The Home Page ·  The Integral Worm ·  My Resume ·  My Show Car ·  My White Papers ·  Organizations I Belong To

Contact Me ·  FAQ ·  Useful Links

My Professional Writing Papers

Technical Writing ·  Exposition & Argumentation ·  Non-fiction Creative Essays ·  Grammar and Usage of Standard English ·  The Structure of English ·  Analysis of Shakespeare

Analysis of Literary Language ·  Advanced Professional Papers ·  The History of the English Language ·  First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop ·  Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing

Theories of Communication & Technology (A Second Course in Methodology) ·  Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology) ·  The Writer's Guild

Journalism

UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" ·  UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" ·  Introduction to Journalism ·  Feature Writing ·  Science Writing Papers

Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology)

Visual Literacy Paper 1 ·  Visual Literacy Paper 2 ·  Visual Literacy Paper 3 ·  Visual Literacy Paper 4

Presentation of Lohr Chapter 5 ·  Presentation of LDW's Chapters 7 and 8

Weekly Web Log Journal ·  Hurricane Katrina Personal Journal

Presentation 3: Summary/Outline of G. Kress Literacy in the New Media Age Chapters 1, 2, & 3

by Christopher Paul

Method of Presentation Delivery

Chapter 1 -- The Future of Literacy: modes, logic's, and affordances

Chapter 2 -- Going into a different world

Chapter 3 -- Literacy and multimodality in a theoretical framework

1. Two Distinct yet Related Factors
   • Move from dominance of writing to dominance of image
     • More of a problem for Westerners
     • Asian text is created from Pictographs, therefore Asians have been reading images for 1000's of year
   • Move from dominance of the medium of the book to the medium of the screen
   • (the vehicle that will deliver the information)

2. Kress Raises Two Questions:
   • What is the likely future of literacy?
   • What is the likely larger-level social & cultural effects of that change?

   Language-as-writing will be increasingly displaced by image in the domains of public communication.

3. Organization:
   • Writing organized/governed by:
     • Logic of time
     • Logic of sequence of its elements in time
     • Most writing is linear except for when reading James Joyce "streams of consciousness"
   • Image is organized/governed by:
     • Logic of space
     • Logic of depicted elements in spatially organized arrangements

4. Kress emphasizes:
   • The world told is a different world from the world shown
   • The world narrated is a different world from the world depicted and displayed
   • The world of text is a different world than the world of visuals
   • Writing (Mode) and Visuals (Mode) demand a epistemological commitment but different ones
     
     

     Writing Mode	Visual Mode
     Commitment to naming of relation	Commitment to a location in space
     Ex: The cell owns a nucleus	Ex: Where does a nucleus go in a cell?

     
     
   • With text or writing, we fill in a large, amount of blanks with our own visuals and experiences which brings a text to life. (The Craft of Revision, D. M Murray, 2004)
   • With an image, the "life" is already there. Our literacy and our ability to describe the image through language allows us to convey the message one receives from an image.

5. Two Problems with Image:
   • May lack critical skills to interpret the image message
   • May lack the language to express the image
   
   

   Text	Image
   1 path	Many paths
   Linear	Either Path may exist because created by maker of image or Path exists because of viewer

   
   

   Sequence in time orients us towards a world of causality
   Agent                  Acts                   Causes an Effect
   (Researcher)                                   (Cause and Effect)

6. Image:
   • Path may be defined by:
     • Logic of Space
       • Central Element/Marginal Element
     • Spatial Display
       • Salient Elements/Non-salient Element
         • By Size/Color/Shape
   • Reading path wide open but image itself & elements filled with meaning
   • Images full of meaning/Writing needs to be filled with meaning by the reader
   • Images have an open reading path/Reading path in writing is one set direction

Image: Imagination focuses on creating the order of the arrangement of elements already filled with meaning
Writing: Imagination focuses on filling words with meaning

Kress suggests when constructing a debate arguing Writing vs. Visual:
Start with: Focus on what each mode makes available

Affordances of Mode and Facilities of Media

New Media: Change in Media (Book to Screen)

• Four Effects:
  1. Change in print-based Media to New Information and communication technologies
  2. Multiplicity of Modes
     • Mode of Image
       • Still or Moving
     • Mode of Sound
  3. Interactivity
     • Two Aspects:
       1. Can write back/text based
          • Discussion Boards/Bulletin Boards/Forums
            • One person starts a topic
              • Others respond
              • Topic starter also responds
       2. Hypertextuality
          • Sophisticated boards will allow for HTML, Java Scripts, Images, Hypertext links adding a semiotic power
     • Key: Old Media
       • Mode: Writing - Media: Book
       • Mode: Music - Media: LP/Album/Vinyl
     • New Media
       • Mode: Digital Code/0s & 1s/Hills & Valleys - Media: Some Memory Chip

Communicational world moving towards image rather than towards word
New technologies facilitate a message for a particular audience

The designer chooses through methodology what is the best mode to communicate a message for a particular audience

Multimodality is made easy, usual, and natural by Digital Technologies

The new technologies allow anyone to be an author:

• Changes the balance of power
  • The editors of book companies were considered the "gatekeepers"
    • Decide what will be published
    • With only 23% of the population reading & buying books, publishing houses only publish what they think will sell
    • The web allows all to publish but also creates new problem:
      • No gatekeepers, no referee
      • There's no one to call foul or say, "can you support this with a citation, can you verify that fact.
• This leads to Reagan's policy of Nuclear Arms Control, "Trust and Verify."

Kress envisions the possibility of writing becoming subordinated to the logic of the visual in many of its uses

Right Now, an Objection

1. More books published than ever before
2. More writing than ever before
   • Research produces more research
   • Writing produces more writing
3. What do we loose if many forms of writing disappear?

Addressing Objections

1. Objection 1:
   • Books are emulating screens with more images and text explaining the images
2. Objection 2:
   1. Who is writing?
      • Those who always wrote
   2. Future of writing
      • Before: Text was Primary/Image Secondary
      • After: Image dictates where text will be placed
        • Image-Superior/Text-Inferior
3. Objection 3:
   • Issue of Gains and Losses

Return to the top of the page

Method of Presentation Delivery

The delivery of this presentation was given according to typical academic lecturing standards and format. I stood at the lectern and delivered the presentation and either used chalk and blackboard or pen and whiteboard when illustrations were necessary for providing visual explanations of concepts. At the end of my presentation, I conducted a question/answer session.

Return to the top of the page

The Integral Worm • Christopher Paul • Independent Senior Technical Writer/Editor

The Home Page ·  The Integral Worm ·  My Resume ·  My Show Car ·  My White Papers ·  Organizations I Belong To

Contact Me ·  FAQ ·  Useful Links

Return to the top of the page