Last night I was playing around with ologies (the study of something) and wondered what would denote research into entertainment that crosses media. I looked up a latin dictionary and found ‘trans’ (as in across, beyond, through etc) and after some looking, ‘modi’ (plural of modes, of mediums). And there it is, our beautiful field of research: Transmodiology. There are Narratologists (those that study narrative) and Ludologists (those that study games) and now there are Transmodiologists (those that study transmedia entertainment traversal across modes). That means everyone’s theories (Jenkins, Ruppel and so on) all go under this field. I’m very excited. I think it fits and I’m putting it in the paper I’m writing at the moment. What do you think?
An interest turn of jargon. The word rolls off the tongue a bit like a mix of gelatine and treacle, but I suspect its the sort of thing that could catch on if you pitch it in the right context. I like the idea behind the word – I’ve been reluctant to adopt the mantle of a either a Ludologist or a Narratologist because I suspect my work relies on a good understanding of both, as well as some sound pedagogy, so some sort of transitory paradigm seems more appropriate.
Hello Kim! I’ll be including ‘transmodiology’ in my thesis — I didn’t intend this to be the only platform for persuasion. I’m working on narrative/ludic agnostic terms for my PhD, for the very reason (and others) you cite. I like the fact that transmodiology works on so many levels: traversing media, traversing genre, arts types, rhetoric and so on. It can be invoked by those looking at entertainment, those not and so on. I think it espouses the particular lens that some of us are viewing things with now.