Images of a crisis: visual metaphors and metonymies in the U.S. presidential transition, 2021

Abstract

The article proposes an analysis of the outstanding rhetorical resources in two series of images published during the crisis that took place in Washington at the end of Donald Trump's presidency and on the eve of Joseph Biden's inauguration. In this context, I postulate a complementary distribution of visual metonymies and metaphors. While metonymy prevails when showing the seizure of the Capitol, metaphors are the most used resource when it comes to presenting the restoration of order. Some of the photographs that make up the corpus come from the international press, while others circulated in social networks. The proposed analysis employs theoretical and methodological resources from rhetoric, political philosophy, and semiotics to consider rhetorical strategies in the field of political images.