Scripted voices: script’s role in creating Japanese manga dialogue

ABSTRACT

The construction of dialogue in comics often involves both visual and graphic considerations, with changes to the shape, size, font, colour, and even orientation of text and speech bubbles used to establish characters’ identities and voices in the medium. However, while many styles of graphic manipulation in comic dialogue have been discussed and researched to date, the variant use of script has seen little attention. In this study, I examine if and how locally variant uses of the Japanese hiragana, katakana and kanji scripts are used to index information about speakers and speech acts in three series of Japanese manga (comics). The findings show that marked selections of each script are used to index specific effects and social voices, with the interplay between script choice and the surrounding visuals often working together to establish information in the analysed texts.

KEYWORDS:

• Manga
• Japanese writing
• visual speech
• dialogue
• indexicality
• script

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This is not to say that the changes here are restricted to a specific medium. However, they are recognised as common and important elements of dialogue construction in comics, whereas phenomena such as colour/font changes between characters/utterances would be uncommon in other dialogue-heavy mediums such as novels.

2. A fourth script, rōmaji (the Roman Alphabet), is also used. However, it has a comparatively minor and specialised role, and its variant use does not appear in the manga analysed in this study. It is therefore not discussed here.

3. Meoto jawan (lit: husband and wife teacups) refer to a set of two bowl-shaped vessels, one generally larger than the other, used for tea or rice.

4. For an extensive overview of major manga genres, see Bryce and Davis (2010).

5. The small っ symbol does not have a clear reading when placed at the end of a word, but appears to represent a pause or something similar to a glottal stop.

6. Certain kanji compounds, such as 小為替, have special readings (jukujikun) which are specific to the compound rather than the individual kanji in the compound. This is somewhat similar to how ‘p’ and ‘h’ are able to represent a ‘f’ sound when placed together in English, but neither is able to do so on its own.

7. In multiple forms, such as sōdesuka, sōdane or sōne. All are forms of the same stem.

8. The word appears in a standard (hontō) and truncated (honto) form.

Additional information

Funding

The preparation of this article was funded by a Monash Postgraduate Publication Award.

Notes on contributors

Wes Robertson

Wes Robertson is a Lecturer at Macquarie University. His research focuses on script use in Japanese writing. In particular, he is interested in the various ways that authors make use of the writing system’s flexibility to create meaning, and how readers respond to these changes when interpreting the text.