Verso un corpus multimodale di intercomprensione. Sfide metodologiche e alcuni risultati

While the use of corpora as a basis for linguistic research is a well-established practice and corpus-based – if not corpus-driven – practice is in fact a shared and recognized methodology, there are areas where there is a certain lack of structured and queryable data collections on which to pursue analysis and reflection. Intercomprehension (IC), a relatively young subject in the composite hive of linguistics and educational linguistics, is one such area. Based on these considerations, the research team of the PLUS-SI (PLUrilinguismo per la Sostenibilità Sociale e l’Inclusione giovanile) project, which shares with the UNITA European Alliance the principles and aims of applied research related to plural approaches, has initiated the construction of a multimodal corpus of interactions in IC annotated with ELAN at different levels, which will be freely accessible by the scholarly community. This paper presents the reflections that led to the definition of the corpus architecture, the different levels of labelling (Jefferson, PoS, Lexicon, Pragmatics and Language Acts, Plurilingualism, Nonverbal Language among the most relevant), and shows a first example of an annotated file, a result of the design process.