Page 13 - Literacy in the New Media Age

2 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

The organisation of the image, by contrast, is governed by the logic of space, and
by the logic of simultaneity of its visual/depicted elements in spatially organised
arrangements. To say this simply: in speaking I have to say one thing after
another, one sound after another, one word after another, one clause after
another, so that inevitably one thing is first, and another thing is second, and one
thing will have to be last. Meaning can then be – and is – attached to ‘being first’
and to ‘being last’, and maybe to being third and so on. If I say ‘Bill and Mary
married’ it means something different to ‘Mary and Bill married’ – the meaning
difference perhaps referring to which of the two is closer to me. In a visual
representation the placement of elements in the space of representation – the
page, the canvas, the screen, the wall – will similarly have meaning. Placing
something centrally means that other things will be marginal, at least relatively
speaking. Placing something at the top of the space means that something else
will likely be below. Both these places can be used to make meaning: being
central can mean being the ‘centre’, in whatever way; being above can mean
being ‘superior’, and being below can mean ‘inferior’.
The point is that whether I want to or not I have to use the possibilities given
to me by a mode of representation to make my meaning. Whatever is represented
in speech (or to some lesser extent in writing) inevitably has to bow to the logic
of time and of sequence in time. The world represented in speech or in writing is
therefore (re)cast in an actual or quasi-temporal manner. The genre of the
narrative is the culturally most potent formal expression of this. Human
engagement with the world through speech or writing cannot escape that logic; it
orders and shapes that human engagement with the world. Whatever is
represented in image has to bow, equally, to the logic of space, and to the
simultaneity of elements in spatial arrangements. The world represented in image
is therefore (re)cast in an actual or quasi-spatial manner. Whatever relations are
to be represented about the world have inevitably to be presented as spatial
relations between the depicted elements of an image. Human engagement with
the world through image cannot escape that logic; it orders and shapes how we
represent the world, which in turn shapes how we see and interact with the world.
The genre of the display is the culturally most potent formal expression of this.
‘The world narrated’ is a different world to ‘the world depicted and displayed’.
To get closer to the core of that difference we need to ask more specifically
about the affordances of each of the two modes. Is the world represented through
words in sequence – to simplify massively – really different to the world
represented through depictions of elements related in spatial configurations? Let
me start with a very simple fact about languages such as English (not all
languages of the world are like English in this respect, though many are). In
English if I want to say or write a clause or a sentence about anything, I have to
use a verb. Verbs are, by and large, words that represent actions, even if the
actions are pseudo-actions, such as seem, resemble, have, weigh and so on. There
is one verb which is not really about action, the verb be, which names relations
between entities – ‘John is my uncle’, or states of affairs – ‘the day is hot’. But