ positions of the angry

persons in the Asterix album; (3) the aftereffects of anger. Perhaps these lacunae are simply

the result of oversights on Kovecses’ part; but it is equally possible that the visual medium

of comics emphasizes eyes, mouths, hand/arm positions and loudness because it has better

means of doing so than language, or because it is particularly good at representing these

(rather than other) manifestations of anger. Similarly, the dominance of visual representa-

tions of anger’s aftermath perhaps simply finds its source in the supposed humorousness of

such portrayals. The research into manifestations of ICMs needs to focus on, and compare

the results of, different media of representation, not only because different media may

accentuate different aspects of the ICM, but also because such a focus will yield

instruments for the analysis of non-verbal or multimedial communication. Starting points

for further research on facial expressions and the role of hands are to be found in Yu (2000,

2001).

Clearly, no sweeping generalizations can be made on the basis of this one case-study.

Probably other runes pertaining to anger exist besides the ones identified here (a student of

mine, Yfke van Berckelaer, suggested to me that ‘‘backward-pointing ears’’ might be

another candidate in the Asterix albums). Variables may consist in personal, group, or

national styles. These rank under what Kovecses discusses as aspects of ‘‘within-culture

variation’’ in the conceptualization of emotions (2002: 189f). Moreover, ‘‘styles’’ of anger

may be associated with specific characters. In La Zizanie, for instance, there seems to be a

difference in the degree of anger—measurable in the number and/or intensity of the

pertinent runes—displayed for instance by the irascible Obelix and the equanimous druid

Panoramix, respectively. Similarly, Catastrofus’ ‘‘neutral’’ facial expression could be

described as ‘‘grim’’ or ‘‘malignant,’’ and he thus ‘‘naturally’’ displays various signs

(bulging eyes, tight mouth) which in other characters would signal anger. (Ed Tan makes

the same comment with reference to Tintin’s Captain Haddock; Tan, 2001: 36.)


Further research should take into account various comparisons: with other Asterix

albums, with other French, European, American, and non-Western albums, such as

Japanese Manga before it was influenced by Western trends (see McCloud, 2000/1993:

131—a comics theory in comics book form—for a good example). Intercultural and

diachronic comparisons, like their verbal counterparts, can help lay bare to what extent the

ICM of anger is universal and to what extent it is culturally determined. Shinohara and

Matsunaka (2003), for instance, analyzing verbal expressions of anger in Japanese, point

out that whereas the ‘‘rising fluid’’ in Kovecses’ model is typically blood, in Japanese what

moves (not necessarily: ‘‘rises’’) in the body-container may be other fluids besides blood.

Secondly, in Japanese, it appears to be not so much the head where the anger manifests

itself as the stomach, the locus of the digestive system. Finally, they point out that whereas

in Kovecses’ examples the emotion is very much located within the body, in Japanese,

particularly in the case of a low-intensity emotion, it is conceptualized as surrounding and

affecting the body from outside (as in ‘‘Anxiety passed by (my) chest’’ and ‘‘Sorrow floats

about chest’’), giving rise to the metaphor EMOTION IS AN OUTER FORCE THAT

AFFECTS THE CONTAINER. A specific variant of this ‘‘outer force’’ is the metaphor

EMOTION IS EXTERNAL METEOROLOGICAL/NATURAL PHENOMEN[ON] THAT

SURROUNDS THE SELF (cf. ‘‘Black cloud [¼anxiety] covers chest’’ and ‘‘Storm [of

anger] blusters in [my] heart,’’ Shinohara and Matsunaka, 2003: 16–17). Clearly, such

insights require further examination and testing in the audiovisual realm.

Another project worth pursing is to investigate to what extent the signs identified are

used in animated comics as well as static ones. And of course ICMs of other emotions

(pride, happiness, fear) need to be charted in comics as well. Such research will be of

potential benefit to scholars of metaphor and emotions, but also to analysts of pictorial

communication in comics and other multimedial representations.

Acknowledgements

Versions of this paper have been presented at the 21st conference of the Poetics and

Linguistics Conference (ELTE, Budapest, Hungary, April 2001) and the Dutch-Hungarian

‘‘Conference on Social Cognition and Verbal Communication: Cultural Narratives,

Linguistic Identities and Applied Argumentation in a Period of Social Transition,’’

University of Pecs (PTE), Hungary, February 2002. I have benefited from comments

by Ray Gibbs, Martin Wynne, Gerard Steen, and Zoltan Kovecses, who are of course all

free to decline any responsibility for what I did with these comments. I am further indebted

to an anonymous referee of Journal of Pragmatics for useful suggestions, and to Etienne

Forceville for help with the figures.

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Charles Forceville, educated in Departments of English, Comparative Literature, and Word & Image, now

works in the Department of Media Studies of the Universiteit van Amsterdam. His scholarship focuses on

pictorial metaphor, narration, genre, and visual rhetoric in popular culture, and combines text-oriented with

pragmatic perspectives. He is currently writing a book on multimedial metaphor. He is book review editor of

Metaphor and Symbol and reviews English fiction for the Dutch newspaper Trouw.


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