Multimodality draws attention to the core areas of research conducted at OMBEiK focusing on the multisemiotic and performative dimensions of humanities education.
The concept of multimodality emerged at the end of the twentieth century and began to function in scientific discourse in the fields of linguistics, media studies, communication studies and education. It is gaining popularity and its boundaries are becoming blurred and fuzzy. Multimodality used to mean the multi-channel and multi-codal transmission of information, combining word, image, sound and gesture, as well as the communicative and cultural background relevant to them. In the era of intermediality and the development of digital technologies, the long-known phenomena of polysensoriality, the multimodality of the messages surrounding the individual, take on a special meaning, constituting an interpretative challenge.
The phenomenon of multimodality, studied in the context of humanities education, reveals its dual nature. For, on the one hand, the object of teaching are multimodal texts, in which diverse sign systems are not in competition with each other opening the way for new meanings thanks to their potential for recombination. On the other hand, the educational discourse itself (the teacher’s message, the teacher-student dialogue) is multimodal, i.e. linguistic, audiovisual, and therefore combining different semiotic systems and media.
The work carried out at the Centre for Multimodal Educational and Cultural Research (OMBEiK) as part of initiatives such as Interliterature (Pl. Międzyliteratura), PolonisStudies_MindTech and Heritage_lab is a response to the increasing multimodalization of the reading process. This is due to the continuous evolution of literature itself, which is no longer based solely on the letter, but has become multisensory, spatial, immersive and interactive thanks to advanced technologies and mediatisation processes.
Our research show the phenomenon of multimodality in a new light, focusing also on its educational potential. It results from the overlapping of the horizons between the sender of a text of culture and its recipients (teacher and pupils) who, drawing from their knowledge, experience, cultural background or needs, reconstruct and, at the same time, create a comprehensive sense of the works they learn about. In the school interpretation process, teachers and students seek a coherence that is not a simple sum of meanings, but is derived from the interaction of different semiotic and media systems.
In parallel, work is also being undertaken on the construction of an experimental multimodal educational module, which could form the basis for new forms of cultural education and a bridge between the fields of technoscience and humanitas. After all, one of the aims of multimodal education is to introduce people to functioning in a multimedia community of a completely new type, to interacting in it in solidarity, to skilfully sharing and using knowledge from different disciplines and subjects. This, in turn, implies the necessity of building a transversal mindset with the ability to move seamlessly between different modalities, disciplines, discourses and ultimately to break down the barriers between science and art, that is between science and humanitas; a mindset able to consciously and critically exist in between and inside different worlds.
Ongoing research at OMBEiK into the multimodality of educational messages addresses the challenges of modernity, in which multimodality should be considered as the basis of all forms of communication. The response to the transformations of the modern world can take the form of setting new goals for humanities education, new models and forms of education that take into account the polysensoriality of the act of reception, the overlapping of different sign systems and the technologization of the individual’s environment.
