The Western Desert Special Speech Styles Project
The Connecting, Communicating and Learning through New Media Project is also linked to The Western Desert Special Speech Styles Project (2012–13), funded by a grant from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project Documentation Programme (ELDP).
In this project Inge Kral is working with Elizabeth Marrkilyi Ellis (Ngaatjatjarra/Ngaanyatjarra linguist) and Dr Jennifer Green (The University of Melbourne) in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands of Western Australia, audio-visually documenting elders in their use of traditional verbal arts: sand story-telling, narrating traditional stories and utilising a special respect speech style.
The documented corpus will lend itself to an examination of the multimodal characteristics of sand story drawing in order to explore questions associated with multimodal nature of communication in the new digital environment. It will also further an understanding of changing oral practices and the social implications for intergenerational language transmission in the Ngaanyatjarra communities.