Narrative art (2011-2013)

Multimodal documentation of speech, song, sign, drawing and gesture in Arandic storytelling traditions from Central Australia

Dr Jennifer Green
ELDP Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship IPF0173

In Central Australia the expressive potentials of verbal and visual art forms are combined in multimodal narratives that incorporate speech, song, sign language, gesture and drawing. These stories are a highly valued yet endangered part of the traditions of Central Australian peoples. The project took a multimodal and multidisciplinary approach to the documentation of stories from the Arandic language group - a group of closely related languages spoken by about 5,500 people. It provided a significant record of these narrative practices and provided rich data sets for analyses that enhance our understanding of how multimodal communicative systems work.