Introduction: Bridging the Gap between Pragmatics and Multimodality

The present issue set out to bridge the gap between pragmatics and multimodality, and each contribution represents a distinct possible bridging point, both in the data analysed and in the methodological approaches employed. The issue is divided into four thematic sections, grouping together studies with similar approaches or foci. Ultimately, across its four sections, this issue of Lingue e Linguaggi, successfully addresses the theoretical and empirical gap identified at its inception, moving from, and beyond, traditional pragmatics towards a broader understanding of discursive, situated, multimodal, communicative events. By bringing together scholars across digital, educational, aesthetic, intercultural, and corporate domains, this collection of essays achieves its primary aim: to demonstrate that pragmatic meaning is not merely supplemented by non-verbal modes; rather, it is necessarily constituted through various interconnected and overlapping semiotic resources. Stylistics, CDA, corpus linguistics, and humour studies, variously, serve as vital bridge disciplines, allowing scholars to explore the complex and nuanced landscapes of interactional and intersemiotic communication, even beyond the solely ‘human’ connotations of such terms. In fact, this issue further pushes the boundary of the once revolutionary statement that “multimodality [is] the normal state of human communication” (Kress, 2010 p. 1); on the one hand, we hope to have shown that pragmatic multimodality is the normal state of human communication, on the other hand, we can not ignore non-human communication in our rapidly evolving AI- and digitally-enhanced world.