A disclaimer: I’m something of an anti-theory person, so I approached Gunther Kress’ Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication with some suspicion– not least because I’ve read a little bit of his work before (Multimodal Discourse, with Van Leeuwen) and found it to include a lot of what seems, to me, to be overanalysis of mundane topics (which, of course, Kress says are the best places to anchor theory). While I understand the purpose of theory, to create a framework through which to understand the world, the close examination of common communication processes often feels a little too much of theory for theory’s sake – I’d rather spend my time considering how to improve things practically.
That said, I was able to find some key points that resonated with my experience and professional interest.
First is the idea of “authorship,” and how the term has become increasingly complex thanks to new technologies and methods of creation. While in the past, supreme respect was given to the originator of a certain message or product, those notions of authenticity and legitimacy have gone out the window. In the new remix culture, it’s about what you do with raw communication material; where it comes from is ultimately of less concern (hip-hop sampling is one example, but they can also include Photoshop mashups and even news aggregators). As Kress puts it, those who would denigrate remixers as just cutting and pasting content are relying on a “misconceived transfer of old conceptions of authorship to new conditions” (21).
Basically, what this means is that anyone can be a creator – there’s no real audience anymore, or at least not in the way the audience was typically conceived. This was true even before user-generated content became the norm; Kress points out the differences in assumptions between a traditional page of a book and a page on a website. Unlike the traditional page, which is designed with a given order, basically directing the reader how to consume it (e.g. from left to right, top to bottom), a webpage is shaped “with the assumption that engagement takes place in terms of the reader’s interest” (38) The reader (or user) might choose to look at one section of the site and then scroll down to another section – the goal is to make it easy for the user to do what he wants, not necessarily to direct that action. It’s clear that not all websites adhere to this line of thinking, or have done the necessary legwork to determine what users actually want. It’s this area of digital communication that most interests me – figuring out how to engage users on their terms.
As Kress sees it, in order to engage users, you have to figure out which is the right tool to use – the ‘aptness’ of the means for representation. That choice is always complex (particularly online, with choices including text, image, video, audio, etc.), but it becomes even more so when you consider cultural preferences. While Western societies have long preferred writing to image for areas of formal public communication, that does not necessarily hold true for all forms of communication. A good example of this is the increasing use of images in American textbooks since the 1930s – more important than the fact that there were more pictures was the fact that the mode of images was looked at in a different light. Instead of just acting as a supplement to writing, image has become an equally dominant mode, with each offering specific affordances. Still, while that might apply to American textbooks, it may not apply to a website which is intended for an international audience.. Kress talks about how ‘reach’ and translation across cultures can be difficult, and how there’s no such thing as ‘arbitrariness’ when it comes to selecting text, images or any mode of communication (which can also include color, font, layout, etc – things I never thought of as creating meaning until studying graphic design). The society or market to which you’re directing the message plays a huge role in defining the choices you make.
