One page, two stories: intersemiotic dissonance in a comic adaptation of Journey to the West

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study highlights intersemiotic dissonance between two constituents of a multimodal page from a social semiotic perspective. The data under analysis is Tsai Chih-chung’s comic adaptation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West. Each page of Tsai’s comic book is divided into two halves: verbal narrative and comic strip. Instead of working mutually with each other to arrive at a unified meaning, the words and the comic strip often diverge. This divergence in meaning is defined as intersemiotic dissonance. Focusing on the ideational metafunction, the article analyses how the verbal narrative and comic strip each presents a different story, mainly through dissonance in the participants, processes and the projected speeches. The reason why there is such dissonance is also explained with a consideration of the field of context, that is, Tsai’s work as a social activity of adaptation. The verbal narrative serves as a sign of fidelity to the original, and the comic strip extends and subverts the original. It is in the dissonance between the two constituents that a deeper meaning is realized.