The Research Group on Academic and Professional English at the Universitat Jaume I (GRAPE-UJI), led by professors Inmaculada Fortanet and Noelia Ruiz, is developing a computer tool to promote a paradigm shift in language teaching — in this case, English — that will make it possible to move from an exclusively linguistic approach to a global approach in which visual elements play as important a role as verbal elements.
The team has received funding from the UJI>LAB IMPULS call with a project led by Edgar Bernad that will help accelerate the software development of GRAPE-MARS (Multimodal Analysis Research Software). The first prototype, already in operation and tested by a large number of researchers at international level, was created in a previous project with the participation of Noelia Ruiz, Inmaculada Fortanet, Edgar Bernad and Julia Valeiras. The current project aims to improve the programme and commercialise it in relevant contexts such as research, education and business.
This software is an automatic annotation tool for the analysis of semiotic resources used in different communicative contexts. It addresses the limitations of existing programmes by enabling the fast labelling of a wide variety of information in video files through a simple interface. It also incorporates artificial intelligence tools to analyse the data generated dynamically and efficiently, facilitating quantitative or large-scale studies of oral discourse corpora.
The target groups for this knowledge transfer are real-world environments linked to research, education and the business sector.
In the first of these, research, the new software is compatible with all operating systems and allows collaborative work online. It also includes a graphical representation of results, which is of crucial importance in this type of analysis, where multiple variables and their interactions are studied. It could be useful not only in linguistics, but also in other fields such as communication, marketing and advertising, among others.
In the field of education, the application may be very useful for the design and development of educational materials or teaching proposals aimed at developing multimodal and digital literacy, two highly relevant educational needs at present. Under the supervision of teaching staff, it would allow students to analyse and understand digital genres popular among young people, such as Instagram videos (reels) or TikTok videos.
Finally, its usefulness in the business sector would be related to the growing demand for large-scale data used in training artificial intelligence systems, which require powerful tools with a fast response that can be easily integrated. The challenge in this field would be legal issues relating to data privacy and compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The GRAPE-MARS project is funded by the Universitat Jaume I of Castelló within the UJI>LAB IMPULS programme for the valorisation and transfer of research results of the 2024 Research Promotion Plan. The main aim of this initiative is to promote knowledge transfer between academia and society by supporting research results that are at a stage of development where they can be taken up relatively quickly by the social and economic environment.