One of the papers I’m currently writing is about how “time” is understood across sequences of panels. Scott McCloud’s basic position on this is that “time = space,” so moving through space means that time is passing in graphic form. I have numerous problems with this, but more than anything it has made me question why this equation might be made.
I’ve been particularly into Benjamin Lee Whorf’s writings, who argued that the language we speak affects the way we think and perceive reality. A class on this “lingustic relativity” in college is what basically motivated me to study the relationships between linguistics and “comics” in the first place.
Whorf argues that the tense system found in most European languages is what (in part) has created our sense that time is a linear thing. Because we have a past, present, and future tense, it lines up all events in a row. He makes similar arguments to the extant that we create a sense of “space” out of our quantifiers and plural system that relates back to our understanding of time.
So, this begs the question: Will the people who speak a language without a tense system (like Hopi, as Whorf shows) have a different manner of conveying concepts graphically? Would their visual languages lack sequential events entirely in favor of something else more amenable to their spoken language? Would this make the visual langauge grammar dependent on the concepts from the spoken, or can both exist with different systems of conveying events?
This is one of the most fascinating possibilities for research I think: whether the language one speaks affects the language that one draws. In some ways, this is the question that a lot of my work is leading up to. All in good time I suppose…
Comments
Interesting.
I’ve been coming at the space=time equation from a different angle recently. Some comics are presented on the web one panel at a time (I’ve been using Ethan Persoff’s as an example). Each successive panel is displayed in exactly the same space as the last (and the next and so on…). This goes against the panel juxtaposition/space=time idea yet I think the mental mechanisms used to read these narratives are the same as in conventional comics layouts.
It’s a different tack than what you discuss here but both ideas question conventially held comics wisdom. I look forward to seeing the paper.
As an aside, Did the Hopi develop a symbol system for their language? I mean before any European intervention/translation? I’m no linguist but it would seem a purely spoken language would have less reason for tense than a written language.
Maybe I’m just musing up the wrong tree…
Whoops. Forgot to close my tag.
Etan Persof’s The Recovery of Charle Pickle is my example.
Thats an interesting example you posted. With the constant background, it almost comes across as “animation lite” rather than spatial juxtaposition. In many ways, its like the Australian sand narratives I always mention.
I can’t say for certain, but I’m fairly sure that the Hopi did not develop a transcription system that was systematized in any way. There have been reports of various Native American “picture stories” that might shed light on how visual thought was conveyed in relation to verbalized speech. But, those weren’t systematic by most accounts.