Chapter 5 Modality

Coding orientation is dicussed on page 163. One statement that the authors make is concerning the social construction of refering to items or problems in terms that relate to sight. " Behind this, in turn, is the primacy which is accorded to visual perception in our culture generallly. Seeing has, in our culture, become synonymous with understanding" (163). We use sight terminology to rate or assign a degree to the ownership of an idea or understanding.


Another factor of modality is the color of the visual image. "It is here that the affective values of colours come into their own, for example. The emotive colour is sometimes seen as a general characteristic of colour" (165). I discussed this issue in the first subproject involving my avatar. I chose black and red because of the emotions and characteristics that they represent and how I wanted my avatar to convey the message that the colors embody. The meaning of the colors chosen, can make a statement (high modality) about the object in question.

Modality can be altered due to the social characteristics of a culture or society. For example the color dicussion mentioned above. In Western cultures a bride wears white at a wedding but in India the bride wears red and that culture wears white for funerals. The cultural context where the visual is percieved can change the the strength of modality. "This is why we see modality as interactive, rather than ideational, as social, rather than as a matter if some independently given value" (171).

Happy Easter!


http://people.clemson.edu/~hwitmer/fear/