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Part of
The Discursive Construction of Identities On- and Offline: Personal - group - collective
Edited by Birte Bös, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin and Nuria Hernández
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 78] 2018
► pp. 81–106

The development of identity in Batman comics

| University of Vechta, Germany

This chapter analyses dialogues in the American comic book series Batman for constructions of identity in fictional interaction. Far from remaining static, the characters develop as the plot progresses and their language reflects these changes. Although there are linguistic expectations for the members of Batman’s team, these are not fulfilled by every character all the time. The analyses show how characters do or do not meet them. The identities are continuously shifting in reaction to the ongoing talk and one part of a participant’s self is usually foregrounded in any given exchange. Even though some comic book issues in my data were published over a decade apart by different staff, each character is linguistically consistent enough to be recognizable, but simultaneously refashioned enough to befit the new identity.

Keywords: Batman, comics, conversation analysis, fiction, identity, interaction, membership categorization, relationality, superhero
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Fictional dialogues and worlds
  • 4.Reading for character and identity construction in comics
  • 5.Characters in the DC Batman universe
  • 6.Conversation analysis and the comics data
  • 7.From Spoiler to Robin to Batgirl
    • 7.1Phase 1: The mutual construction of the Spoiler identity
    • 7.2Phase 2: The emergence of Stephanie’s Robin identity
    • 7.3Phase 3: Constructing and legitimizing the Batgirl identity
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 23 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.78.04enz
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