Thursday 28 February 2013

Batman wrote a book on Multimodality?

Oh…its Bateman, guess I should read a little closer.  The first of several disappointments.

This is the first entry for foundational reading concerning my dissertation.  Wanting to do graphic narratives I should probably learn the theories of layout and semiotics.  So I started with this book of multimodality which was nearly 300 pages of very dry text.  I didn't choose it because Bateman is an accepted scholar in his field, but because this happened to be cheaper than the books of the leading scholar, Kress.  What I found almost immediately is that the first 100 pages Bateman is arguing with Kress, and is trying to establish an empirical approach to multimodality, while dismissing logic that would seem to say that an empirical approach to semiotics probably won't ever ever ever work.  What I have also come to notice about Bateman is that he is never cited in other essays on multimedia.  I'm starting to wonder about this lack of presence in the field of multimodality.  Looks like I will have to fork out the cash for the books written by Gunther Kress.

Ah Bateman, if only your name was Batman and you kicked ass.