ABSTRACT
Comics provide a promising platform for technical communication, but there are limits to their affordances. This article demonstrates some of the limits using Robert Sikoryak’s Terms and Conditions, a graphic adaptation of Apple’s iTunes Terms and Conditions. Using discourse analysis, it argues that Sikoryak’s adaptation, while an impressive piece of art, is not an example of accessible user agreement as media reports claim. The article concludes with practical implications on producing comics-style technical communication.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The history of “manga,” which literally means whimsical drawings, goes back many centuries to works such as the Animal Scrolls (12th century, credited to Toba Sōjō) and Hokusai’s Manga (19th century, by Hokusai).
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Notes on contributors
Han Yu
Han Yu is Professor of Technical and Scientific Communication at Kansas State University. Han’s research focuses on popular science communication, visual rhetoric, and intercultural technical communication. She is the author of Mind Thief: The Story of Alzheimer’s, The Other Kind of Funnies: Comics in Technical Communication, as well as Communicating Genetics: Visualizations and Representations. She is the co-editor of Negotiating Cultural Encounters: Narrating Intercultural Engineering and Technical Communication (with Gerald Savage) and Scientific Communication: Practices, Theories, and Pedagogies (with Kathryn Northcut).