Cover not available

Article published In: Approaches to grammar for interactional linguistics
[Pragmatics 23:3] 2013
► pp. 389–402

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

Silent and semi-silent arguments in the graphic novel

Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 September 2013
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.23.3.01adl
This study focuses on the iconographic channel of the graphic novel as a particular occurrence of silence. In Comics, images provide not only the data required for the development of narration; they also render available the concrete circumstances of the enunciation and often orient the reader towards the identification of language in action, or towards the selection of a particular communicative intention, a process which coincides with Saville-Troike’s silences carrying illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect (1985), or with Kurzon’s silences – intentional signifiers alternating with an utterable signified. Through the analysis of concrete scenes taken from three graphic novels dealing with sociopolitical contexts of conflict – Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), Folman and Polonsky’s Waltz with Bashir (2009) and Sacco’s Palestine (2007) – we identify two different sets of arguments: (1) semi-silent arguments resulting from the interplay between verbal and visual language & (2) silent arguments emerging within an entirely visual, extra-linguistic scene, where images alone regulate the quantity or the quality of information given at a certain point of narration with the aim of leading the addressee to a certain tacit conclusion.
References (54)
Abbott, Lawrence (1986) Comic art, characteristics and potentialities of a narrative medium. Journal of popular culture 19/4: 155-176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Adler, Silvia (2011) Silence in the graphic novel. Journal of Pragmatics 43/9: 2278-2285. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amossy, Ruth (2008) Argumentation et analyse du discours : Perspectives théoriques et découpages disciplinaires. Argumentation et Analyse du Discours n° 1. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (1964) Eléments de Sémiologie. Paris: Le Seuil. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1977) Image - Music - Text. Trans. S. Heath. London: Fontana.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bergman, Mats (2000) Reflections on the role of the communicative sign in semeiotic. The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy XXXVI/2: 225-254.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carrier, David (2000) The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chute, Hillary (2008) The texture of retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis . WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 36.1 & 2: 92-110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chute, Hillary L., and Marianne DeKoven (2006) Introduction: Graphic narrative. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 52.4: 767-782. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dillon, George L. (1999) Art and the semiotics of images: Three questions about visual meaning. Conference, University of Birmingham, July 1999. In [URL].
Eco, Umberto (1976) A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eemeren, Frans H. van, and Rob Grootendorst (1984) Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions. Dordrecht: Providence.  BoP Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisner, W. (1985) Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL.: Poorhouse Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ephratt, Michal (2008) The functions of silence. Journal of Pragmatics 401: 1909–1938. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011) Linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic speech and silence. Journal of Pragmatics 43.9: 2286-2307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012) 'We try harder': Silence and Grice’s cooperative principle, maxims and implicatures. Language & Communication 32.1: 62-79. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. (1971) Les règles d'inférence dans une théorie sémantique. Cahiers de Lexicologie 19.2: 3-24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul (1957) Meaning. The Philosophical Review 661: 377-388.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1969) Meaning and intention. The Philosophical Review 781: 147-177. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1989) Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grize, Jean-Blaise (1981) L'argumentation: Explication ou séduction. In l’Argumentation. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, Collection "Linguistique et Sémiologie", pp. 29-41.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1982) De la Logique à l'Argumentation. Genève: Droz. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Groensteen, Thierry (1999) Système de la Bande Dessinée. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005) La Bande Dessinée, une Littérature Graphique. Toulouse: Les Essentiels Milan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Groensteen, Thierry, and Benoît Peeters (eds.) (1994) Töpffer – l'Invention de la Bande Dessinée. Hermann: Paris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaworski, Adam (1993) The Power of Silence: Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. Newbury park, CA.: Sage.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (1986) L'Implicite. Paris: Armand Colin.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam (1983) Gesture and speech: How they interact. In John M. Wiemann, and P. Harrison Randall (eds.), Nonverbal Interaction. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, pp. 13-45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kohn, Ayelet (2003) A comic story, a song and a press article: Three models of image/text. In Rina Ben Shahar, and Toury Gideon (eds.), Hebrew, A Living Language, vol. 31.Tel Aviv: HakibutzHamehuhad, pp. 167-189.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kohn, Ayelet, and Rachel Weissbrod (2012) Waltz with Bashir as a case of multidimensional translation. In Laurence Raw (ed.), Translation, Adaptation and Transformation. London: Continuum, Advances in translation, pp. 123-144.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images – The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kurzon, Dennis (1998) Discourse of Silence. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing company.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007) Towards a typology of silence. Journal of Pragmatics 391: 1673–1688.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McAllister, M.P., Jr., E.H. Sewell, and I. Gordon (2001) Comics and Ideology. NY: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott (1993) Understanding Comics, the Invisible Art. New York: Kitchen Sink Press for Harper Collins Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000) Reinventing Comics. New York: Paradox Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mitchell, W.J.T. (1986) Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1994) Picture Theory. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin (1993) Meaning in the Visual Arts. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peeters, Benoît (2003) Lire la Bande Dessinée. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perelman, Ch., and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958) La Nouvelle Rhétorique. Traité de l'Argumentation. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pomier, Frédéric (2005) Comment Lire la B.D. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saville-Troike, Muriel (1982) The Ethnography of Communication: On Introduction, 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1985) The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication. In Deborah Tannen, and Muriel Saville-Troike, Perspectives on Silence. New Jersey: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2006) Silence: Cultural aspects. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 379-381. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, John (1979) A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-29.  BoP Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, John R. (1982) Sens et Expression. Paris: Minuit.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson (1989 [1986]) La Pertinence. Traduit de l’anglais par Abel Gerschenfeld and Dan Sperber. Paris: Editions de minuit.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (1985) Silence: Anything but. In Deborah Tannen, and Muriel Saville-Troike, Perspectives on Silence. New Jersey: Ablex.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1989) Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Varga, A. Kibedi (1989) Discours, Récit, Image. Brussels: Pierre Mardaga.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Varnum, Robin, and Christina Gibbons (eds.) (2002) The Language of Comics: Word and Image. University press of Mississippi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Richard A. (1975) Meaning and Conversational Implicature. In P. Cole, and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, vol.31. New York, San Fransisco, London: Academic Press, pp. 363-382.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Raina, Shriya
2025.  Harnessing comics as minoritarian interventions in the representation of conflicts and their everyday: the case of Vanni and Welcome to the New World . Social Semiotics 35:4 ► pp. 652 ff. DOI logo
Adler, Silvia & Ayelet Kohn
2020. Silence in a 9-panel grid: the voice of Israeliness in Asaf Hanuka’sThe Realist. Israel Affairs 26:1 ► pp. 5 ff. DOI logo
Adler, Silvia & Ayelet Kohn
2022. When the cannons roar, comics panels fall silent: on silent representations of traumatic events in Israeli comics and graphic novels. Visual Studies 37:5 ► pp. 442 ff. DOI logo
Adler, Silvia & Ayelet Kohn
2023. Silence: a modality of its own. Social Semiotics 33:5 ► pp. 946 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue