HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS AND GESTURES IN COMICS

In an attempt to explore the relationships between words and gestures in comics, the terms 'gesticulary' 'ingesticulatory' and 'pergesticula ry act' are proposed and employed. A study is reported, in which frequ ent gestures from Asterix books were investigated. Ten gestures were u sed in the first part of the study together with their accompanied utt erances in the comics, in order to examine the gesture-utterance conne ction. In the second part of the study, 26 subjects were presented wit h those gestures, along with corresponding photographed gestures. They were asked to propose utterances for the gestures and to ascribe poss ible meanings to them. We conclude from the results that the meaning o f a gesture lies in the ingesticulary act, independently of the exact propositional content. We also argue that people have a firm comprehen sion of comics gestures, and that those gestures are understood to mea n the same as similar 'real life' gestures.