Multi-modal Discourse Analysis of the Ethnographic Novel Representation of the Sri Lankan “No Fire Zone”

Abstract

This study is a qualitative multimodal discourse analysis of figures 8 and 9, Illustration of bombardment in a government-designated 'no fire zone' in Sri Lanka, 2009, of the graphic novel Vanni: A Family Struggle by Benjamin Dix, using the Sri Lankan Conflict. Although most of the current literature on the Sri Lankan conflict concentrates on the historical, political, or literary narration of the conflict, the ethnographic graphic novels as a multimodal expression of civilian sufferings have not been addressed well. The work is based on the Multimodal Theory and Visual Grammar of Kress and van Leeuwen, as well as the Cultural Violence Theory by Johan Galtung, which allows the researcher to examine the chosen panels in the graphic novel. This is analyzed in terms of visual means like framing, gaze, layout, desaturation of color, and onomatopoeic words. All these aspects show how fear, displacement, powerlessness, and normalized violence can be depicted visually. The invisibility of civilian victims is also helped by the invisibility of the perpetrators, who are not always visible in the dominant war discourses. The results reveal that Vanni is a multimodal ethnography that questions the official accounts about the security in the No Fire Zone. This paper employed multimodal discourse analysis and cultural violence theory to emphasize how the graphic novel contributes to giving marginalized voices of Tamil and how structural and symbolic violence have been normalized.

Keywords: Multimodality, trauma, violence, Interactive meaning, Compositional meaning, Representational meaning, Vanni, War.