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The Cognitive Grammar of ‘I’: Viewing Arrangements in Graphic Autobiographies

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Gerard Genette's classic questions about narrative perspective – ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’ – are at their most relevant when it comes to the multimodal narrative intricacies of autobiographical graphic novels. The already complex matter of narration and focalization in a purely visual medium is distinctly complicated when taking the different perspectives of the narrating ‘I’ and the experiencing ‘I’ into account. Furthermore, many acclaimed autobiographical comics, including works like Maus, Fun Home, Blankets, or Safe Area Goražde, thematize the construction of their viewpoints, addressing issues of memory, objectivity, and (un-) reliability. In this chapter, I propose a new approach to this complexity, turning to cognitive linguistics – more specifically, to the model of cognitive grammar established by Ronald Langacker and his concept of ‘viewing arrangements’. In Langacker's theory, all categories of grammar are based on cognitive conceptualizations that represent our position in the world and our relation to our surroundings. These conceptualizations have a distinctly visual bent. In Langacker's terminology, a ‘viewing arrangement’ is a model of how a viewer conceptualizes a scene, ‘the overall relationship between the “viewers” and the situation, being “viewed”’. These arrangements change constantly, as conceptualizers focus on various parts of their environment, imbuing them with different meanings and expressing various degrees of subjectivity. Applying Langacker's model to examples from autobiographic graphic novels, I will use the concept of the ‘viewing arrangement’ to illustrate how intricate narrative perspectives in these works can be analysed systematically and how different degrees of subjectivity are constructed with the formal means of comics. The model may not only help to untangle the narrative intricacies of autobiographies, but may enrich discussions of narration and focalization in comics generally.

Hardback ISBN: 9781789389494
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The Cognitive Grammar of ‘I’: Viewing Arrangements in Graphic Autobiographies
Intellect , 111 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389494_9
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References

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References

  1. Anderson, L. R. (2001), Autobiography, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Badman, D. A. (2010), ‘Talking, thinking, and seeing in pictures: Narration, focalization, and ocularization in comics narratives’, International Journal of Comic Art, 12:2&3, pp. 91–111.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Baetens, J. (2001), ‘Revealing traces: A new theory of graphic enunciation’, in R. Varnum and C. T. Gibbons (eds), The Language of Comics: Word and Image, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 145–55.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Bechdel, A. (2006), Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Chute, H. L. (2008), ‘Comics as literature? Reading graphic narrative’, PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 123:2, pp. 452–65.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Eakin, P. J. (1999), How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Evans, V. (2007), A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Evans, V. and Green, M. (2006), Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Genette, G. (1980), Narrative Discourse, Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Genette, G. (1988), Narrative Discourse Revisited, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Gibbons, A. (2012), Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Hague, I. (2012), ‘Beyond the visual: The roles of the senses in contemporary comics’, Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art, 1:1, pp. 96–110.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Hampel, R. (2001), ‘I Write Therefore I Am?’: Fictional Autobiography and the Idea of Selfhood in the Postmodern Age, Berne: Lang.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Hatfield, C. (2005), Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Herman, D. (2009), ‘Beyond voice and vision: Cognitive grammar and focalization theory’, in P. Hühn, W. Schmid, and J. Schönert (eds), Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 119–42.131
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  16. Herman, D. (2010), ‘Multimodal storytelling and identity construction in graphic narratives’, in D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina, and A. Nylund (eds), Telling Stories: Language, Narrative, and Social Life, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 195–208.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Horstkotte, S. and Pedri, N. (2011), ‘Focalization in graphic narrative’, Narrative, 19:3, pp. 330–57.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Jahn, M. (2005), ‘Focalization’, in D. Herman, M. Jahn, and M.-L. Ryan (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London: Routledge, pp. 173–77.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Jost, F. (2007), ‘The look: From film to novel. An essay in comparative narratology’, in R. Stam and Raengo (eds), A Companion to Literature and Film, Malden: Blackwell, pp. 71–80.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Kukkonen, K. (2011), ‘Comics as a test case for transmedial narratology’, SubStance, 40:1, pp. 34–52.
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  21. Langacker, R. W. (1987), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Vol. I: Theoretical Prerequisites, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Langacker, R. W. (1991a), Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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  23. Langacker, R. W. (1991b), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Vol. II: Descriptive Application, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Langacker, R. W. (1999), Grammar and Conceptualization, Berlin: de Gruyter.
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  25. Langacker, R. W. (2008), Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Lejeune, P. (1989), On Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Marion, P. (1993), Traces En Cases: Travail Graphique, Figuration Narrative Et Participation Du Lecteur: Essai Sur La Bande Dessinée, Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. McCallum, E. (2009), ‘Lost in the Fun Home: Alison Bechdel's gothic queers’, in M. Duperray (ed.), Gothic N.E.W.S.: Exploring the Gothic in Relation to New Critical Perspectives and the Geographical Polarities of North, East, West and South, Paris: M. Houdiard, pp. 310–22.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. McCloud, S. (1994), Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, New York: HarperPerennial.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Mikkonen, K. (2008), ‘Presenting minds in graphic narratives’, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 6:2, pp. 301–21.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Mikkonen, K. (2012), ‘Focalisation in comics – From the specificities of the medium to conceptual reformulation’, Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art, 1:1, pp. 69–95.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Page, R. E. (2009), ‘Introduction’, in R. E. Page (ed.), New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–13.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Pleyer, M. and Schneider, C. W. (2014), ‘Construal, cognition, and comics: Analysing the multimodal construction of a gothic autobiography in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home’, in C. Harrison, L. Nuttall, P. Stockwell and W. Yuan (eds), Cognitive Grammar in Literature, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 35–52.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Rosenblatt, A. and Lunsford, A. A. (2010), ‘Critique, caricature, and compulsion in Joe Sacco's comics journalism’, in P. Williams and J. Lyons (eds), The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, pp. 68–87.132
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Sacco, J. (2001), Safe Area Goražde, Seattle: Fantagraphics.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Sacco, J. (2004), ‘Presentation from the 2002 UF Comics Conference’, ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, 1:1, https://imagetextjournal.com/joe-sacco-presentation-from-the-2002-uf-comics-conference/. Accessed 31 May 2013.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Schneider, C. W. (2010), ‘Young daughter, old artificer: Constructing the gothic fun home’, Studies in Comics, 1:2, pp. 337–58.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Smith, S. and Watson, J. (2001), Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Thompson, C. (2004), Carnet De Voyage, Marietta: Top Shelf Productions.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Verhagen, A. (2007), ‘Construal and perspectivization’, in D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 48–81.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Watson, J. (2008), ‘Autographic disclosures and genealogies of desire in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home’, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 31:1, pp. 27–58.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Whitlock, G. and Poletti, A. (2008), ‘Self-regarding art’, Biography, 31:1, pp. v–xxiii.
     [Google Scholar]

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