Blog Post 6

Multimodality is described as communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, and visual resources - or modes - used to compose messages. Personally, I would define modes as the make up for multi modality. They are the bits and pieces of communication, resources and pieces of information, whether they are through text, visuals, videos, etc. All modes come together with other modes to make one final message. In a way it relates closely to an assemblage, it is basically the parts that come together to make the complete message. 

According to Kress, things such as a moving image, video and speech are all samples of time. They are in the moment as they are being seen or heard. Text on the other hand is considered to not be in time, it was written and now being read, therefore it is not in the moment. Things such as a still image are what Kress considers special. Wysocki’s places a much heavier view on the special and the relationship between it all. However, overall they each want to know what is gained and lost in the process of using each mode and how they intertwine to make communication better. Some tension between Kress and Wysocki, is the fact that Wysocki feels that Kreess’s views are constrained and he wishes to “question what becomes unavailable when we think of word and image as Kress has suggested we do, as bound logically and respectively with time and with space.”