Part 1 Kress et all

One thing that Fortune’s and Moran’s articles made me think about was the role dialects play in images. Throughout most of the articles, there was a discussion about the grammar of images, and a discussion about how we understand word and image (as separate or a dichotomy) and what that means for our classrooms. I was thinking of African American Vernacular English, and the absence of the third person singular, or the habitual be in writings where AAVE speakers are aiming for Standard Written English. How will the grammar of images affect them? Will the use of visuals and images place those who speak non-standard dialects on a more equal playing ground as compared to those who speak Mainstream American English, or will speakers of non-standard English dialects still be at a disadvantage with the addition of images? Kress states “Representation and communication are motivated by the social; its effects are outcomes of the economic and the political. To those or act otherwise is to follow phantoms” (6). So… my thought is that the addition of images is going to make it even harder for non-standard speakers to reach a socially acceptable level of standard written (and visual) English.

When Kress was discussing the IoE, he comments that “the author(s) of this page clearly have in mind that visitors will come to this page from quite different cultural and social spaces, in differeing ways, and with differening interests, not necessarily known to or knowable by the maker(s) of the page” (9). Does this make the multimodal web pages more ideological? More culturally sensitive? I feel as though Kress was discussion more about the gains and losses of the different modes and mediums, but I can’t help but think about who gains accesses to these different modes, mediums, and socially accepted practices, and who loses access. What will become the new dominant mode for the elite? Will it stay as the book? Will it be the web text? Or will the elite discover something different, as others gain more access to the current dominate mode for the elite?

One final thought for the first half of the readings, instead of thinking about word and image as separate, or as a dichotomy, why don’t we think about word and image as a venn diagram?