ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the dialogue form as a key narrative device and technique, and examines the main compositional principles and narrative functions that characterize conversational scenes in comics. It discusses the function of speech balloons as metaphors for an utterance, 'utterance' meaning here a specific piece of dialogue, voice, and turn-taking, and their narrative role in organising the time of the speech event and the order of its reading. The ultimate goal of the chapter is to develop a medium-specific understanding of the dialogue form in comics and outline the basic narrative functions of scenes of talk in comics. A dialogue scene can portray the participants' positions, gestures, and relations in great detail, but in a 'talking heads' story or a verbal gag strip, words can also be the primary focus of the reader's attention, whereas sometimes faces can tell next to nothing.
