Multimodality in Knowledge Communication

• Applicant: Dr. Sylvia Jaki
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 436475510

Increasingly today, knowledge communication takes place via the media. In a vast array of different multimodal formats, media producers try to convey factual knowledge to a wide audience in a comprehensible and mostly also entertaining way. Meanwhile, the dynamics of the ongoing trend towards digitalisation regularly leads to the emergence of new and interactive forms in knowledge communication. Formats popularising knowledge have increasingly become the focus of multimodality research, which deals with the question of how meaning is generated through the interaction of a variety of semiotic resources. What is still in the offing, however, is a systematic description of the multimodal design of the media products at hand. In order to contribute to closing this gap, this network combines the perspectives of 15 experts on various forms and formats of knowledge communication. The network is composed primarily of early-career researchers who work with more staid academics to describe trans-medial and media-specific characteristics in the multimodal design of such formats. The subject will be approached from both applied-linguistics and media-studies perspective, while also taking into account how multimodal formats have changed over time. We will experiment with a multitude of methods from multimodality research to describe the orchestration/interaction of the modes in the formats at hand. The discussion of the subject will take place in six network meetings, both among the members and in dialogue with renowned representatives of the scientific community as well as journalists working in the field of knowledge communication. An end-of-project volume will document the network activities and their findings to provide new insights into the multimodality of knowledge communication.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks