Eric Young

Project One

Wordnet on “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning!” By Gunther Kress

By using the information on my wordnet I was able to have a more in-depth understand
of the article and it led me to look for the reoccurring theme of Semiotics. The wording within
the article shows a strong leaning towards trying to explain how meaning is made through our
use of writing and media. Gunther Kress speaks at length about the changes in meaning between
different forms of media and there benefits and disadvantages. Kress has worked closely with
other figures within the field and collaborated on several books with them, these books have
spanned over two decades of work within the Semiotic field. Kress also cites a few other books
from the sixties and seventies and how media was changing even before the advent of the
internet and its effects on Semiotics. Semiotics is at the core of the wordnet that I created, and
although the word does not appear even once in the article, it was vital to my understanding of
the article and its meaning.
By looking at the most used words within the paper we can see that several key words are
used more than 40 times. Mode, page, writing, also appear repeatedly throughout the paper, and
speak to the way in which we learn through written and unwritten forms. The repeated use of
page and writing most likely have a stronger connection for Kress because he is himself an
author and values the media form. But he talks at great length about other modes of expression
and authorship that aren’t necessarily written. This is a strong link to Semiotics in that it is the
study of meaning making and the study of signs and sign process. Many of these words, such as
meaning, and representation have a direction connection to the base principles of “meaning
making”. Kress repeatedly comes back to how things are expressed by the author and how they
are received by the reader, how meaning is processed and what represents what meaning to each
party. The fact that he uses these five words so often shows his desire to use the written page, as
a mode to represent meaning.
The wordnet allowed me to understand the significance of the article based on the time in
which it was written. In the year of 2004 there was a major shift in how media would begin to be
distributed. The rapid growth of the world wide web is even noted in the article, Kress goes on to
describe the massive change in how the Institute of educations own website had go through a
massive change in its presentation and use over just a few years. The advent of Facebook would
show a rapid change in how people communicate within groups and with each other, and in what
manner that communication happens. Google starts to become a major player in how people look
for and receive information, defining for a generation how we see and understand topics and in
what modes this information is represented. WordPress started a free open source version for
bloggers to use that led to a massive increase in the amount of written material available on the
internet. Anyone who wanted to could write on an open forum and have themselves heard by
others, changing forever how authors are born and received. Flickr entered in to use this year as
well, it allowed the user to add photos and videos to their blogs or webpages, this created an
increase in expression not just with the written word but with the use of additional pictures to
bring greater meaning. Skype was founded in 2004 and allowed people to have voice and video
calls over the internet, this gave a new face to conversation and new modes of information and
signals to be sent from broadcaster to recipient. These new forms of social media have had a
huge impact on the study of Semiotics and have a large influence on Kress writing.
The wordnet also revealed a number of connections to noted Semioticians that had
collaborated with Gunther Kress in the past. Also noted in the wordnet was the Semiotic society
of America as well as the Institute of Education of which Kress no doubt drew a great deal of
influence from. The Institution of Education appears several times as both a reference and
example within the article. It is both the publication body of the article as well as where Kress is
the Co-director of the Centre of Multimodal Research. He has also worked closely with Theo van
Leeuwen who is credited as main inventor of the sub field of Social Semiotics. Their
collaboration on the grammar of visual design has become a well know book on the beginnings
of visual media and a strong base point for the article. Another of his references was a dual work
with Jewitt Carey, “Multimodal literacy”. Carey has a deep background in Semiotics and is the
current director of UCL Knowledge lab in London. This collaborative work shows their
combined interest in how signs are seen in multi ways and how these effects not only the reader
but the writer.
Kress also uses many of his own books as reference in “Gains and losses”, these books
span over a decade of work for him. He is illustrating that the subject matter has consumed his
life and he has put an immense amount of time and effort into exploring how the mode of
representations have changed over the past ten years. More than half of the books listed in his
reference section are his own work or works done in collaboration with other noted Semiotics.
Roland’s “The death of the author” takes a look at the time before the internet and how media
was changing even before the events of the article are shaping the world. The book discuses the
changes in how people read and how the advent of a more picture based media is changing how
ideas are expressed to the readers and what the readers are now more interested in experiencing.
The work of Shannon, Claude, & Warren, Weaver in “The mathematical theory of
communication” tries to illustrate how messengers are sent and received regardless of size. How
very tiny messages or even single symbols can have massive meaning and implications. The
ideas of symbols and pictures as transferring important meaning is a key component of Semiotics
and comes up repeatedly not only in Kress’ books but in Roland and Shannon, Warren’s work in
a much earlier era in time.
The connection show in the wordnet pointed me towards the study of Semiotics because
of its connection to semantic, affinity, choric, and bibliographic elements. The word selects
points to Kress’ desire to create meaning and to show how meaning is created. The world events
of 2004 when the article was written show an explosion of new and diverse modes of
communication, video chat, blog posting and pictures all because increasingly more common.
These new forms of media have become the standard for us, and we have come to making new
meaning from their use. Kress has a strong affinity to the field of Semiotics, whether though his
own collaborations with noted members of the field or from his work at the Institution of
Education. Kress uses several his own books and those from the sixties and seventies to
demonstrate the changes in modes of communication and how they affect us. The article at its
core is about how meaning is made and what we gain and lose from the new ways the world now
has express meaning.