Book Review

After mulling a bit over possible pedagogical influences I returned to an annotation I'd dug up in anticipation of our article / book review assignment.  Although the annotation was not something I wanted to use for the assignment, it turns out that this work I looked at years ago seems to echo through the goals I have for my teaching.  I've updated it with this current context in mind.

Kres. G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of

contemporary communication. New York, NY: Oxford

Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) follow much of their previous work with visuals and other means of meaning making modes with a specific focus on the multiplicity of media available for present day communication in modern countries.  Their discussion focuses on four core components of communication: discourse, design, production, and distribution.  They describe discourse as a “social construct of knowledge” (p. 24).  Design they see as connecting content and expression, while also seeing it as the “conceptual side of expression” and the “expression side of concept” (p. 5).  Production they refer to as “the communicating use of media, of material resources” (p. 66).  Distribution they see as adding to meaning while facilitating preservation and distribution (p. 7).  They outline these components of communication and provide chapter long discussions with a variety of clear examples of each.  Each of their descriptions offer more fully developed explanations through the multiple examples.  Though their work is not geared toward provide a specific framework for analyzing these elements, they do intend to show how all the elements are available as a part of contemporary communication in modern countries.

Within their production section Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) identify a concept they call “experiential meaning potential” (p. 77).  This concept can be understood as referring to the possibility that exists in the variety of communicative modes (text, visuals, sound etc.) for creating or experiencing meaning.  Much of my teaching takes advantage of this principle around a traditional classroom focus on texts.  However, I still hope to push myself to engage students with the other modes more fully - beginning with my course project to prepare a new approach for teaching English 101 online this coming fall.  I'm thinking specifically here of the readings that connect some of the technologies students may be using (Tumblr, Twitter, etc.) to purposeful classroom use.  I think bringing "experiential meaning potential" to the forefront could be a useful way to help students critically engage with writing technologies (Kress and Van Leeuwen p.77).