Abstraction and the Interpersonal in Graphic Narrative

Abstract

This chapter discusses the involvement of the creator, the creator’s attitudes and opinions, in the text; the resources available in comics form to communicate firstly the reality status of what is drawn, secondly the creator’s affective relationship to what is drawn and thirdly to whom we should assign the content of what is drawn—how directly we are to attribute this to the beliefs and experiences of the creator, as opposed to a narrator or the participants represented in the diegesis. It recaps the interpersonal system in comics and then introduces the resources for ‘modality’ as it is accounted for in language by Halliday and Matthiessen. It then outlines a development of this resource as systems of ‘appraisal’, using the work of Martin and White. It recaps and expands upon a range of dimensions of abstraction, each operating on a ‘cline’, a continuum of variation, and outlines a mapping of these as realisations of the modal functions of comics communication, illustrating with a range of examples. Finally, it considers colour as a resource in comics, showing not only how it may operate as a modal resource, but how it works multifunctionally, bringing together ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. The chapter ends with more specific discussion of abstract enclosures as a general category.