Drawing bodies and spaces in telecollaboration: a view of research potential in synaesthesia and multimodality, from the outside

Abstract

While much scholarship on the multisensory and transmodal phenomenon of synaesthesia seeks to uncover its psychophysiological and neurological bases, recent research in multimodal literacy and language acquisition addresses it largely in terms of agentive processes of meaning-making and design. This paper takes as its starting point the latter’s concern with socially situated learning, but examines data from a university-based, distance French learning project in order to suggest that such research may need to look further. Content and narrative analyses of students’ reflective drawings illustrate their awareness of the complexities of learning and expression in hypermediated environments, where geographic and virtual spaces, mediated and interpersonal relations and embodied and on-screen actions converge – all seeming contradictions that may, when viewed together, offer a new vantage point on the nature of synaesthesia, from the outside.