Strategies for production of meaning: a reflection on the comic and metaphor in photographic illustration

Abstract

This paper attempts to design the forms through which photo-illustrations are able to make sense, with special attention to comedy and metaphor. The ideas of a comic effect and a metaphorical character of these images are worked in order to understand them in a dual role: on one hand, establishing a relationship of complicity with the reader and, on the other, serving as a cognitive operator. Thus, they work for a rhetorical purpose, because they are configured as procedures for the construction of a message that is aimed at guiding the reader in interpreting the issues reported.