Picture speaks a thousand words,literally.

Ever since the Japan tsunami earthquake disaster, many people are very aware that the people in Japan are suffering from the aftermath of the disasters yet some people wanted to lighten the mood so they drew a comic. That comic has given the public a very 'good' impression of Malaysians. We should be more aware on what kind of comics to draw depending on the current situation and how will the audience interpret it.

Source: http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/20110314/5f4ce0_comic31411.jpg

In a news article from The Star titled 'Berita Harian issues public apology over tsunami cartoon' written by Wong Pek Wei, the comic strip that was drawn by Mohd Zohri Sukimi but he is more well known as Zoy that shows Ultraman the cartoon character running away from the tsunami has made many Malaysians and people from other countries angry (Wong 2011). Berita Harian and the Malay Mail have issued a public apology through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter (Wong 2011). 

Texts and contexts have an interdependent relationship with each other and it affects one another even if it could be the text that determines the context or the context determines the text (Schirato and Yell 2000). But in this case, without text, the public can already decipher the meaning behind the comic strip. Could it be because of the current situation?

There are three conditions to determine context given. First condition is called field which is to find out the current situations and the reason for the communication. Second condition is called tenor which is to find out who are the participants, what are their roles in a certain communication. Third condition is called mode where we determine how the text is structured and to determine the code and the language used (Halliday and Hassan 1985). So the field in this comic strip ‘drama’ is that Japan just went through an earthquake which brought the tsunami and it has costs many lives and the artist drew the comic in conjunction to that. The tenor in this situation is that the public who saw this comic strip and they were angry at the artist who drew it. The mode is the comic strip and in the comic, it shows Ultraman running away from the tsunami. The reason that Ultraman is used because Ultraman is a character that is created by the Japanese.

References

• Halliday, M and Hassan, R 1985, Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Speech Communication, The Pennsylvania State University, viewed on 11 June 2011, http://language.la.psu.edu/spcom497b/halliday.html .

• Schirato, T and Yell, S 2000, Communication and culture: An Introduction, 2^nd edn, viewed on 11 June 2011, http://books.google.com.my/books?id=x0eCjzs0bhwC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=schirato+and+yell+on+context&source=bl&ots=1HAIVUbhv0&sig=tLFOc7uQ5CAKC3ekRLw6XhNVYWA&hl=en&ei=_IjzTfGgII3QrQes0dDzBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false .

• Wong, P 2011, ‘Berita Harian issues public apology over tsunami cartoon,’ The Star Online, 14 March, viewed on 11 June 2011, http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/3/14/nation/8262608&sec=nation .