Osnovni zadatak ovog rada jeste da ispita mogućnosti primene analize diskursa na medij stripa, sa polazištem u dvema većim analizama ovog tipa. Prvo polazište jeste doktorska disertacija E. Stejnbruka (Stainbrook 2003), koja se bazira na Kinivijevoj teoriji diskursa (Kinneavy 1971) i koja nastoji da ispita kako kroz analizu diskursa može da se pristupi (1) odnosu vizuelne i tekstualne komponente u stripu, (2) modalitetima izražavanja u okviru stripova (naraciji, opisu, klasifikaciji, itd.) i (3) ciljevima koji mogu da se ostvare kroz ovaj medij. S druge strane, M. Saraseni (Saraceni 2000) dotiče problem analize diskursa na više mesta u sveobuhvatnoj analizi jezika u stripu i bavi se problemima kakvi su semiotička sličnost reči i slika u stripu, njihova kohezija, naratologija stripa i pedagoška primena stripova. Kroz određeni broj ilustracija, u radu će se prikazati kako se date teorijske postavke mogu primeniti na analizu nekoliko vrsta stripa, što može doprineti rasvetljavanju nekih elemenata komunikacije kroz ovaj medij.

The main goal of the present paper is to explore the possibilities of applying the tenets of discourse analysis to the medium of comics, starting from the main findings of the two existing analyses of comics discourse. The first of them is Eric Stainbrook’s (2003) doctoral dissertation, Reading Comics: A Theoretical Analysis of Textuality and Discourse in the Comics Medium, which is based on Kinneavy’s (1971) approach to discourse analysis. Stainbrook attempts to use discourse analysis for the purpose of tackling several issues: (1) the relation between the textual and the visual strand in comics, (2) the modes of discourse as applied to comics (e.g. narration, description, classification, evaluation, etc.) and, finally, (3) the aims of discourse which can be achieved through the medium of comics. Our study provides authentic material from various comics to support Stainbrook’s approach to these three aspects of discourse. On the other hand, Mario Saraceni, in his doctoral dissertation titled Language Beyond Language: Comics as Verbo-Visual Texts, deals with discourse analysis from another perspective and tries to establish an approach which would address issues such as cohesion in verbal texts and in wordless comics, their semiotic relatedness, the relation between the writer and the reader, narratology, as well as potential pedagogical applications related to the analysis of comics. By providing appropriate illustrations, the paper reveals various facets of communicating messages via comics and supports the idea that discourse analysis can be applied to visual languages in almost the same way it is applied to other language modalities. Besides this, its very application to the medium of comics seems to be something discourse analysis can benefit from.