Exploring Image Narrative in Manga: A Social Semiotic Approach

• Main Authors: Yu-tai Sung, 宋育泰
• Other Authors: Mary Shen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/78342410387952092598

碩士 === 世新大學 === 口語傳播學研究所 === 97 === 　Not taken seriously, not even worth being discussed, comic books used to be dismissed too easily as merely for children. Today, however, we hear of quite some big academic talks about the “pictorial turn”, visual thought and image thinking. We also know that government officers seem interested in boosting “industries of cultural creativity”. Being a very popular form of popular culture that could easily serve as a good startup, comic books surely deserve much more serious attentions, whether from academics or from the government. 　Among various comics and cartoons, Japanese manga undoubtedly stands aloof as the most successful of all. It has won a worldwide recognition and long enjoyed an established status. The word manga symbolizes the whole phenomenon itself on the one hand, while on the other, it constitutes Japan’s principal cultural exports not only to other Asian countries, but also to European and American markets. With its fully-fledged manga industry, Japan is now undeniably a cultural superpower in production of animation, comics, and games (the so-called ACG industries). In strong contrast, Taiwan is deplorably weak with its comic book market filled with Japanese manga. Works of local artists could only struggle for a bare survival under its charms and influences. Out of a concern for Taiwan’s cultural creativity in this particular cultural media form, this study takes comic books seriously and treats Japanese manga as something to learn from. An adept mixture of image and text, manga incorporates two different symbolic systems. Being the simplest among various multimedia forms of expression, manga has been relied on by many artists for very complicated storytelling, in which images naturally play a far more crucial and substantial role than words. Exactly how do images “tell” a story in manga, with (or even without) the assistance of words? The author believes that this question deserves academic attentions, especially in an era of those big academic talks about the “pictorial turn”. Taking two famous culinary manga book series as examples for a comparative empirical study, the author tries to figure out how images actually “acts”, as words normally do, to push forward a narrative that readers find enjoyable. Drawing on social semiotics, the study pays special attentions to “social context”, “participants” and “symbols” in manga narrative process, while regarding image as a potential symbolic system with three major meta-functions (i.e., ideational, interactive and textual) fulfilled simultaneously whenever any expression is being “uttered”. With its empirical research findings, the thesis concludes that manga image does operate on quite some systematic rules, even if still tacit and not yet recognized as “grammar”. Cultural creativity is expressed more precisely and effectively when such tacit rules of image narrative are learned and grasped, and more stylishly when the artist knows well the subtle interplay of materiality, composition, and the story itself with its unique characters in action and scene. By adding to our understanding of manga poetics, the author hopes to have contributed his share on the way toward social semiotics of manga.