https://d2ng68cf36kxsk.cloudfront.net/store/public/post/336/post_images/Slide013.JPG">

It’s the same mountains that we mean, but the form of that meaning is different – and the two forms of meaning are complementary when the writing and image appear together in multimodal communication. The forms of text and image may be different, but the meaning function is shared. In this case, we might want to highlight the function of reference – these there mountains. And we could go on to discuss the other functions at work to deal with the meaning in these mountains: agency (our relations in the act of meaning – in the center of the picture is the house where Mary was born); structure (the different ways the meaning is arranged in image compared to text); context (relevant surrounding meanings); and interest (the purposes of the meaning for its participants). All of these functions are there in every act of meaning, always, inevitably.

To tie these ideas together into a dynamic, ever-changing whole, meanings can always be transposed. Something can be meant in one form then another, though the re-meaning is never quite the same – in, for instance, the transposition from text to image in the case of our mountains. This never-quite-the-sameness is the reason we reach for multimodality so often and with such ease. This is transposition of meaning form.

One meaning function can also transpose into another. The functions are alternative meaning perspectives on the same thing, but what is “seen” from each perspective is both one-and-the-same and never the same. Reference: these mountains for the knowing. Interest: still these mountains but this time the reason we are showing you them.

And within each function, there is constant movement. In reference, one mountain is always ready to be counted as one of many. In interest, our mountains become yours as well, as they are added to your repertoire of meanings. Meanings are always ready to become something else. They are not stable or fixed points, as the neat categorical structuralism of traditional grammars would have us believe.

This idea of immanent movability and imminent movement is fundamental to our analysis. For this reason, we call this a “transpositional grammar.”^§MS0.2.10

– – –

Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. 2020. Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316459645. 11 Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 11-13.

MEANING §0