Page 170 - Literacy in the New Media Age

READING AS SEMIOSIS 159

dominant mode into the dominant, or treat both as equal and read them
conjointly. A further component in the strategy might be to assess what the
function of each of the two modes in the text is, both at a structural level – are
they complementary to each other or is one supplementary to the other? – as well
as in terms of their specialised meaning-role – does writing, as in the example
here, have the function of ‘pedagogic framing’, and image that of representing
curricular content? This double assessment would provide a strategy for reading
the page or text.
Just as in the scanning of a sentence, say, where we have a preliminary sense
of the major components which shapes our initial approach to its reading – of
course the actual reading may need to be revised along the way – so this
assessment gives us a sense of how to read the page: there are ‘chunks’,
elements, units of meaning, of differing function, structurally in their relation to
each other and in their meaning-relation. The first scanning might give sufficient
sense to the experienced ‘reader’ of such a page for her or him to proceed with a
reading ‘below’ the level of these elements. ‘Experience’ here would indicate
both prior encounter of such pages or texts, and membership of the relevant
social/textual community, that is, someone who both understands what is at issue
socially and culturally, and understands usual modal forms of realisation of these
issues. At the points of transition from one modal ‘block’ to another, there is then
an expectation for the reader of two kinds: for instance ‘now I will get
information which complements that which I have just had’ and ‘I will now get
information of this kind (curricular, let’s say) rather than that kind (pedagogic,
let’s say)’. The reading would then proceed at that next level ‘down’, in terms of
the elements which exist in that block, at that level, in that modal realisation.
This would not tell us what reading path to adopt. That decision would be
another result from the first scanning, and it would depend on two things: on the
one hand, the look, the organisation, of the page – how are the blocks organised,
spatially, in relation to each other? And, on the other hand, the reader’s already
existing disposition as a reader. A reader who had been socialised into traditional
forms of reading may wish to persist with that as a possibility, even when that is
really difficult in terms of what the page is like. Other readers, socialised into
newer forms of organisation through the significance in their lives of the screen,
might wish to read even a (relatively) traditional page in terms of a non-linear
reading path. So a reading path is nearly as much a matter of the social as it is of
the semiotic. Given that readers socialised in the traditional forms of the page
and of the mode of writing are those who have social power now, whether as
parents, educators, politicians or media-pundits, it is not surprising that there is
such outrage at the newer semiotic forms. They are felt as challenges to social
power, which they are.
The semiotic and the social power of the screen is now such that its influence
reaches all sites of representation. It may be that the designers of the science
page believed, if they thought about it at all in those terms, that they were
constructing a traditional page, though made attractive for the readership of