Cognitive processes and multimodal communication in the parody of politicians.

To single out the cognitive processes implied in the production of a parody; viewed as a distorted imitation of a text or behavior aimed at eliciting laughter and mocking someone; a corpus of parodies of politicians has been collected and multimodal communication analyzed through a devoted annotation scheme. Analysis allows to distinguish between surface and deep parodies; to single out the steps required for making a deep parody when the bare imitation of the Target is not enough for the Parodist’s satiric goals; and to see the intertwining of various modalities in conveying the crucial information of a parody: identification and characterization of a Target and of its flaws through allusion to some event.