Even though the Kress reading was difficult to try and pick through, he did make some interesting points. For instance, for the science project he suggests, or at least that’s how I interpreted him, that the rhetor has some, and often times a subconscious understanding of the intended genre. This intended genre then impacts the way the rhetor approaches the given material. If you look at the different ways the two groups approached the science project it is obvious that they had differing views on what constituted “being scientific.” One group presented their material in more of a cause and effect design while the other group focused more on just the generalizations of the experiment—the classic “how to guide.” He states that some of this has stemmed from the integration of different forms of communication. For instance, the students’ textbooks are a combination of both written and visual texts. The children are not learning merely through the communication of a written message, but rather through the combination of written messages and visual explanations. Kress also suggests that this mixing of genres is normal, “My preferred solution is to accept, to begin with, that mixing is normal, in whatever domain, and at whatever level.” (52) However, I am still slightly confused about what he would suggest for a pure genre. What would the standards be for a pure genre? Is this even realistic? I don’t think there could ever be something considered a pure genre. I think it could be even argued that everything created, within its own context, is pure.
Sorry I'm just now posting. I was having some major issues with Moveable Type! Good to go now though!
Anyway, I didn't enjoy Kress very much. I thought his ideas were really hard to grasp. Maybe it was just me, but his video was somewhat confusing too. However, something caught my attention on page 48 when Kress writes, "The truth of actions is reached via the mode of writing, and the truth of how the world looks is reached via the mode of image."
I started to think about this, and in my opinion, this sums everything up. Writing allows us to know (gain understanding) about the truth of actions, which to me means things that have happened, things going on, etc. And image allows us to actually see what these actions look like or result in. Together, both the writing and images, give us knowledge and understanding, and we have numerous genres and modes because of all of the different ways that these writings and images can be presented.
In our world today, especially because of technology, many people rely on both writing and image together to convey a meaning or to understand what someone else is conveying. I love that this class is letting us exercise our abilities to use text, image, or both in our projects.
On page 39 Kress says "Does the category of genre remain important, useful, necessary; does it become more or less important in the era of multimodal communication? The answer is that the category of genre is essential in all attempts to understand text, whatever its modal constitution. The point is to develop a theory and terms adequate to that." This is talking about how some people think that genre's are not useful and are not needed anymore, but I disagree with this. There are many different ways of talking, speaking and writing genre's are used almost everyday.
I thought that this article was very hard to read and kind of boring. It took me a while to read it because I kept getting distracted from reading that article.
On page 47 Kress writes:
"Even though the written parts of the two ensembles are generically different from each other, they do share a significantly common feature: both are focused on action and event, even if differently so; both of the the visual elements by contrast are focused on 'what is,' the visual display of the world that is in focus. Each of the two texts overall is incomplete without both written and visual parts; each mode, writing and image, does distincly different and specific things."
First off, I would like to state that I found the Kress article to be mostly uninteresting and difficult to read through. Now, I would like to discuss what I think that Kress means in the above quote. I take it that he means to say, that the aforementioned texts are incomplete without both the writing and visual apsects. Each aspect does its seperate part, and within that certain text, both aspects are needed for the full and complete meaning to get across to the reader/viewer.
Upon reading Kress’ last section on Genre and Educational Strategies I could not help but to be reminded of Colgate’s relatively new CORE curriculum.
Kress’
general assertion about education is that the intellectual aspects of a
fundamental academic education need to be better applied to the reality of
current economics or politics as part of a redefined curriculum. He uses
English as an example of a discipline that historically has done a poor job of
incorporating works of historical wealth with works of modern practicality.
Kress stresses the importance of applying traditional English texts to present
day writing media of the evolving globalized era. He states that he first documented this claim
in his 1995 book Writing the Future:
English and the Making of a Culture of Innovation.
I disagree, however, with the notion that modern, more applicable texts have to be “mundane” or “banal” as Kress assumes on page 53. Regardless of how important a contemporary work might be, it will never be adopted as a permanents part of any school’s curriculum due to a lack of student and administrative interest. At the highest levels of academia, professor do not teach what is not interesting to them, but more importantly, students do not learn what is not interesting to them. Fortunately, this need not be the case, for there are plenty of intriguing texts that fit into Kress’ theory of redefining an English curriculum.
My mind seemed to constantly resist reading Gunther Kress’ Multimodality, Multimedia, and Genre. I don’t disagree with his point, I just found his writing obscured and difficult to follow. Reading Kress was like repeatedly banging my head against a wall, but slightly less productive. He argues a single text can partake in multiple genres, media, and modes. I will grant him that proposition, but I just couldn’t deal with the style of his writing – the vagueness and unfocused generality of his statements and the obsession with categories. To be fair, I didn’t really understand the “problem” he sought to resolve by introducing his concept of mixing genres. It seems to me that a text can speak for itself, regardless of how one chooses to label or classify it. I didn’t see the same exigence Kress did to justify the “mixedness” of some texts. Kress may be exactly right, but I don’t find his conclusion to be especially profound.
On page 12, Kress addresses the formality of the various forms of writing. He states:
"The new technologies have a vast role, but they do not determine social change. The often remarked changes to the forms of writing in e-mail are a consequence of the unmaking of the social frames of power at least as much as of technology. To use speech-like forms in writing is a sign of 'informality', itself the sign of a lessening social 'distance', a sign of the reduction in social power difference."
In class, we talked about who gets to decide what the standards are for language. Although some countries have institutions in place which theoretically decide this, the power lies in the hands of the masses. If a word or phrase becomes successfully incorporated into the speech of society, it becomes "correct" by default no matter how correct or incorrect it was previously considered. Kress alludes to technology bringing with it informality and as such possibly losing some of its weight and worth. I believe that this is merely a short-sighted view and that the AIM and Texting language that is so abrasive and informal to older generations will find its place in the realm of formality as soon as it is widely enough accepted. There are some limitations however, that the e-mail has by nature. It is much faster to type an e-mail than to write out, stamp, and mail a letter. This effort taken in writing the letter currently gives it more worth than an e-mail. This is not because of the substance of the writing, which would be the same, but rather because of the value placed in the writing by deciding to take more time to hand-write it. If in the future, the efficiency and expediency of the e-mail is more highly favored, the e-mail may become the more formal form of writing.
As the title of Kress’ chapter suggests, many texts today are
produced using a mixture of modes and genres, in comparison to the
once traditional use of simple writing to convey a message. One of the
most crucial questions that Kress poses throughout the chapter is: “if
all genres are mixed genres…what is a “genre,” a pure genre; how and where
would it occur; and how would we recognize it?” (52)
In short, my response to this is ‘who cares?’ Why does it matter if or where there is such a thing as a ‘pure genre’? Why do we have to label our texts with certain terms to categorize them for other people, other than for our own convenience? Kress agrees that it is useful to use mixed genres to convey a message, but he refers to the difficulty of labeling these texts as a “problem” that needs a “solution” (51). In my opinion, his struggle to find an answer is useless. There is no need to search to find something in order to label it a ‘checklist’ or an ‘essay’. With the increasing complexity of computer technology, we are able to produce texts, images, sounds, etc. that were never possible before. Consequently, there are undoubtably fewer texts that are (what Kress would refer to as) ‘pure genres,’ meaning that it is becoming obsolete to even attempt to define this concept. The infinite possibilities of mixing genres will continue to perplex Kress in attempting to find a suitable way to categorize texts as he would like to do. Therefore, although I think it is important that we have a common language and understanding of rhetoric and the innovative ways to present text, it is useless, and nearly impossible, to attempt to identify ‘genre’ in the fast changing world.
In this chapter, Kress argues that "in the new comunicational world there are now choices about how what is to be represented should be represented: in what mode, in what genre, in what ensemble of modes and genres and on what occasions".
I feel that Kress makes a good point here. I think he is saying that there are so many different ways in which people can do things with all the different technology today. That gives people so many choices on how they want to get their point across and in what mannor they want to present it. He is also saying that now, people can represent the same things in so many different ways to get their point across to many different types of people. I feel that Kress is correct with his point. There are so many different websites, and articles out there that look so different on the surface, but once you look at them hard enough they are about the same thing.