Dimensions of Mechanical Narrative in Graphic Humour: elementary episodic structures of daily comic strips

Abstract

This article discusses elementary narrative schemes of graphic humour, based on an examination of the interactional economy of the narrative meaning of comic strips published in daily newspapers. From a theoretical point of view, we aim to determine the importance of sequential schemes and their underlying principles of causality as aspects that link the sequential textuality of narrated actions to the principles of their understanding in ordinary experience. In the model of visual and verbal gags of these strips, we also identify certain disjunctive aspects of the humorous action, whose operation is dependent on the causality that originates certain everyday situations, and also produces the sensory-motor and paradigmatic events that characterize the genres of laughter as founded upon the aspect of criticism of the mechanical normality of ordinary life.