Multimodal Semiotics for the Analysis of Comics and Graphic Novels

Abstract

The broad challenge taken on in this contribution is to attempt to reconcile more literary-hermeneutic approaches to comics and graphic novels, on the one hand, and closer, more finegrained analytic accounts, on the other. This will be done by applying a semiotic framework that takes the phenomenon of multimodality as its primary organising principle. The discussion begins by showing how several assumptions commonly made in the comics research literature concerning the nature of semiotic account need to be redrawn because of substantial developments in recent years directly relevant to the treatment of complex media, such as comics and graphic novels. This appears not to have been realised sufficiently in many discussions of those media. Several examples of complex narrative will be drawn on to illustrate the possibilities of a broader semiotic account that nevertheless maintains a tight connection to the details of form, thereby opening up possibilities for more focused research on a variety of phenomena previously often grouped rather loosely under Groensteen’s notion of braiding.