Caroline Conboy

Abstract:

In the field of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), there has long been an interest in qualitative inquiry to address language-use issues throughout the world. Many scholars have developed theories around genre (Martin & Rose, 2008; Rose & Martin, 2012) and English as a Second Language (ESL) (de Oliveira, 2010; de Oliveira & Dodds, 2010b; Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007; Schleppegrell, 2009), etc. However, much of this research has been descriptive in nature, and many of the underlying theories have not been submitted to verification through experimental research, even though such studies have been called for in the literature (e.g., Butler, 2003). In this summer research project, Visual Arts student I worked with Dr. Josh Iddings (Siena College), Dr. Ryan Miller (Kent State), and Dr. Michael Maune (MIT) to illustrate comics for an experimental linguistics study in SFL. While comics have been used in experimental studies in other areas of linguistics (e.g., Menn et al., 2005), this study is the first of its kind to do so in SFL, so far as we are aware.