Neil Cohn
Neil Cohn (/koʊn/; born 1980) is an American cognitive scientist and comics theorist. His research offers the first serious scientific study of the cognition of understanding comics, and uses an interdisciplinary approach combining aspects of theoretical and corpus linguistics with cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
Neil Cohn | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 11, 1980 |
| Alma mater | Tufts University of Chicago UC Berkeley |
| Known for | Visual language theory Contributions to comics theory and emoji theory |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cognitive science, linguistics, comics studies |
| Institutions | Tilburg University |
| Doctoral advisor | Ray Jackendoff, Gina Kuperberg, Phillip Holcomb |
| Other academic advisors | Marta Kutas, Jeff Elman |
| Doctoral students | Bien Klomberg, Irmak Hacımusaoğlu |
Cohn’s work argues that common cognitive capacities underlie the processing of various expressive domains, especially verbal and signed languages and what he calls “visual language”—the structure and cognition of drawings and visual narratives, particularly those found in comics. His 2020 book, Who Understands Comics? explored the proficiency required to understand visual narratives, and was nominated for a 2021 Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. His theories on visual language provided the foundation for the creation of automatically generated news comics for the BBC.
Cohn's research has also examined the comprehension and linguistic status of emoji. He has also helped propose and design several emoji.