Conclusion

Abstract

Through my critique of McCloud and Eisner in the introductory chapter, I argued that their metaphor ‘language of comics’ helps give comics artists and scholars common ground on which to build discussions of the way images and texts go together. At the same time, the metaphor stands as a barrier to a sufficient engagement with comics from a linguistic viewpoint. As the chapters in this collection demonstrate, comics scholars must eschew the notions of the ‘vocabulary of comics’ or the ‘grammar of comics’ so that a more productive engagement with the language in comics may proceed. In this way, the linguistic codes at play in comics are freed and the distinction can be used more fruitfully to characterize and explore the text and image as well as the linkages that bind them one to the other. Further, linguistic scholarship can be used productively to examine nonlinguistic domains (like visual representations of action).