Part 1:
Write a 2-3 paragraph summary of your key takeaways from the first half of Multimodality and make sure to include 5 metadata tags for the book.
For me this book was much more tangible than the co-authored text by Kress and VanLeeuwen. While Kress and VanLeeuwen provided a lucid conceptual framework for how multimodal text are disseminated/created, Kress brings us back to the root of multimodality in Multimodality: A social approach to contemporary communication through a semiotic approach grounded in social and cultural context (for me, this book continually brings us back to the discourse phase, emphasizing how it is always a factor in every step of communication).
I flew through chapter 1 and fell in love with Kress's attention to rhetoric and identity as well as the construction of power. Who has the power? How is it disseminated? What does power mean in reference to the designer or the audience? With this, Kress stresses that "communication isn't really the issue, power is" (3). In reference to power, Kress does an excellent job of defining his terms as he moves through his social semiotic theory noting that resources are culturally defined and constantly remade. Because of my interests, I found a lot of currency in what Kress was theorizing in reference to emojis as a socially constructed resource that is constantly changing. With these constantly changing resources that are culturally bound, Kress asks us "what about a translation of a movement, an action, a gesture that is entirely understood in one society and either entirely misunderstood or nor understood in any way or another?" (11). In considering this I return to Kress and Van Leeuwen and think about articulation and interpretation and think that somewhere within this stage of their conceptual framework is where meaning becomes refigured and transformed. In considering this alongside emoji use, we see different interpretations that are internalized in new ways based on social construct and cultural signifiers (I think here of how someone sends me a "fried shrimp" emoji and how I may think it is a signifier for "random" when the sender is really using it in a literal fashion to mean "food").
Kress also calls attention to the ethical considerations in communication and how access and dissemination need to be cognizant of the "affordances and facilities that they offer....of what is socially possible at any one time" (19). If communication is to be successful, there needs to be some type of internalization taking place from sender to receiver. Kress calls attention to the global market and the "Westernization" of how we consume and disseminate information and the power of choice. With this, new notions of authorship and plagiarism have surfaced and the resources that way may use are constantly being remade and refashioned in how we ethically view/use information.
I'm going to clump chapters 3 and 4 together in one paragraph because for me, they both had a lot to do with rhetoric. Kress provides a solid foundation for how communication is orchestrated under Saussure's methodology of communication. For Kress the semiotic sequence for communication is "attention-->framing-->interpretation"(32). In considering this sequence Kress stresses that design is "the servant of rhetoric....or to put it differently: the political and social interests of the rhetor are the generative origin in shaping influence for the semiotic arrangements of the designer" (50). Where rhetoric is the political and social considerations, representation is rather concerned with the individual. Communication on the other hand is more concerned with the societal implications of the design, specifically considering who has the power. Within social semitoic theory, Kress stresses that signs are "made, not used" (62). Kress contrasts and discusses Saussure alongside Peirce, noting that the Peirce is more concerened with the individual whereas Saussure contrasts the inner with the outter world. Kress ends the first four chapters with different examples of salt and pepper packets and how social considerations and rhetorical implications greatly influence the designs in which produce the labels.
Part 2:
Choose a multimodal text you've created in this class (preferably the one from in-class on 9/21). Work to describe this text through K&V's terms from last week (discourse, design, production, distribution). Do your best to see how you might talk about and/or analyze your text through this terminology.
Discourse: For my multimodal piece, I chose to look at instagram and the affect instagram plays within my life. For me, discourse surrounding my multimodal piece situates the technology of instagrm in how I use it was a social construct. Instagram is a paticipatory platform in which users engage in to share, communicate, and collaborate in a visual way. For me, the discourse is really the language of the platform. Using the hashtags and also participating within the genre of visually communicating is a big consideration of the "culture" that surrounds this piece. For example, I chose to select a picture of food because this is a common cultural signifier of Western instagram use. Instagram has become a "topoi" for shared recipes and dissemination for how we are eating and living our lives. I wanted to represent that in my multimodal piece so rather than take a picture of myself (a selfie), I wanted to represent my primary social use of instagram, which is to share (and participate) in a culture that visually communicates around the social construct of recipes and healthy living.
Design: For me the "blueprint" and rhetorical considerations of my multimodal piece was really about capturing the linear form of communication that Instagram represents in how the sender projects the message, the receiver views it, and then they internalize its content and project their understanding of it (they can "like" comment, or even choose not to participate in it at all"). For me I wanted to make those blueprints visible, so I chose to use arrows to represent the path of communication in the platform of instagram. I also chose to put the pros and cons list under the sequence of communication because I wanted the audience to internalize the process before they were either critical or complimentary of it.
Production: Within the production of this piece, I found that it was relatively easy for me to produce this multimodal text within the software of Piktochart. I knew I wanted to create a document that could encompass all of the information I wanted within one frame. I knew already that I wanted my multimodal text to really represent the nature of instagram, so I wanted to include visual, text, and video (all of which are features that you can use in instragram). Having visual be the focus was important to me, so I wanted to make sure that my linear flowchart was the biggest focus for my text (as our visual compositions are the biggest emphasis within the platform of instagram). For instagram, the text almost becomes supplemental to the image, so I wanted that same ideology to mirror the way in which my multimodal text represented that technology. In production, I also wanted to have my content be the focus, not the construction of the materials, so I chose a soft background. In addition, I chose specific hashtags attributed with "foodie" pictures so that my audience could make the connections based on a cultural signifier (provenance). The experiential meaning potential is the representation of the flowchart with the arrows in that the action (the posting of the picture) becomes the knowledge (the image is internalized and processed in a way that allows the receiver to articulate their knowledge of it by commenting or liking).
Distribution: Within this last phase, the re-production of this text could take a physical form in being disseminated as a poster or flyer. I thought about potentially making this a movie on jing, where I move through the text explaining it as it could be a resource I could even embed within instagram. As I consider the distribution phase, I think of the features of piktochart and how to even share the image, it needs to be recoded as either a jpeg or a png. In addition, there are more features to share the image but they require you to pay. With this I consider issues raised in the Kress book about ethical considerations and access and how I might work to distribute this text in a way that allocates access for the public.
Part 3:
NOW, describe how what you've read so far in Kress adds to this analysis in any way. Does it? How so? If not, why? The gist here is to try to figure out what this book adds to your/our understanding of multimodality.
The Kress book really helps my analysis in that it helps me to situate my terms and where the rhetoric takes place within the design phase. Whereas the rhetor is considerate of the political and social affects, the convention and interpretation are mindful of the power. I felt as though the Kress and Van Leeuwen was really missing a conversation centered around power and what power does to communication. Kress really helped me to contextualize power and rhetorical considerations and how cultural and social semiotics are a continual factor in how we design, produce, and distribute our text (and how they are constantly remade and remixed resources in which we use to articulate meaning). I really liked the Kress book and I thought it was a nice build to the framework that Kress and Van Leeuwen laid out, it allowed us to zoom in on the semiotic framework, recognizing the essential humanizing that takes palce within communication, and how we need to consider the ideologies and cultural frameworks that people come to communication with, and how these social semiotics asks us to be more rhetorically aware in how our choices impact others.
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