The semiotics of inter-panel transition in comic-strip postcards

This paper examines the process of generic embedding in a selection of the How to be British postcard series, produced by Lee Gone Publications in the UK. Analyzed postcards display comic strips that target British culture, lifestyle, language and people. The methodological framework integrates tools from genre analysis (Bhatia, 2004) and systemic functional social semiotics (Halliday, 1978). Specifically, the inspection adopts Lim’s (2004, 2007) and O’Halloran & Lim’s (2009) analytical framework for logical-semantic relations between sequential panels. Hence, panel-to-panel relation is addressed as the crucial narrative meaning structure engendering mirth in the corpus. Findings show that, if postcards use comic strips to be more attention-catching and entertaining, embedded comic strips tend to simplify their logic-semantic strategies in order to fit the communication system of ‘postcarding’ (Ӧstman, 2004).