The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images.

Neil Cohn

A&C Black, 2013/12/05 - 256 ページ

Drawings and sequential images are an integral part of human expression dating back at least as far as cave paintings, and in contemporary society appear most prominently in comics. Despite this fundamental part of human identity, little work has explored the comprehension and cognitive underpinnings of visual narratives-until now.

This work presents a provocative theory: that drawings and sequential images are structured the same as language. Building on contemporary theories from linguistics and cognitive psychology, it argues that comics are written in a visual language of sequential images that combines with text. Like spoken and signed languages, visual narratives use a lexicon of systematic patterns stored in memory, strategies for combining these patterns into meaningful units, and a hierarchic grammar governing the combination of sequential images into coherent expressions. Filled with examples and illustrations, this book details each of these levels of structure, explains how cross-cultural differences arise in diverse visual languages of the world, and describes what the newest neuroscience research reveals about the brain's comprehension of visual narratives. From this emerges the foundation for a new line of research within the linguistic and cognitive sciences, raising intriguing questions about the connections between language and the diversity of humans' expressive behaviours in the mind and brain.

目次

• 1 Introducing Visual Language: 1
• SECTION 1 Structur e of visual language: 17
• Visual Morphology: 23
• Panels and Constructions: 51
• Narrative Structure: 65
• Discourse and Film: 87
• Conclusion: 88
• 5 Navigation of External Compositional Structure: 91
• 6 Cognition of Visual Language: 107
• Narrative grammar: 110
• Fluency: 134
• SECTION 2 Visual language across the world: 137
• Morphology: 147
• Narrative grammar: 148
• Languages versus dialects: 151
• 8 Japanese Visual Language: 153
• Influence in Japan and abroad: 166
• 9 Central Australian Visual Language: 173
• Cultural role: 174
• Graphic structure: 175
• Lexicon and morphology: 179
• Narrative grammar: 187
• Culture meets structure: 191
• 10 The Principle of Equivalence: 195
• Graphic references: 201
• References: 203
• Index: 217

著者について

Neil Cohn is an internationally recognized scholar for his research on the overlap of sequential images and language in cognition. He is the author of Early Writings on Visual Language and Meditations.

書誌情報

• 書籍名: The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images.; Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
• 著者: Neil Cohn
• 版: 再版
• 出版社: A&C Black, 2013
• ISBN: 1441174516, 9781441174512
• ページ数: 256 ページ