Linguistic of Comic
Linguistic of Comic
Linguistic of Comic
2016
Recommended Citation
Bramlett, Frank. 2016. Comics & linguistics. In Frank Bramlett, Roy T. Cook, & Aaron Meskin (eds),
Routledge companion to comics, 380-389. New York: Routledge.
Frank Bramlett
Manuscript version. Published in The Routledge Companion to Comics (Routledge, 2016), edited
However we define comics, it is safe to claim that in general they consist of two main
components: images and language. With some exceptions, the vast majority of comics include
linguistic elements: speech balloons, thought balloons, narrative boxes, sound effects, and
ambient language (language used in the background, as on store fronts, t-shirts, restaurant
menus, and the like). Comics scholarship examines the language used in comics to say
something about narrative, character development, even the nature of comics themselves. And
while fitful linguistic analysis of comics began in the early 20th century, only recently has the
academic discipline of linguistics been brought to bear on comics studies, resulting in a rapidly
growing expanse of research. This essay will discuss the concept of “language of comics,”
explore several approaches to language and linguistics, and then attempt to address linguistic
Since at least the 1980s, many scholars who write about comics have relied on the notion that
comics are a language. Both Will Eisner and Scott McCloud write about “the language of
comics,” and this metaphor “gives scholars and artists alike some common ground for discussing
their research and art” (Bramlett 2012:1). For example, the idea of “the language of comics” is
appealing because sequencing in language (e.g., order of words in a sentence) aligns very well
with the notion of sequencing in comics (e.g., the order of panels in a comic strip). As a
metaphor, the phrase “language of comics” has a powerful, almost poetic attraction, but Eisner
and McCloud “may have interfered with the study of language in comics because they called for
a language of comics” (Bramlett 2012a:1). However, from a linguistic point of view, comics are
Despite the difficulties with “the language of comics” as a scholarly principle, some
research has endorsed the view that when comics artists create their work, they are employing a
system called “visual language” (Cohn 2012: 93). This is not exactly the same as saying there is
Linguistics is a large and complex discipline, involving brain science, social science, digital
humanities, language acquisition, language policy, and many more. It is doubtless not surprising
that there are deep and divisive disagreements about how to define linguistics, and these
disagreements are rooted in competing definitions of language. Some linguists attempt complex,
complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious
qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to
mind, language may also be understood as located both in the brain and outside the brain.
Language can be defined from a sociocultural aspect in that it is learned, is culturally varied, is
Sociolinguistics concerns itself mostly with variety, and its focus is to understand that speakers
of languages “are creative agents, able to choose their verbal means and, in so doing, prone to
cooperate” with each other (Coulmas 2013: 15). Many linguists believe that language is as much
social as it is anything and reflects extraordinary diversity: “[linguistic] diversity means two
variety of coexisting forms in every language. This diversity is the result of many contingent
factors working on human speech and behavior” (Coulmas 2013: 5). The debates within
linguistics about what counts as language and about what counts as linguistics have a bearing on
the way that the analysis of comic books is carried out. The remainder of the essay explores a
variety of strands of linguistic research in comics studies, beginning with a discourse analysis
approach.
Most language in comics resides in speech and thought balloons, and even before balloons
speech, even language printed on the shirt of a young child in Outcault’s Yellow Kid. Through
these devices, readers have access to the way characters talk to each other. The analysis of
language includes the study of speech exchange systems, for example, through conversation
analysis (Wooffitt 2005) or interactional sociolinguistics (Bucholtz & Hall 2005). In everyday
conversation, speakers usually orient to a system of turn taking in which turn allocations are
agreed upon by the participants in the moment of the conversation. In other words, depending on
their needs and desires, speakers will take longer or shorter turns, and will sometimes interrupt
each other.
Arguably, the primary method we use to read a comic book is to study the social
interaction of characters, much of which is linguistic exchange. For example, in Rawhide Kid:
Slap Leather, writer Ron Zimmerman and artist John Severin created a story in which the main
character is a gay man. While few of the other characters in the story know that the Kid is gay,
readers are supposed to understand through the speech balloons that the Kid plays with language,
engaging in witty repartee with his friends and enemies alike. The following conversation takes
place near the end of the story arc in Issue 5, just before the big fight scene. Laura is at the jail
house to keep an eye on the prisoner, Red Duck. Another bad guy, by the name of Lé Sabre, has
come to break Red Duck out of jail, but he decides to make unwanted sexual advances toward
In this excerpt, three characters engage in social interaction, and their physical actions and
speech illustrate an attempted rape, resistance to the attempt, and a physical intervention that
prevents it. The speakers take clearly separate turns: they don’t talk “on top of” each other. This
phenomenon is most clearly evidenced by the distribution of speech balloons and the tails of the
balloons. None of the balloons in these few panels is overlapping visually—one balloon doesn’t
lie on top of another balloon; one tail doesn’t cross another balloon’s tail—so readers may
assume that the speakers are taking separate turns with no overlapping speech. Of course, in
other panels in Rawhide Kid, there is clear overlap of the balloons, suggesting that characters
produce speech simultaneously. In addition, these turns are short and don’t take up much room
on the page; usually speech balloons are designed so that they contain just the speech of a turn,
meaning that the size of the balloon will reflect how many words are being produced or how
much time is being taken up by the speaker. (For more on character interaction vis-à-vis turn
Importantly, the Rawhide Kid’s turns function in multiple ways: they communicate both
a serious message (that the rape will not happen) and an implied joke about sexual activity
between Lé Sabre and himself. In gay male communities, this is an example of “camp” practice:
gender norms and sexuality—with the express intent to undercut it. In many interactions, the Kid
uses joking language and sometimes stern language, much of which can be characterized as
verbal camp, which celebrates and critiques a situation, usually one that revolves around or is
founded in a heteronormative construct (Bramlett 2010). In this case, the Kid uses the joke about
rough play (hinting at sexual activity) in an ironic way to refer to a physical fight. These
utterances have multiple meanings in that they respond to a dangerous situation in part by
resisting heteronormative constructs and overlaying queer meanings: “The social practice of
camp as a masquerade insists that readers/hearers delve into the wide-ranging possibility of
meanings created in the moment of camp. This multiplicity is a hallmark of camp and is meant to
disrupt and destabilize discourse coherence, as the Kid achieves in his disruption of [Lé Sabre’s]
attempted rape” of Laura (Bramlett 2010). Social interaction in this very short scene ranges from
dangerous to sarcastic to humorous, and the characters communicate with each other about their
identities, their intentions, and their values, all of which is achieved through the language
The relationship between linguistic codes and comics encompasses far more than
principles of conversation alone. For much of the 20th century, linguists studied dialects based on
geographic regions (e.g., English spoken in the Midwestern U.S.), but they also began to study
social dialect, varieties of language used by groups of people who share similar social
situations, like language of the court room, or the classroom, or the locker room (Coulmas 2013).
Aside from obvious differences in language choice (e.g., comics written in French, Japanese,
Dutch, or Turkish), it is very easy to see the linguistic choices that writers make when it comes to
representations of dialect in comics. Many characters in Will Eisner’s Contract with God use a
New York City dialect and in some cases use English words derived from Yiddish (e.g.,
cookalein). Similarly, Takashi Okazaki’s Afro Samurai contains a measure of Japanese and a
range of different kinds of English, including African American English (Bramlett 2012b).
For many decades, the study of eye dialect has figured prominently in the literary
analysis of a range of works. Authors like William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Charles
Dickens are frequently cited for their use of eye dialect, defined as strategic manipulation of
spelling to approximate a character’s pronunciation (but see Preston (1985: 328) for helpful
distinctions between allegro speech, dialect respellings, and eye dialect). Given that comics
artists represent spoken language via a written language system, the notion of eye dialect (and
related concepts) is essential to the study of language in comics. For instance, Walshe (2012)
analyzes a large corpus of Marvel superhero comics to study the use of Irish English dialect
forms, focusing on characters like Banshee, Siryn, and Shamrock. Using Marvel’s online digital
database, the study examines “150 comic books compiled from 28 different series by 28 different
Table 1. The distribution of supposedly typical Irish English features in the corpus (adapted from
Table 1 shows a select number of features identified in the corpus. As Walshe explains,
“the representation of Irish speech in the Marvel universe involves a combination of supposedly
typical Irish English lexicogrammatical features [e.g., vocabulary choice or verb conjugations],
concludes that some of the features arise from nineteenth-century caricatures, but most of the
features are more often associated with Scottish English rather than Irish English, for example,
Scottish forms of negation like cannae, dinnae, didnae, nae, and so on (285).
A similar question arises when we consider comics that contain two or more different
languages. Breidenbach (2012) surveys a number of comic strips (La Cucaracha) and editorial
cartoons by Lalo Alacaraz in order to measure the extent to which the Spanish language, the
English language, and varieties of the two are represented. Discourse analysis reveals several
combinations of language and identity in La Cucaracha: Chicano English; Pocho; Spanglish; and
Mock Spanish, among others. For example, Alcaraz uses Mock Spanish for humorous and satiric
effect, substituting Cinco de Marcho for Cinco de Mayo and modifying a well-known fast-food
restaurant advertisement campaign: It’s Finger-Lickin’ Bueno (Breidenbach 2012: 226). Further,
Breidenbach shows how Alcaraz plays with linguistic codes in order to poke fun at people in the
U.S. because of their politics (left, right, and center), regardless of whether they identify as
Latino/Latina, as well as how he manipulates “language choice and language ideologies […] to
Like Lalo Alcaraz, many comics artists employ multiple linguistic codes in their comics.
In La Perdida by Jessica Abel, readers see the main character, Carla, travel from Chicago to
Mexico City in search of a stronger sense of identity or sense of self. Part of Carla’s experience
is her process of acquiring the Spanish language. Many of the pages show the slow start that
Carla has, but the reader understands that eventually Carla speaks passable Spanish. Figure 1
shows Carla attempting to use Spanish with some new acquaintances. In these two panels, Abel
shows codeswitching (e.g., English and Spanish spoken together in one speech balloon), English
spoken with a Spanish accent, and ungrammatical Spanish produced by a native speaker of
English (Abel 2006: 30). As a helpful guide to the reader, Abel also provides translations below
certain panels. As Breidenbach argues about Alcaraz’s comics, the use of linguistic codes
demonstrates a lot of information about states of mind and identity of the speakers. Unlike
Alcaraz, however, Abel does not satirize here. Readers encounter a very sympathetic rendering
contains a glossary of mostly Spanish terms that Abel considers important for the comic.)
comics as a way of understanding language variation, in particular how a language can change
over time. The concept of language variation is multifaceted, but in general it is the notion that
when speakers wish to communicate a meaning, they have options to choose from (Coulmas
2013). A simple example is that an English speaker may use the form is not or isn’t or ain’t,
depending on communicative needs. Since comics can represent a range of social situations, it is
reasonable to expect that language in comics will also evince language variation.
Gert Meesters (2012) constructed a corpus of comics to trace grammatical and lexical
development in the Dutch language spoken in Flanders. There is some variation in Dutch across
borders (Belgian Dutch and Dutch Dutch, for instance), and Meesters explains that these dialect
differences are similar “to the relationship between American and British English,” noting that
the “clearest difference is the pronunciation” (163). The corpus contains Suske en Wiske, which
Meesters identifies as “the most popular Flemish comic in history” (165). The study explores
grammar and lexicon in order to determine whether the different varieties of Dutch have become
more alike or more different over the course of the publication history of Suske en Wiske. For
instance, Meesters examines the personal pronoun gij (a kind of English ‘you’); auxiliary verb
gaan for future tense; and conditional clauses introduced by auxiliary verb moest, among others
(175). The study concludes that Belgian Standard Dutch and Dutch Standard Dutch are
becoming more alike but there is a different spoken variety of Dutch that is growing in
importance. Meesters explains the limitations of the study by citing the size of the corpus and the
fact that it includes written representations of language rather than the analysis of spoken
language data; however, the study demonstrates a very rich potential for the use of comics in
To this point, the essay has discussed language as a social phenomenon, created through social
interaction. Since comics are centrally about characters and their relationships, this approach
serves a vital function in comics scholarship. However, the concept of language as a brain-based
phenomenon has also contributed significantly to comics scholarship. Cohn (2012) advances the
argument that people who draw comics rely on their mental faculties of visual language in order
to render the visual forms of comics. His approach borrows from traditional linguistic notions,
like phonology, morphology, and syntax, to explain the formal properties of comics and the
systematic patterns of graphic representation, along with the structures necessary to string
them into sequences, they effectively use a visual language. (Cohn 2012: 97)
The argument here is that people who draw comics rely on an internal, cognitive system that
provides forms and rules for using those forms. Cohn also proposes the idea that all people in all
cultures have this visual language facility, positing, for example, American English Visual
There is also a strong trend in cognitive research devoted to explaining the role of
cognitive metaphor in comics. While some research centers on linguistic metaphor, Forceville
explores this relationship between language, cognition, and the visual in a study of what he calls
pictorial runes, “non-mimetic graphic elements that contribute narratively salient information”
(Forceville 2011: 875). Pictorial runes merit investigation in comics because they have a
relatively fixed form and “thus have characteristics in common with language that most other
types of visuals do not” (876). Forceville categorizes some of the pictorial runes in Tintin and the
Picaros: speed lines; movement lines; droplets; spikes; spiral; and twirl (877). For linguistics, it
is important to recognize the similarity that pictorial runes have to metaphor because they
“visually suggest events that are literally unrepresentable, such as movement and emotions”
(876). Additionally, pictorial runes suggest something about the way we think about the world.
Cognitive linguistics helps to explain the ways that readers of comics can recognize thoughts and
linguistics seeks an objective understanding of language (linguistic systems), but linguistics can
also help answer questions about child language acquisition, adult language acquisition,
language policy (both national and local), and literacy practices. Bound up with these questions
is the notion of language ideology, belief systems that affect how the use of language is viewed
in the public sphere. Indeed, it is a fact of comics history that politicians, scholars, and pundits
worry that the language in comics has a detrimental impact on readers, especially young readers
Linguistics encompasses the study of language acquisition, both for children who are
acquiring their home language(s) and for adult learners of additional languages (O’Grady et al
2009). In the past, psychologists believed that children learned their first languages through
observing and imitating the language behaviors of people around them. It is much more likely,
though, that children learn their first languages because human brains are designed for the rapid
acquisition of linguistic systems through social interaction. In other words, even though the brain
is hardwired for language, without meaningful social relationships, language acquisition cannot
take place. Research has long shown that the acquisition of language occurs in stages, meaning
that children learn certain sounds earlier than other sounds, e.g., English [m] is almost always
acquired before [l] or [w]. Likewise, children progress through stages of syntax, beginning with
one-word utterances, progressing to multiword utterances, and over time exhibit fuller control
over longer utterances. Under normal circumstances, children have control of the majority of
their language system by the time they enter school, adding mostly vocabulary after that. Of
course, some children take longer to finish this process, and a small minority of children go
through speech therapy in order to correct “problems” with pronunciation, for example the
Throughout the 20th century, though, various groups were concerned that the language
found in comics would interfere with children’s proper use of language. The fear was that comics
relied on inferior kinds of language and would have a negative impact on the language of
children and teens. Nyberg (1998) reviews some early studies from the 1930s to the 1950s to
show the range of findings. Some studies focused on children’s language production and showed
that “English found in comic strips carried over into the language of children” (Nyberg 1998: 9).
Others looked at reading practices and found, among other things, that reading comics topped the
In some ways, the early critics were correct about the fact that nonstandard language
forms were used in comics. A 1935 essay in American Speech functions as a survey of comics
from the late 1920s and early 1930s, cataloguing certain kinds of words on the basis of their
representation of regional dialect but also their representation of informal, casual language,
especially the use of slang terms found in comic strips of the time (Tysell 1935). The essay looks
at the wide variety of lexicon employed across the comics spectrum and the linguistic features
and/or functions these terms embody, including character names (e.g., alliteration, prosody,
humor); manipulated spelling usually to represent a “realistic” pronunciation (e.g., can’tcha for
‘can’t you’); sound effects (e.g., symbols to represent the sounds of anger, mechanical sounds,
weeping); oaths and expletives (e.g., Gosh darn, hot diggity, Gee whinnikers); epithets (You
dastardly fiend). This article also covers slang (e.g. terms for ‘to kill’: to polish off, to zap, to blot
out, to bump off, to put on ice); figures of speech (e.g., I miss Zeb Doe like a dog misses fleas);
place names (e.g., names of towns: Hecktown, Minesburg, Junkville Town); pseudoscientific
terms (e.g., paramagnetic needle; mechanical cranium); folk etymology (e.g., annamule for
If you have any lingering doubt that the Funnies serve as grammar, speller, and style
book of the vulgate, listen to a few street-corner conversations or ask a school teacher or
two about the language problems with which she has most frequently to deal. You will be
convinced, I am sure, that if the English of the comic cartoons does not direct the speech
habits of the common people, it at least crystallizes and gives currency to popular
Tysell was not alone in this belief, and the question of language in comics was incorporated into
the 1948 Comics Code: “Vulgar and obscene language should never be used. Slang should be
kept to a minimum and used only when essential to the story” (Nyberg 1998).
Importantly, some activists and researchers claimed that “comic books are death on
reading” (Wertham 1954: 121). Further, it was suggested that the language in comics often
correlated with and perhaps even encouraged reading disabilities and the “language itself
expresses an unfortunate attitude—the attitude of the crime comic book” (145). Wertham
implicates the relationship of comics and children with learning difficulties but also behavioral
problems, and this resonated with society at large and especially governmental authorities. This
frightened many educators and parents but, according to Nyberg, a small number of educators
“took a more optimistic attitude [and] felt that comic books presented a unique opportunity for
educators to adapt the techniques to classroom use, using comics as a ‘stepping stone’ or ‘bridge’
to better reading” (p. 13). Nevertheless, the 1954 Comics Code expanded the restriction and
included a section on “dialogue,” which forbade “profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words
or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings” (Nyberg 1998). Arguably, other
restrictions were relaxed: “Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use
should be discouraged and whenever possible good grammar shall be employed” (Nyberg 1998).
In the 21st-century, scholars promote the use of comics in the classroom to encourage
literacy, but now comics are recognized for their value not just for reading words but also for
reading images: “Knowledge of linguistic, audio, visual, gestural, and spatial conventions within
comics affects the ways in which we read and the meanings we assign to texts, just as knowledge
of conventions within word-based literacy affects the ways in which those texts are read” (Jacobs
2007: 24). Concerns about literacy are a mainstay of modern societies, and while the use of
comics is increasing in the classroom (especially in universities), the debate about their value
will continue.
Conclusion
Prior to 2010, much had been made of the idea of a “language of comics” or “grammar of
comics” or “vocabulary of comics,” and while these phrases were helpful metaphors that point to
understanding of how linguistic science can shed light on comics (Bramlett 2012: 1–4).
However, as more scholars approach comics studies using linguistic theory and methods as tools,
we are better able both to analyze the language in comics and to attempt an overarching theory to
Cohn’s argument that comics rely on the artists’ verbal language echoes much of the
variation with little to say about whether language is a mental construct, or a social phenomenon,
or some combination of both. The scholarship that comes closest to blending multiple stances
can be attributed to scholars like Forceville, whose work encompasses cognitive metaphor and
Comics readers have access to an overwhelming wealth of comics to study, and there is
certainly room for all of these varied approaches. In fact, no single approach could possibly
encompass all aspects of comics relating to language and linguistics. This situation creates the
However, competing research programs may hinder the creation of a coherent vision of what
linguistic comic studies could be. Comics scholars who are interested in blended or eclectic
approaches to the field have at our disposal a robust and powerful set of tools for contributions to
comics studies.
References
Bramlett, F. (2015) “The Role of Culture in Comics of the Quotidian,” Journal of Graphic
Linguistics and the Study of Comics, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 183–
209.
—. (2010). “The Confluence of Heroism, Sissyhood, and Camp in The Rawhide Kid: Slap
Breidenbach, C. (2012). “Pocho Politics: Language, Identity, and Discourse in Lalo Alcaraz’s La
Cucaracha,” in F. Bramlett (ed.), Linguistics and the Study of Comics, Basingstoke, UK:
Cohn, N. (2012) “Comics, Linguistics, and Visual Language: The Past and Future of a Field,” in
F. Bramlett (ed.) Linguistics and the Study of Comics, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave
Coulmas, F. (2013) Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers’ Choices. 2nd ed. Cambridge:
Forceville, C. (2011) “Pictorial runes in Tintin and the Picaros,” Journal of Pragmatics, 43, pp.
875–890.
Jacobs, D. (2007) “More than Words: Comics as a Means of Teaching Multiple Literacies.” The
Meesters, G. (2012) “To and Fro Dutch Dutch: Diachronic Language Variation in Flemish
Comics,” in F. Bramlett (ed.), Linguistics and the Study of Comics, Basingstoke, UK:
of Mississippi.
O’Grady, W., Archibald, J., Aronoff, M., & Rees-Miller, J. (2009) Contemporary Linguistics:
Preston, D. (1985) “The Li’l Abner Syndrome: Written Representations of Speech,” American
Tysell, H. (1935) “The English of the Comic Cartoons,” American Speech, 10(1), pp. 43–55.
Walshe, S. (2012) “‘Ah, laddie, did ye really think I’d let a foine broth of a boy such as yerself
Bramlett (ed.), Linguistics and the Study of Comics, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave
Wertham, F. (2004 [1954]) Seduction of the Innocent. Laurel, NY: Main Road Books.
Wooffitt, R. (2005) Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: A Comparative and Critical
Zimmerman, R., & Severin, J. (2003) Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather. New York: Marvel.
Further Reading
For the role of English as an international language in European comics, see K. Beers Fägersten,
“The Use of English in the Swedish-language Comic Strip Rocky,” in F. Bramlett (ed.),
Linguistics and the Study of Comics, pp. 239–263. For a survey of the presence of the English
Francophone Comics,” in F. Bramlett (ed.), Linguistics and the Study of Comics, pp. 142–162.
H. Miodrag writes about the role of linguistic theory in understanding the literary value of
comics: Comics and Language (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013). For an article-
length review of cognitive linguistics in comics scholarship, see D. Stamenković & M. Tasić,
6(2) (2014), pp. 155–162. N. Cohn, The Visual Language of Comics, (London: Bloomsbury,
2013) is a book-length exploration of comics and visual language. Another very important text in
the discussion of comics is T. Groensteen, (1999[2007]), The System of Comics, trans. B. Beaty