Week 10 Readings

In the beginning he touched on the concept of meaning. This seems like such a simple idea in communication, but he described the three specific ways on page 37: "It is the work of filling the elements or writing with content. It is the work of making hypotheses about the 'content' of these elemenst, and it is the work of making sense of these elements in all possible combinations which they can contract with each other in the text." This quote made me laugh, because as much as I write I have never looked at the "meaning" of my writing as doing just this. But in fact, Kress makes total sense. By making hypothese you are giving more backup to the meaning you are tryint to convey.

Another point I thought was interesting was about adding meaning directly to a word. On page 59, it says "Each word asks to be filled with meaning, a meaning that comes from our past experience of that word in our social lives. " I tried to relate this to my writing, but as I thought about it, I realized that this is an unconcious action. I am sure that whatever meaning I put into my writing in fact does come from a past experience or from something I learned.

This reading was exensive and detailed, but Kress have numerous points that caused me to think about my own writing and communication.