The brief: To create illustrations which replace text-based scenarios used in a linguistics research questionnaire. The research is conducted in the field of impersonalisation strategies (such as “they”, “one” or “someone” instead of “he”,  “she” or “John” when referring to a subject. The illustrations need to induce specific responses from the audience, relating to specific linguistic contexts. The problem addressed in the brief is that the text-based questionnaire has been found to be too restrictive and does not necessarily reflect the natural speech patterns of the respondents. 

The Project: Theories of sequential art and comic strips as a wordless visual narrative are employed to illustrate scenarios which comply to the given linguistic context This entails the manipulation of frames and panels to help the viewer understand the emphasis, time and timing of the narrative, as well as the perspective from which to answer.

Scenario 1: The response required is "In the desert, they ride camels."

Scenario 2: The required response is "They/someone played soccer here."