Kress

Outline

Why? And why now?
• A revolution has dislodged “written language from the centrality which it has held in public communication”(182).
o “Reasons range from changes of a social and cultural character to those more to do with technologies of information and of transport”(183).

• Information initially stored in written form is ‘translated’ into visual form

• We need to rethink ‘language’ as a multimodal phenomenon (184)
1. Relation of ‘mode’ and of the material stuff
2. Relation of semiotic mode to the medium of transmission or propagation

The body’s potential for engagement with the world: mode, materiality, and medium
• “None of the senses ever operates in isolation from the others…That, from the beginning guarantees the multimodality of our semiotic world”(184).
• So-called Western societies have for too long insisted on the priority of a particular form of engagement

• Material(ity): the ‘stuff’ which a culture uses as the means for the expression of (its) meanings
o ‘Materiality’ can also have a non-physical, appearance (185)

• The transcription of writing is a multimodal system
• Language in the spoken word is yet another multimodal system

• “The issue of the medium, that is the issue of transmission and dissemination”(186).
• “If mode affects what can be said and how, media affects what can be and is addressed and how”(187).

Some Key Examples
1. All texts are multimodal
2. There are texts which exist predominantly in a mode rather than the (multi-) mode of language
3. There are systems of communication and representation which are acknowledged in the culture to be multimodal (188)

• Web of cultural practices: practices performed by humans, so that humans have to be trained, educated, or socialized into performing them (190)

• “Insist on the semiotic, communicational, and meaningful aspects of objects”(191).

Potentials and limitations of semiotic modes
• “The visual mode has not been developed into as highly articulated a state as spoken or written language are”(194).
• “The two modes—language and the visual—simply start from different concerns, are embedded in distinct ways of conceptualizing, thinking and communicating”(195).
• Specialization: one representational mode, language, is used for a pedagogic purpose, to direct, remind, organize

Grammar and Multiliteracies: the example of the visual
• “Mulitliteracies is not merely the assumption that we communicate through and with a range of quite different modes”(199)

The semiotics of social relations of viewer and image
• Relations of power are coded by the position of the viewer in vertical relation to the object
• “There are regularities of structure, and regularities of a “grammatical’ kind in different modes”(202).

Comments

Multi-modality is on a roll. Recognition of the multi-modality of speech, as posited by Kress, is enjoying currency in popular culture as the inauguration of a weekly “Body Language” segment on Fox News’ top-rated The O’Reilly Factor attests. Footage of verbal exchanges or pronouncements involving newsworthy figures is aired in conjunction with commentary from a body language expert, analyzing whether the words spoken are reinforced by or in conflict with the kinesthetic movements of the speaker. Each twitch, grimace, tongue thrust, finger wag and shoulder shrug is scrutinized as the medium of the body is subject to the same level of analysis once reserved for words alone. The complexity of the spoken word and the search for its meaning in every nuance of production is a theme espoused by Kress and popularized, after a fashion, for the general public. While application of academic theory is generally laudatory, something seems to have been lost in translation given the sideshow quality of the segment. The human lie detector seems more snake oil than substance.
Recognition of the multi-modality of human intelligences, as referenced by Kress—along with his acknowledgement of society’s power to confer privilege according to the value placed on each modality’—is a cottage industry among academics but with regrettably little effect on the educational delivery systems mired in established practices. Howard Gardner put multiple intelligences on the map, Daniel Goleman is the guru of emotional intelligence, Mel Levine has provided a new generation of school children with an owner’s manual to the brain, spelling out what skills need to be developed to perform specific academic chores.
Where Kress expounds on issues of multi-modality which have received widespread treatment, his commentary is accessible. Where he departs from the beaten track, it becomes problematic. I cannot decide if I do not understand what he has to say or if I disagree with it. Many of his premises seem flawed, dated, or over-generalized. When he refers to music and visual media being viewed as means of expression rather than communication, he is off-target. To bifurcate the expressive features of any art form from their communicative aspects hardly seems possible. Just as, in making the case for the perceived primacy of the word, he over inflates the shared perception of its ability to express the entire range of human experience. Many times have I felt personally and heard expressed by others the inadequacy of words to give expression to sentiments incapable of description. I do not feel that I inhabit the world he describes. Perhaps in championing the cause of multi-modality, he is attributing more primacy to the word than is warranted in order to make a more persuasive case for the necessity of a paradigm shift.
To me Kress seems to be going from one extreme to another. By taking “literacy” so far outside the realm of print medium and expanding its meaning to incorporate all senses and cultural associations, the terminology is rendered meaningless; by encompassing everything, it means nothing in terms of a shared understanding of meaning. So, too, would the spoon tray if placed on a dining room table today. One family might use it for discarded artichoke leaves, another for used teabags, another for the tamale wrapping, another for olive pits, and another for lobster shells. What had cultural significance before becoming a museum piece would incite a free-for-all today. How does that fit into Kress’ construct? Or would it prove his point?
The example of reading a water bottle also invites a subjective range of reaction across the entire sensory, cognitive and emotional spectrum, from critical evaluation of label content to emotional evocation of childhood memories, national allegiance, or pastoral flights of fancy. While marketers of brands have certainly found consumers susceptible to manipulation in forming ties to products, exactly what model of communication and use is Kress advocating or is he simply recognizing the complexity and multi-modality of existing behavior patterns?
For someone for whom the production of meaning is of such significance, Kress is experiencing transmission problems. Whether the defect is in the transmitter or in a faulty receptor lacking in cultural context is at issue.