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University of Huddersfield Repository Tang, Andrea Narration and Speech and Thought Presentation in Comics Original Citation Tang, Andrea (2016) Narration and Speech and Thought Presentation in Comics. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/27960/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. 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For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ NARRATION AND SPEECH AND THOUGHT PRESENTATION IN COMICS ANDREA TANG A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Huddersfield January 2016 Abstract The purpose of this study was to test the application of two linguistic models of narration and one linguistic model of speech and thought presentation on comic texts: Fowler's (1986) internal and external narration types, Simpson's (1993) narrative categories from his 'modal grammar of point of view' and Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation scales. These three linguistic models of narration and speech and thought presentation, originally designed and used for the analysis of prose texts, were applied to comics, a multimodal medium that tells stories through a combination of both words and images. Through examples from comics, I demonstrate in this thesis that Fowler's (1986) basic distinction between internal and external narration types and Simpson's (1993) narrative categories (categories A, B(N) and B(R) narration) can be identified in both visual and textual forms in the pictures and the words of comics. I also demonstrate the potential application of Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation scales on comics by identifying instances of the scales' categories (NPV/NPT, NPSA/NPTA, DS/DT and FDS/FDT) from comics, but not all of the speech and thought presentation categories existed in my comic data (there was no evidence of IS/IT and the categorisation of FIS/FIT was debatable). In addition, I identified other types of discourse that occurred in comics which were not accounted for by Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation categories: internally and externally-located DS and DT (DS and DT that are presented within (internally) or outside of (externally) the scenes that they originate from), narrator- influenced forms of DS and DT (where narrator interference seems to occur in DS and DT), visual presentations of speech and thought (where speech and thought are represented by pictorial or symbolic content in balloons) and non-verbal balloons (where no speech or thought is being presented, but states of mind and emphasized pauses or silence are represented by punctuation marks and other symbols in speech balloons). Keywords: Multimodal Images Comics Speech Thought Presentation 2 Academic Biography Andrea Tang has completed bachelor and master degrees in English Language (BA(Hons) in English Language with Creative Writing and MA in Modern English Language) at the University of Huddersfield. Currently, she is a PhD research student at the same university, writing a thesis on 'Narration and Speech and Thought Presentation in Comics'. She has presented her research at previous Postgraduate English Conferences at the University of Huddersfield and at the PALA (Poetics and Linguistics Association) 2013 Conference in Heidelberg, Germany. 3 Acknowledgements My special thanks go to Professors Dan McIntyre and Lesley Jeffries for their supervision and support throughout the writing of this thesis. My gratitude also goes to my family without whom I would not have been able to pursue my PhD. 4 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such Copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trade marks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. 5 Contents List of Figures......................................................................................................................9 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................12 1.1 Reasons for research..........................................................................................12 1.2 Research questions.............................................................................................14 1.3 What are comics?...............................................................................................17 1.4 The comic debate: a lower form of reading or a visual-verbal literature?.........21 1.5 Literature on comics...........................................................................................23 1.6 Summary.............................................................................................................28 Part One: Narration in Comics..............................................................................................30 2. Models of Narration..........................................................................................................31 2.1 Introduction.........................................................................................................31 2.2 Participants in the narrative communication situation........................................34 2.3 The discourse structure of fictional prose...........................................................36 2.4 Focalization.........................................................................................................39 2.5 Fowler's (1986) internal and external narration types.........................................47 2.6 Simpson's (1993) modal grammar of point of view............................................50 2.7 Summary.............................................................................................................54 3. Analysing Images in Comics.............................................................................................56 3.1 Introduction.........................................................................................................56 3.2 A framework for analysing images.....................................................................57 3.3 Visual indicators of point of view.......................................................................64 3.4 Visually identifying Fowler's (1986) and Simpson's (1993) narration types and categories............................................................................................................77 3.5 Summary.............................................................................................................81 4. Applying Fowler's (1986) and Simpson's (1993) Narration Types and Categories to Comics...............................................................................................................................83 4.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................83 4.2 Fowler's (1986) internal and external perspectives in comics.............................83 4.3 Identifying Simpson's (1993) narration categories in comics..............................89 4.3.1 Category A - character perspective.......................................................90 4.3.2 Category B(N) - narratorial perspective................................................97 4.3.3 Category B(R) - reflector perspective...................................................102 4.4 Summary..............................................................................................................107 Part Two: Speech and Thought Presentation in Comics.......................................................109 5. Background Literature on Speech and Thought Presentation...........................................110 5.1 Introduction.........................................................................................................110