Toward a Cognitive Approach to Analyzing Comics: A Selective Frame-Theoretic Characterization of the Conceptual Representation of Comics

Abstract

Toward a Cognitive Approach to Analyzing Comics: A Selective Frame-Theoretic Characterization of the Conceptual Representation of Comics

Szawerna 2012 contends that similarity-based approaches to the representation of conceptual categories — the classical approach, the family resemblance approach, and the exemplar approach — are not equipped with mechanisms that would enable an analyst to integrate all of the information obtained by anatomizing an array of expert definitions of comics into a comprehensive characterization of the concept of comics. This paper, conceived as a continuation of Szawerna 2012, aims to demonstrate that a description of the conceptual category of comics informed by frame theory readily incorporates the characteristics of comics that Szawerna 2012 has shown to be problematic for the similarity-based approaches: the multifacetedness of comics, the variation in the degree of prominence attributed to the multiple facets of comics, the variation in the degree of abstractness observable in the category of comics, and the interplay between the components of the visual representation found in comics.