The construction of ethnic identities in comic books: Analysing the
      (re)presentation of Self and Others in The Adventures of Tintin
Creators: name: Adibeik, Arezoo
Publisher: name: Publisher unspecified
Year: 2017

description: This thesis aims to raise awareness of the representations of Self and
      Others in a widely-distributed and controversial 20th -Century comic book
      series, Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin. It explores how selected
      character roles are constructed, especially regarding their function,
      ethnicity, and dispersion throughout different narrative plots in these
      comics. Specifically, the aim here is to create a systematic
      categorisation of the data by employing a classic narrative analysis and
      integrating it with other approaches to reveal the discursive construction
      of ethnic identities in comic books in general and the Tintin series, in
      particular. 
      
      To achieve its objectives, this research primarily provides a detailed
      quantification of panels and speech bubbles in all 23 volumes of the
      Tintin series and categorises eleven different ethnic groups based on
      their visual and contextual cues. Such a quantitative analysis enables us
      to understand the propagation of each ethnic group while setting the
      ground to explore how Self and Others are represented and constructed in
      this series. To that end, this research identifies similar and/or
      repetitive patterns in the narrative structures of these comic books. In
      order to track such patterns and to answer my research questions, this
      study applies Propp’s (1928/1968) narrative analysis to disclose the
      discursive construction of ethnic identities, while synthesising the
      theoretical assumptions of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA)
      (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001/2009) of CDS, as an overarching approach, it also
      draws on van Dijk’s (2008) strategies of positive-Self and negative Others
      presentation in his socio-cognitive approach. Additionally, it considers
      some relevant elements of van Leeuwen’s (2008) visual social actors
      network model in the analysis of images. 
      
      The analyses include qualitative case studies from among various ethnic
      groups in the series (Europeans, Far-East Asians, sub-Saharan Africans,
      Native Americans, and Jews), which demonstrates the visual and verbal
      stereotypes through selected texts. Thus, by combining detailed
      quantitative and qualitative methods, the analysis of each ethnic group
      reveals discrepancies in the ways character roles are constructed,
      including differences in both linguistic and visual features.
      
      The results show, surprisingly, that Europeans as in-groups are more
      frequently depicted as ‘villains’ than non-Europeans as out-groups,
      throughout the series, which can imply negative Self-presentation.
      Obviously, this does not mean that non-Europeans are represented in a
      positive way. There may be some complexities which are shown throughout
      the analysis chapters. An overall analysis of both Europeans and
      non-Europeans shows an interchangeable dynamic pattern regarding the
      strategies of positive vs. negative representations of Self and Others in
      different volumes. That is not the case for Jewish diaspora who do not
      share such dynamicity. In other words, throughout the series, they are
      stereotypically constructed in a negative way which can strongly prove the
      antisemitic ideologies in the Tintin series, considering the
      socio-historical context of Belgium during the Second World War
      (1939-1945), a period with its traumatic experience in the 20th century,
      the Holocaust.