"The 'Book' Between Text, Image, and Theatre – The Multimodality of Kamishibai Theatre"

Abstract

Thesis/aim: Kamishibai theatre represents an unconventional, multimodal form of publishing due to its close integration of verbal and visual codes, as well as its multisensory nature from the audience’s perspective. The aim of this analysis is to explore the relationships and functions of various semiotic codes in kamishibai theatre: the text, the image, and the performative manner of their presentation. The material analyzed consists of kamishibai story cards entitled Tenderness by A. Guilloppé (Tibum Publishing, Katowice 2018). Research methods: The study is based on a model of multimodal analysis commonly used in media genre research. This model involves macro- and micro-level analysis of the communicative act, distinguishing the discursive perspectives of the sender, the receiver, and the message itself, as well as describing the integration of codes and subcodes within the message. The primary analytical tools employed are the cognitive mechanisms of metonymy and multimodal metaphor. Results: In kamishibai theatre, there is a close interconnection between the linguistic and visual codes, unified through a performative mode of presentation that is dynamic rather than static—mimicking the action of a stage performance. Visual and verbal metonymy proves to be a precise tool for meaning construction, enabling both the creation and interpretation of conceptual metaphors embedded in the message. Conclusions: Kamishibai theatre exhibits two types of multimodality. First, it is inherent in the genre itself, in which the structural and formal coexistence of visual and verbal codes is essential. However, the function and significance of these codes differ from the perspective of the sender and the receiver. Second, multimodality operates at the level of the meaning of the specific story, where the message arises from the interaction between image and text, both referring to a higher-order element – the title of the kamishibai “book.”