Literacy ... (Kress)

I begin my reaction to Kress with a subject of primacy and recency in the actual reading: the example of "Bill and Mary married" vs. "Mary and Bill married." I consider this a poorly chosen example, because to me, the two mean exactly the same thing. I wouldn't necessarily consider that the former meant the speaker was closer to Bill, or vice versa. As with Bolter and Grusin's irritating habit of using feminine pronouns exclusively: Have they changed the gender power structure by doing so? Of course not. Have they even made a dent? Not likely. But have they served to annoy and alienate some readers by not using a mix of feminine and masculine? In my case, definitely.

But on to more important issues ... given that Kress is an experienced linguist, he has a MUCH more comprehensive view of language than I, but I hardly consider it fair to call language an abstraction; in many cases, it's the most concrete tool we have. That's why I also take issue with Kress largely excluding the English language from the ranks of the tonal. I think English is a very tonal language. This can be evidenced by the artful use of sarcasm ... and by my very use of italics in the previous "very." One message board I sometimes read will ban members for use of the word "um" as a written utterance, simply because it contributes such a snotty tone to the messages, and the moderaters want to avoid that.

One more observation: I think that scrutinizing a tool (in this case, language) to death can strip it of its expressive qualities. Kress can ruminate on and attempt to deconstruct the implications of new media until the cows come home, but how many people have read his book and understood his ideas in relation to the number of people exposed to the sentiment of basement-dwelling teenager Chris Crocker, who set up a videocamera and implored the world to "leave Britney alooooooooooone!!!!"? Sometimes pure expression is the best way to shape messages, meaning and media and to understand their impact.