Multimodal Reconfiguration in Graphic Adaptations of Canonical Novels: A Semiotic Framework Based on Mccloud’s Comic Theory

Abstract

This paper suggests a semiotic model of the multimodal reconfiguration of canonical novels in their graphic adaptations using the Theory of Comics by Scott McCloud. Although the studies of adaptation focused on fidelity, narrative transformation and pedagogical aspects, less emphasis has been placed on the systematic processes of how verbal narratives are transformed into multimodal demonstrating systems. To fill this gap, the study conceptualizes graphic adaptation as a semiotic translation process where meaning is not merely transferred between verbal and visual forms but it is redistributed. Based on McCloud’s Five Choices— moment, frame, image, word and flow—, the study constructs an analysis model which consists of six dimensions: verbal density, narrative mediation versus visual immediacy, lexical specificity versus multimodal substitution, rhetorical elaboration versus visual condensation, temporal expansion versus spatial segmentation and semiotic anchoring and relay. These dimensions describe the restructuring of prose narratives as a structural and semantic reorganization in a graphic format. Populated to the chosen graphic versions of canonical novels—1984, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Giver—, the structure proves the fact that meaning is in the process of creation by the active interactions of textual and visual resources. The findings reflect that the graphic adaptations do not simplify the prose narrative but transform it into spatial sequencing, visual condensation, and multimodal accompaniment. The paper moves the model of the comic production to the analysis of adaptation and provides a relocatable pattern of transformation of multimodal narratives.

Key Concepts:  Multimodal reconfiguration; graphic adaptation; canonical novels; semiotic translation; Multimodality; word-image interaction; narrative transformation.