How comics communicate on the screen: Telecinematic discourse in comic-to-film adaptations

This paper explores the relation between the popular “Tintin” comics by the Belgian artist Hergé and Steven Spielberg’s successful film adaptation “The Adventures of Tintin” (2011) from a linguistic perspective. It explores how language use in the scriptovisual medium of the comic (which combines still images and printed text) is rendered in the audiovisual medium of film (which combines moving images and spoken language). After discussing general linguistic similarities between comics and films and the use of language in each of the two media, the paper compares the representation of voice, accent, thoughts, talking animals, sounds and written language in Spielberg’s screen adaptation to the original printed comic books. It analyses to what extent the language from comic books can be directly transferred to the filmic medium and investigates possible causes underlying any modifications in the above-mentioned domains.