"Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here..."

In his article “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning,” Gunther Kress reiterates several points that he makes in his seminal treatise Literacy in the New Media Age when he states that “Speech and writing tell the world; depiction shows the world. In the one, the order of the world is that given by the author; in the other, the order of the world is yet to be designed (fully and /or definitively) by the viewer” (16); however, this particular quote also embodies several of the difficulties I have been having in coming to terms with the ideas Kress puts forth. In particular, the notion that speech and writing simply “tell the world” seems to be a rather unilateral statement. Anyone who has a creative writing background has heard time and again in workshops to “Show, don’t tell” the reader through descriptive language, metaphor, etc., and although I realize that Kress is expanding the notion of “…words (as) empty entities…to be filled with meaning” (7), my contention (which is by no means a new one) is that all forms of discourse (including visuals) are empty of meaning and can only be filled by the reader / viewers social, political, culture, economic (etc. etc.) background. As I’m writing this (and thinking back to our in-class discussion of Kress), I don’t necessarily think Kress would disagree with me, but the convoluted (and sometimes contradictory) nature of his texts makes it difficult for me to wade through the pools of his scholarship. In trying to think of what he is attempting to convey, in the simplest form possible, I imagine a non-native English speaker trying to read the language and (of course) the words on the page have no meaning because they are merely signs, or signifiers, or whatever term-of-the-week is being used; on the other hand, an image has the capability to convey some type of meaning to the viewer because (to use a tired cliché) pictures speaker louder than words. Okay, I get it. But the notion that “the world is yet to be designed…by the viewer” seems somewhat absurd to me since (although a viewer has more possibilities for reading paths than, say, a text-based reader) the portal, program, browser, website that they are viewing was designed by someone else; thus, the cultural baggage of the designer and the viewer come into contact – thus, the order of the world can never be fully or definitively designed. Am I wrong in my reading? If so, please help me out here.