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Page to Screen Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era 1998 260 pages Complementary Texts Michael Heim Gunther Kress and Robert Hodge Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen Keywords Copyright © 2000-2007 Isabel Pedersen |
Page To Screen investigates the shift from print discourses in education to computer-mediated “existence” and its effect upon education and literacy. I use the word existence because many of the contributors write about computer-mediated communication as a new discourse and in some cases a new way of thinking and imagining the world. Gunther Kress’s paper “Visual and Verbal Modes of representation in electronically mediated communication: the potentials of new forms of text” argues very strongly for the need to change. Interestingly, he does not call for a change in practice, which he believes is making grand strides, he calls for a new theory of meaning-making which has not kept up with change in practice. He explains that while the subject’s use of the visual mode for meaning-making is not a new phenomenon, it has been overridden by written (language) in the past few centuries. It is only in the latter half of the 20th century that the visual mode has become dominant. He compares two science text books (1930s and 1980s) as an example, the latter is far more graphical and not only illustrative but it holds meaning in its own right. He makes a second major point that the term “visualization” does not capture the way that humans make meaning from images. Edward Tufte, Stuart Card, and Richard Lanham treat visualization as a translation. One translates meaning from one mode to another. Kress insists that it is transformation and transduction of meaning between the two modes. The two modes are not doing the same things. They are also not co-existing. They are interacting. They each produce different texts that interact with each other. Acknowledging that it may be an oversimplification,
Kress identifies a major shift from narrative to display. Language conveys information as a Narrative;
whereas, the visual mode conveys it through display and arrangement. He calls for a new theory of Representation and writes that “the semiotic changes which characterize the present and are likely to characterize the near future cannot be adequately described and understood with current linguistic theories. First, he calls for a theory that accounts for the integration and composition of multi-modal texts and messages. Second, he calls for a theory that stresses transformation and remaking over use. He isolates two central concepts: ·
Synaesthesia “A new theory of semiosis will have to acknowledge and account for the processes of synaesthesia, the transduction of meaning from one semiotic mode in meaning to another semiotic mode, an activity constantly performed by the brain.” (76. ·
Design In a theory of use there is no accounting for change. There is only change through critique. But a theory governed by design, opens up a world of remaking, transformation, orchestration, shaping. “Design takes the results of past production as the resource for new shaping, and for remaking. Design is the action of setting an agenda of future aims and of finding means and resources for carrying it out. ”(78) Nicholas Burbules' "Rhetorics of the Web: hyperreading and critical literacy" also offers some interesting ideas about hyperlinking. He explains it in terms of metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, cause and effect and anti-stasis. |