Interesting discussion board exchanges with Jackie

Subject: Re:Halliday and Kress	Topic: Discussions Task 2
Author: Anthony McNeill	Date: 15 November 2008 10:38

This thread's a bit .. um ... threadbare so I thought I'd post something. I'll try to answer Julia's question but will finish on a rant ... I struggled with this activity a bit as I couldn't readily apply what I'd read to the Shrek and HP web sites. There didn't seem to be an obvious connection between the Halliday (about early years language development and learning) and Kress (about images and learning) texts. The 'Introduction to the grammar of visual design', heavily informed by Kress and van Leeuwen's Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, looked a much more relevant text, with lots of concepts to apply to a 'reading' of the two sites. Reading Kress (draft chapter not interview) again though, a few lines struck me;

As the screens are becoming simultaneously the sites of multimodal texts, these are becoming read in accordance with the spatial logic of image.

The point he's making is that images - and screen-based texts operating according to the "spatial logic of the image" - don't necessarily have a fixed reading path; there are multiple lines of inquiry readers can follow according to their needs/preferences. Our two web sites allow this via a menu/site structure that encourages random clicking until you alight upon stuff that floats your boat. Kress cites another writer that makes this very point:

... information is material which is selected by individuals to be transformed by them into knowledge to solve a problem in their life-world’ (Boeck, 2003)

In a non-linear text - and a screen-based one whose underlying logic is that of the image is non-linear - users can make selections that are personally meaningful; they don't have to read the whole lot. The final extract I found interesing is this one:

To return to reading just for one moment: in the former situation, reading aimed to gain truth to the original authority of the text, which delivered knowledge; now reading aims for a truth which arises out of the individual’s interest. The former is now unlikely to deliver relevant knowledge; the latter can. Indeed, reading is now close to the making of the text: it is sign-making on the basis of engagement with materials ‘in the world’.

Kress sets up a binary: print-based texts are all about authorial authority and author-controlled meaning; screen-based texts are spaces where authority has been decentred and where meaning making resides with the reader.'Then' readers had to make do with pushy writers deciding what was meaningful; 'now' readers can select, filter, combine and make meaning. I'm not so sure about this. I think readers of print-based texts have always made personally relevant meanings of the texts they read; Emma Bovary reading herself in the fiction of Walter Scott, Roland Barthes reading himself in the work of Proust or the adolescent reading his/her life in current teen fiction or film. And do we always read linear print-based texts in a linear way? I read The Old Curiosity Shop a few years ago and found myself skipping the drippy, Victorianly sentimental chapters featuring Little Nell and her grandad so I could get back to the funny-grotesque chapters with Quilp and Dick Swiveller. I don't lose agency just because I pick up a book; I don't gain it because I log onto a computer. Is there a chapter to be written on 'Kress and technological determinism'? Reflection and rant over. I'm going to have a nice cup of tea and a lie down now ...

Subject: Re:Halliday and Kress	Topic: Discussions Task 2
Author: Jackie	Date: 16 November 2008 17:16

hope that was a nice cup of tea Tony. Here's a biscuit to go with it. I think it is the extent to which technologies determine reading paths which is important. I am more inclined to read sequentially through a novel (even if I do skip a few pages here and there) than a web site. And I agree with Kress's basic point about the authority of the text becoming more decentralised...again, it isn't a binary, as you point out, more a question of degree.

Subject: Re:Halliday and Kress	Topic: Discussions Task 2
Author: Anthony McNeill	Date: 16 November 2008 18:10

Hi Jackie, Thanks for the biccie - I feel much better now! You write "I am more inclined to read sequentially through a novel (even if I do skip a few pages here and there) than a web site". Are we comparing like for like though in terms of genre? Could genre be more important than technological platform in informing reading paths? I'll read a novel sequentially too but will dip in and out of a collection of academic essays (e.g. 'Multiliteracies'), selecting what's interesting/relevant to me (i.e. activities Kress associated with screen-based texts). It's entirely possible that some web sites will predispose (I prefer 'predispose' to 'determine') readers to adopt a more linear reading path with less branching off. I feel that Kress may be inaccurately homogenising digital texts. Finally, here's a screenshot of strangely usable but suspect iPhone app called 'Classics':

Subject: Re:Halliday and Kress	Topic: Discussions Task 2
Author: Jackie	Date: 20 November 2008 09:01

oh, where do you get that app from, Tony? yes you are right about genre and the way in which the reading of novels is similar across platforms but I still feel the affordances of page and screen are different and lead to different behaviour in the main . You migth also be interested in Karen Littau - 'Theories of reading: Books, bodies and bibliomania. 2006 Polity press

Subject: Re:Halliday and Kress	Topic: Discussions Task 2
Author: Anthony McNeill	Date: 21 November 2008 10:59

Thanks for the ref Jackie - it looks really interesting. The app is from the iTunes Store. I bought it out of curiosity really - to trace the iPod's shift from audio, to video, to smart phone, to portable gaming device and now, potentially, to Kindle or Sony Reader competitor. It's interesting though that we have 'new' technology (iPhone or iPod Touch) but 'old' ethos -the texts that come with the app are canonical and arranged in a bookcase!

Really interesting your comment that "the affordances of page and screen are different and lead to different behaviour in the main". I think I'm uncomfortable with the view that the properties of technologies "lead" users to behaviours that can be easily predicted. There is some technological shaping of social action certainly, but also so many other contextual factors at play too that skew how we interact with print or screen-based texts. My hunch is that the history of technology is a history of users doing things they weren't supposed, or expected, to do with it.