Page 54 - Literacy in the New Media Age

LITERACY AND MULTIMODALITY 43

Figure 4.1 ‘This is a car’

sign or as a metaphor – it is both – it is the interest of the sign-maker at the
moment of making the sign that leads to the selection of the criteria for
representing that which is to be represented – ‘wheel-ness’ and ‘car-ness’ here,
and for selecting the signifier which most aptly, most plausibly represents it.
Since I first used this example I have been shown other instances of wheel-
cars; sometimes they have been steering wheels, or the wheels surrounding logos,
or the actual wheels. What that shows is that there is, clearly, a quite general
feature here, one which can become the principal criterion for representation. Two
points follow from this. One, there are other possible criteria of course for
representing ‘car’: the sound of the engine, for instance, is one; and later shape,
colour, speed and power, become significant, as does imagined use. Gender
plays its part early on, and imagined use combined with gendered imagination
produces its specific forms – cars to be comfortably sociable in, or cars for
mowing down pedestrians. Two, representation as sign is always partial: that
which the sign-maker regards as criterial about the thing signified forms the
basis of the sign. There is no means of knowing – other than broad cultural
tendencies – what will be chosen as criterial, and so there is no way of predicting
absolutely what the sign for an object or phenomenon will be. However, the