• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.10
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• pp.1-16
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• 2006

This thesis aims to recall the importance of language in comics by studying comic strips in Korean daily newspapers: the comic strips are analyzed for rhetorical puns in its language text as they representatively show the value and role of language in comics. Moreover, Korean comic strips, as they developed into current affairs comics, acquired a stronger media characteristic of communicating information compared to other genres of cartoons. As a result, comics strips have become a genre where language plays an important role and the words needing to be able to convey the meaning quickly and implicitly. Due to tight control of national authority, the language technique developed into an indirect expression rather than a stronger direct imaging technique. The political oppression of the comic strip paradoxically brought on the rhetorical development in the creative techniques. Based on this analysis, the writer studied the rhetorical puns of the texts Korean comic strips by implementing the classification techniques of rhetoric expressions. As a result, through quotes and analysis of actual comic strips, the writer confirmed that Korean comic strips do actually show tremendously vast rhetorical puns in its language application techniques. The writer was also able to conclude that the rhetorical puns in comics were the force entertaining and impressing the readers, and also acting as the creative principle. Concluding this study, the writer emphasizes that language, not only in comic strips, is a combination of words and images and is also an important factor in all cartoons in general. Thus the thesis proposes that the training of humanistic thoughts and linguistic sensitivity are as important as learning to draw in the creation of cartoons.