ABSTRACT

Gunther Kress, one of the founders of social semiotics and multimodality, has made lasting contributions to these fields through his work in semiotics and meaning-making; power and identity; agency, design, production; and pedagogy and learning; in varied sites of transformation. This book brings together leading scholars in a variety of disciplines, including social semiotics, pedagogy, linguistics, media and communication studies, new literacy studies, ethnography, academic literacy, literary criticism and, more recently, medical/clinical education, to examine and build upon his work. This disciplinary diversity is evidence of the ways in which Kress' work has influenced and been influenced by a wide range of academic work and intellectual endeavors and how it has been used to lay foundations for theory-building and concept development in a varied yet connected range of areas.

The individual contributions to the book pick up the threads of the often collaborative work of the authors with Kress; they show how these approaches were subsequently developed and discuss what future trajectories the authors see for them.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

part 1|25 pages

Two Personal Views

chapter 1|9 pages

Kress on Kress

Using a Method to Read a Life

chapter 2|14 pages

On Transformation

Reflections on the Work of, and Working with, Gunther Kress

part 2|80 pages

Semiotics and Meaning-Making

chapter 3|10 pages

Semiotic and Spatial Scope

Towards a Materialist Semiotics

chapter 4|11 pages

Proactive Design Theories of Sign Use

Reflections on Gunther Kress

chapter 5|8 pages

Making Meaning in Japanese

Orthographic Principles and Semiotic Meaning Potential

chapter 6|9 pages

Colour Schemes

chapter 9|4 pages

The Search for Multimodality

Mimesis, Performativity, and Ritual

chapter 10|10 pages

On Magical Language

Multimodality and the Power to Change Things

chapter 11|8 pages

Multimodality and New Literacy Studies

Exploring Complimentarity

part 3|112 pages

Shaping Knowledge: Agency in Learning and Design

chapter 12|8 pages

Gunther Kress and Politics

chapter 13|9 pages

Transformation and Sign-Making

The Principles of Sketching in Designs for Learning

chapter 15|9 pages

Kressian Moments in South African Classrooms

Multimodality, Representation, and Learning

chapter 16|12 pages

Voice as Design

Exploring Academic Voice in Multimodal Texts in Higher Education

chapter 17|13 pages

After Writing

Rethinking the Paths to Composition

chapter 18|8 pages

Semiotic Work in the Apparently Mundane

Completing a Structured Worksheet

chapter 20|9 pages

From Error to Multimodal Semiosis

Reading Student Writing Differently

part 4|40 pages

Knowing and Learning Beyond the Walls of Traditional Education

chapter 23|12 pages

Towards a Social and Ethical View of Semiosis

Examples From the Museum

chapter 24|7 pages

Multimodality and Digital Environments

An Illustrative Example of the Museum Visitor Experience

chapter 26|9 pages

Learning, Design, and Performance

Towards a Semiotic-Ethnographic Account of Surgical Simulation