Kress son of Ludwig Wittgenstein?

Gunther Kress

“The crucial difference is that words are highly conven-tionalised entities, and only exist in that manner”

“What is crucial is that if there is no word, then the possibility of representation and communication is ruled out. Only that which is worded can enter into communication; or else, that which is to be represented gets squeezed into the ill-fitting semantic shape of the existing word”

“Because words rely on convention and on conventional acceptance, words are always general and, therefore, vague. Words being nearly empty of meaning need filling with the hearer and/or reader’s meaning. (Semiotically, words are signifiers, not signs: When they are used in representation they become signs—of the maker and of the receiver and/or remaker.)”

(Kress, 2004, Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Knowledge is not translated into words when it is expressed. The words are not a translation of something else that was there before they were”

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world”

“Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized”

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably”

“We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language.”

“Language disguises thought”

“When I think in language, there aren’t ‘meanings’ going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought”

(Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889 – 1951)