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.
eBook - PDF
The Visual Language of Comics
Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images.
- 240 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
The Visual Language of Comics
Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images.
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Information
INTRODUCING
VISUAL
LANGUAGE
9
only
to
face
embarrassment
in
front
of
the
other
dogs,
and
slinks
away
with
his
owner.
Let’s
examine
all
the
different
structures
that
factor
into
understanding
this
sequence.
First,
a
reader
must
be
able
to
comprehend
that
these
drawings
mean
something.
How
do
we
know
that
the
lines
and
shapes
depicted
in
panels
create
objects
that
have
meaning?
Physical
light
waves
hit
our
retinas,
and
our
brains
decode
them
as
meaningful,
not
just
nonsense
lines,
curves,
FIGURE
1.2
Component
parts
of
Figure
1.1
with
regard
to
meaning
and
graphics.
Table of contents
- FC
- Half Title
- ADVANCES IN SEMIOTICS
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 1 Introducing Visual Language
- SECTION 1 Structur e of visual language
- 2 The Visual Lexicon, Part 1: Visual Morphology
- 3 The Visual Lexicon, Part 2: Panels and Constructions
- 4 Visual Language Grammar: Narrative Structure
- Discourse and Film
- Conclusion
- 5 Navigation of External Compositional Structure
- 6 Cognition of Visual Language
- Narrative grammar
- Fluency
- SECTION 2 Visual language across the world
- Morphology
- Narrative grammar
- Languages versus dialects
- 8 Japanese Visual Language
- Influence in Japan and abroad
- 9 Central Australian Visual Language
- Cultural role
- Graphic structure
- Lexicon and morphology
- Narrative grammar
- Culture meets structure
- 10 The Principle of Equivalence
- Graphic references
- References
- Index
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Yes, you can access The Visual Language of Comics by Neil Cohn in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Linguistic Semantics. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.