Semiotic divisibility in multimodal storytelling: Reflections from a community-based comic initiative

Abstract

This practitioner reflection draws from a community-based comic initiative to examine how participatory and collaborative storytelling unfolds in multimodal production. I introduce semiotic divisibility to describe how meaning-making in comics may be distributed across linguistic, visual, or spatial modes, which, in turn, allows collaborators to contribute according to the semiotic mode that aligns best with their storytelling capacities and resources. Through selected vignettes, I reflect on how this distribution democratizes creative control and intuitively opens up spaces for participatory storytelling. I also make a case for why comics, as multimodal artifacts, serve as sites to negotiate multiple collaborating voices, a quality that remains particularly insightful for community-based storytelling initiatives.