Outlines a complete narrative theory of how a reader creates meaning from a sequence of images, applying this to narratives in film and discourse.

Drawings and sequential images are an integral part of human expression dating back at least as far as cave paintings, and in contemporary society appear most prominently in comics. Despite this fundamental part of human identity, little work has explored the comprehension and cognitive underpinnings of visual narratives—until now. This work presents a provocative theory: that drawings and sequential images are structured the same as language. Building on contemporary theories from linguistics and cognitive psychology, it argues that comics are written in a visual language of sequential images that combines with text. Like spoken and signed languages, visual narratives use a lexicon of systematic patterns stored in memory, strategies for combining these patterns into meaningful units, and a hierarchic grammar governing the combination of sequential images into coherent expressions. Filled with examples and illustrations, this book details each of these levels of structure, explains how cross-cultural differences arise in diverse visual languages of the world, and describes what the newest neuroscience research reveals about the brain’s comprehension of visual narratives. From this emerges the foundation for a new line of research within the linguistic and cognitive sciences, raising intriguing questions about the connections between language and the diversity of humans’ expressive behaviours in the mind and brain.

"[Neil Cohn’s] theory, presented in The Visual Language of Comics, is provocative … If he is right, the hidden logic of cartoon panels could provide new vistas on art, language and creative development." - The Observer

"[Cohn's] work exhibits a dogged quest for rigour that gives this book an authoritative tone. [ . . . ] Perhaps the biggest question the book asks is one that demands consideration by any current or future researcher: 'why should the brain create several unique and diverse ways to handle different behaviours when it can efficiently make use of various general underlying structures'? Those with the desire to answer . . . will find this book a thoughtful and useful companion to their studies." - The Comics Grid

"The most unified and accessible explanation of the theory [of visual "language"] this far." - Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art

"Cohn's book represents a major break away from previous discussions of linguistic structures in other media ... He manages to combine a sophisticated theory model with much needed empirical experiments ... This is an innovative approach for comic book research, connecting systematic linguistics and cognitive studies in new ways that are a valuable extension of previous discussions." - Closure (Bloomsbury Translation)

"Cohn writes succinctly, using language familiar to discourse analysts ... [and] draws on the work of others as well as his own original research." - Discourse Studies

"Very useful to introduce students to the core elements of comics and to show them how meaning is conveyed by pictorial elements." - Jutta Rymarczyk, Heidelberg University of Education, Germany

"Very coherent good level of theory and terminology." - Patricia Kennon, Maynooth University