The study of the multimodal nature of human communication has undergone immense progress over the past two decades, fuelled by a rapid growth of the field of gesture studies and by continuous development of the linguistics of signed languages. Our understanding of multimodality to a considerable degree draws on crossing over to disciplines beyond language sciences.
At the same time, there is still a great deal of what can multimodality researchers with different theoretical or methodological backgrounds offer to each other. The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers who share the focus on multimodality but come from different areas.
In particular, its goal is to provide an opportunity for a discussion between i. gesture researchers and sign linguists ii. researchers who work with experimental (or generally quantitative) methods and those who approach the study of multimodality qualitatively