Gains and Losses by G. Kress part two
“Order is firmly coded: the order of chapters, the order of pages, of lines and of the line.”
With this statement G. Kress asks the question: “If order was fixed, as the order given by the author and naturalized by centuries of conventions of reading, then what was the reader’s task, and what or where was the reader’s freedom to act?” His answer: “[w]ords are (relatively) empty entities—in a semiotic account they are signifiers to be filled with meaning rather than signs full of meaning, and the task of the reader is to fill these relatively vacant entities with her or his meaning.” (Kress, 2005 p7). I would compare this to the teacher/student roles whereby students are the readers learning through personal acts of interpretation. The teacher provides the stability of order; the direction and guidance associated with the act of reading, comprehension with feedback.
But are words really empty? We pick our words when we speak or write because we make decisions from choices on the vocabulary we use because words do have their own associated meaning and function. And we expect our intended audience to be familiar with those same meanings and functions. “The still existing common sense is that meaning in language is clear and reliable by contrast, with image for instance, which, in that same commonsense, is not solid or clear (Kress, 2005 p8).” An image can be presented to have one clear interpretation. It depends to the abilities of the creator (whether writer or artist) and the mindset of the audience. Most like to complicate the message by including subliminal secondary messages – a different multimodal.
As for the power of the author and the power of the reader; each can make choices based on how amiable a relationship they desire from the other. There is nothing to stop the reader from reading the last chapter first if they so choose.
As for websites Kress states “[t]here is no pregiven, no clearly discernible reading path, either of the home page or of each individual page, or of the site as a whole (the issue of navigation, where maps are relatively unreliable)”. I would say there is order but not so regimented as immovable printed text. The site designer as author doesn’t presume to know which questions the reader would like answered so with hypertext and other tools addresses multiple quests for timely information. There is more opportunity to mull over what information has been read when using print media but also more chances of losing the reader’s attention in hypertext material.
If readers are only tourists to websites, are they behaving as self-guided tour guides? If so, do the readers cover the complete resource with all its pertinent data; or do they visit only the top six busman’s stops on the tour in record time? Are they receiving all the information necessary to make knowledgeable opinions/decisions?
Kress would lead us to believe that in the “act of interpretation… w]ith depiction and with images the situation is different.” “Unlike words, depictions are full of meaning; they are always specific. So on the one hand there is a finite stock of words—vague, general, nearly empty of meaning; on the other hand there is an infinitely large potential of depictions—precise, specific, and full of meaning” (Kress, 2005 p15). What about misunderstandings, misinterpretations, multiple meanings dependent on the audience‘s interpretations? A finite stock of words? Are we not producing more new words each year? Are we not reinventing new meanings for existing words (example attaching slang meaning to common words)?
Kress asks another question: “Would the next generation of children actually be much more attuned to truth through the specificity of depiction rather than the vagueness of word?” (Kress, 2005 p 21). I ask: Could this result in the same if this scenario were to be reversed?
Kress, Gunter. (2005). “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition. 22(1), 5-22.
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