Writing Workshop by Anisa I.

Some people may consider comic books as something that only children would read. Little do they know that it has been an interest of linguistics study for decades. What makes comic books to be of interest in linguistics study is because of its variations regarding the purposes. Some comic books are made to entertain the readers through its inside jokes, while some others are intended for educational purposes. As it is mentioned by Haugard (1973), in which her sons began to read comic books without having to be told or persuaded to do so. Since then, tons of research have been done in understanding comic books in many aspects, one being that of the linguistics field.

Yumcha Studios, was founded by Dr. Woo Yen Yen and Collin Goh, has published a series of comic books under the title “Little Dim Sum Warriors” (henceforth, LDSW). The series is made as a medium for young readers to learn languages, whether it is first or second language. As of now, there are three main languages that are used in the series: Mandarin, English, and Indonesian. With its bilinguality, it becomes the appeal of the series and it is expected to be able to help parents in teaching languages to their children. That is why, the series is made to be as engaging as possible, especially with its application that can be downloaded in mobiles (both iOS and Android). Considering the target audience being young, the language used inside the comic books is written in a simple form of language, helping the audience to comprehend the content while simultaneously learning the languages as efficiently as possible.

As there have been an increasing number of interests in the study of language, especially in the forms of communication that is more to learn about the systematization and the projection of the meanings other than the linguistics features. The innovations of communication modes that have been developing over the years with the significant development in technology has attracted more researchers to study in the matter. Recently, not only do people use conversations as the only means of communicating their ideas, but they can also communicate through several other media such as advertisements (Royce, year; name, year), entry tickets (Bowcher, 2013), (several other references).

Despite having so much research in various forms as mentioned prior, there is less research conducted on translanguaging in comic books. Using LDSW as the main data to be analysed, this article conducts a research on translanguaging context in the series, using Gracia and Wei (year), Royce (year), and others to analyse the role of translanguaging and how the lexico-semantic ways in the comics help deliver the translanguaging context.

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