Pow, Punch, Pika, and Chu - The Structure of Sound Effects in Genres of American Comics and Japanese Manga

Aug 29, 2026

Pow, Punch, Pika, and Chu examines how sound effects function as a core part of comics’ multimodal language across American comic genres and Japanese manga genres. By analyzing a corpus, the study identifies systematic variation in both content and presentation, especially differences in lexical categories of sound effects such as onomatopoetic “Pow!” versus descriptive “Punch!” within and across cultures. It also shows how Japanese manga sound effects vary by script (hiragana vs. katakana) and argues that English communicates analogous functions through textual font stylization or its absence.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

General introduction

Sound effects as multimodal language

Stylistic integration and Japanese scripts

Narrative functions of sound effects

Structural features: carrier, root, and tail

Nimish K. Pratha, Natalie Avunjian and Neil Cohn* Pow, Punch, Pika, and Chu: The Structure of Sound Effects in Genres of American Comics and Japanese Manga DOI 10.1515/mc-2016-0017 Abstract: As multimodal works, comics are characterized as much by their use of language as by the style of their images. Sound effects in particular are exemplary of comics’ language-use, and we explored this facet of comics by analyzing a corpus of books from genres in the United States (mainstream and independent) and Japan (shonen/boys’ and shojo/girls’) . We found variation between genres and between cultures across several properties of the content and presentation of sound effects. Foremost, significant differences arose between the lexical categories of sound effects (ex. onomatopoetic: Pow! vs. descriptive: Punch!) between genres within both culture’s works. Additionally, genres in Japanese manga vary in the scripts used to write sound effects in Japanese (hiragana vs. katakana) . We argue that, in English, a similar function is communicated through the presence or absence of textual font stylization. Altogether, these aspects of variation mark sound effects as important carriers of multimodal information, and provide distinctions by which genres and cultures of comics can be distinguished. Keywords: visual language, multimodality, onomatopoeia, comics, manga, Japanese General introduction Comics are inherently multimodal, and their use of written language can be just as emblematic of the art form as the style of its images. In particular, sound effects exemplify language-use in comics, second only perhaps to the speech balloon. From a linguistic perspective, sound effects represent the interplay between the various modalities of language present in comics, and therefore function as a sort of “crossroads” at which the reader is able to stand and experience meaning in multiple ways (Petersen 2009) . While several studies have looked at the ways that sound effects and onomatopoeia are translated between comics of different cultures (e. g., Zanettin 2008, Jüngst 2004), few studies have examined in a systematic manner the presentation or content of sound effects in comics directly, either within or between cultures. Such an effort requires a corpus-based approach that gathers and reports on data across a variety of works. We have therefore examined, using such a process, the structural properties of sound effects within two genres of American comics and two genres of Japanese manga, as well as comparing these features across cultures. In comics, sound effects may be a written form of the verbal modality, but they are often styled visually in ways that normal English text is not. While the text of a sound effect does not become a part of the “visual language” of the images (Cohn 2013b), they do take on image-like qualities that allow them to more seamlessly integrate with images. For example, though speech balloons just encapsulate regular text, sound effects are often integrated into the composition of the image without any “carrier” holding the text, and their depiction may have semantic and imagistic qualities, such as letters of an angry utterance appearing aflame to emphasize a metaphor for anger (Forster et al. 2012) . This becomes especially relevant in works like manga, which do not use the Latinate alphabet, and where selection of script may also influence these visual and semantic properties. Manga from Japan freely make use of the multiple scripts in written Japanese (discussed below), and authors of Japanese fiction switch between these scripts to achieve varied stylistic effects (Smith and Schmidt 1996; Robertson 2015; Iwahara et al. 2003) . Thus, while sound effects are not part *Corresponding author: Neil Cohn, Center for Research in Language, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA; Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, E-mail: [neilcohn@v

FAQs

What does the study investigate about sound effects in comics?

It analyzes the structural properties of sound effects within American comic genres and Japanese manga genres and compares these features across cultures.

How do sound effects differ between genres and cultures in the findings?

Significant differences occur between lexical categories of sound effects (e.g., onomatopoetic vs descriptive) between genres within each culture, and presentation varies across cultures.

What roles do sound effects play in comic narratives?

Sound effects can illustrate audible “sounds” and can also convey semantic information hidden from the visual representation, such as motion or emotional affect.

Aug 29, 2026

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