MULTIMODALITY THEORY AT THE INTERSECTION OF LINGUISTICS AND SEMIOTICS IN THE AGE OF DIGITALIZATION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the multimodality concept and deals with its main characteristics as well as with the theoretical apparatus of the new branch of “multimodal” linguistics and semiotics. A number of considerations are made on “moduses” ("modalities") and “multimodal ensembles”. It is emphasized that today the traditional phenomena of multimodality are complemented and transformed due to the rapidly developing communication technologies, implying active strengthening of technical means of creation, transmission, and processing of messages. Multimodal ensembles or complexes are systematized based on a brief description of the communicative languages or sign systems in use. Special attention is paid to technosymbols which include different groups of signs with different origins. The article also classifies some distinctive features of languages involved in the phenomenon of multimodality as natural, artistic-graphic and visual-technical. According to a functional typology presented in the article, the multimodal text-complexes can be divided into explicative and implicative sign ensembles. The authors also studied how the multimodality theory could be integrated in the context of foreign language teaching at a technical university. The peculiarities of foreign language training of future specialists were noted in connection with its focus on clarification of relations between concepts in intercultural bilingual environment of native and foreign language. The emphasis was made on the necessity to take into account in teaching not only the conceptual form, but also the complex nature of sign models in engineering practice, the presence of extra-linguistic elements in them, in addition to verbal linguistic structures. The advantages of a multimodal approach to presenting information in a foreign language were described. Along with this, there were given examples of implementing the theory of multimodality in the educational process with the help of the method of infographics, creation and control of multimedia presentations, through the communicative technology of storytelling aimed at generating multimodal messages. It is concluded that, in the age of digitalisation, the concept of multimodality has increasingly acquired an integral essence, enriched with different but interrelated and complementary elements.