Scholarly Article #3

When I read the section about word order on page 291, in the article by Gunther Kress, I thought of the image to the left. This is a picture of a coffee vending machine, from my university's cafeteria, in Spain. The person that created this sign meant to say, "You choose how your day is going." Instead, the Spanish translator lost the meaning by saying, "you choose how is going your day." My classmate and I laughed, when we found this sentence. I have empathy because I am sure I make similar mistakes with Spanish grammar.

Although the author argues that images are less likely to have as much ambiguity as words do, images can have open-ended interpretation as well. I mean, look at the pistachios in this picture. Oh, wait, the pistachios are probably coffee beans. Without "coffee" underneath the image, I would probably guess wrong about the theme of this beverage dispenser. Notice the green around the words. Does that not seem pistachio or related?

People process images and words similarly. A document designer has just as much influence as a writer who intentionally uses word order to influence the readers' response. Gunter Kress demonstrates this idea in figure 13-3, with an example of proximity, Even though Kress shows readers can interpret images similar to interpreting words, he discredits document designers' work by not suggesting that images have signifiers too (287). For example, taken out of context, the picture on the coffee machine does not seem coffee related. Based on my experience with cookies and pistachios, I have a different perspective than a coffee-addict would have.

Gunter Kress, and the author of the first scholarly article, agree with Derrida's theory of words as signifiers (287). However, Gunter Kress presents a muddled argument by indirectly referencing ideas related to Derrida's deconstruction and later introducing the idea that authors of novels have more influence on meaning than the reader does (296). The readers have the most influence, from a Derrida perspective because meaning of the text depends on readers' word association. Kress also claims that new media has created a shift from the author having meaning to the reader controlling meaning. Instead, the reader has always had control of meaning. Saying otherwise discredits the ability of people to process information before new media.

New media requires both text and image. However, the author says,"The decline of the book has been seen as the decline of writing" (284).  I do not agree with that idea because there are a lot of writing outlets online. The fact that I am writing this blog post would suggest that the new technology has not killed writing. If anything, people write more because of new media.