Narrative art: multimodal documentation of speech, song, sign, drawing and gesture in Arandic storytelling traditions from Central Australia

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

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. This project will take 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 will provide a significant record of these narrative practices and provide rich data sets for analyses that will enhance our understandings of how multimodal communicative systems work. Primary investigator: Jenny Green

Project Details


Location: Australia, Australia and New Zealand, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Melbourne Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £69,159.00 Commencement Date: 01/2007
Project owner? Update this project



Related Projects

Archive Collage

Understanding Mandate Palestine through the publications and archive of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem

This project digitised 33000 pages of rare books (1619-1950) and archives (1919-1950) from the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, preserving endangered materials on M…

Explore project
EAP1402 Pub003

19th-century documents from the Peruvian asylum el Manicomio del Cercado

The Victor Larco Herrera Hospital in the centre of Lima, Peru, was closed in 1917. Its archives, dating back to 1859, consist of medical documentation as well as administrativ…

Explore project
EAP1306 Silk Museum

The Caucasian Silk Circle: Digitising Photo Collection of the State Silk Museum in Georgia

The State Silk Museum of Georgia holds the only documentary evidence of the practice of sericulture in the 19th century. Taken during expeditions of the Caucasian Sericulture …

Explore project