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Signs of reference to an instance of a space are in the one-and-onlyness of a space – this museum, or this kitchen. Signs of reference to an instance of object, this camera in my hand, named in its specificity perhaps by a serial number. Signs of reference to an instance of embodied meaning may be a gesture or bodily appearance in a moment, showing signs of similarity with other gestures and kinds of bodily experience perhaps, but always uniquely expressed in that moment. Or there may be a performance of sound, or spoken utterance, uniquely instantiated because said in one, unrepeatable time and place.

Forms of meaning are proxies for each other, where the meaning of a single person, for example, is their instantiation in a name, image, embodied presence, a statue even. In a transpositional grammar, cross-reference is the meaningful connection between one form of meaning and another. Instantiation is a process of always-being-about-to-become: a thing that is ready to be named, or a name in search of its possible object; a picture whose object is about to be found, or a found object that could be pictured; an event that could be indicated by a sound, or a sound indicating an event. Instantiation is sometimes a traceable actuality; at other times it is the absolute possibility of its meaning to appear as an instance. These are form/form transpositions. They are things that, from one form of meaning to another, stand for each other.

In this analysis, “language” is not a higher form of meaning that defines our human-ness. Nor do the abstractions of theory, logic, and the mechanics of quantification overlie language alone. They may also be rendered visually, in diagram, geometry, and mathematical formula, for example. It is the habit of Analytical Philosophers and theorists of “the language turn” to privilege the ways in which written or spoken words overlie visual, sounded, material, and embodied meanings. Then the logicians and mathematicians layer over language progressively deeper abstractions.

We want to give equal credence to journeys in the other direction, where just as readily we may transpose an object for a word, or a visualization for a number. This is as powerfully meaningful a vector of transposition, just as important as language. It is the patterns of transposition across meaning forms that define our human-ness. We are not mainly a “language animal”²⁴ or even a “symbolic species”²⁵ whose peculiar bent is to abstract in verbal concepts.^AS§1.1.3a We are a species of meaning-transposers – as for that matter are other species, though in their different ways.

As well as form/form transpositions, there are also always-possible function/function transpositions, one of which is the transposition of instance with concept, or one with more than one. Whichever direction we go, form/form or function/function, these transpositions are the product of a meaning act (designing), whose patterned genealogy is traceable to found meaning artifacts (available designs), and whose consequence is always new, transformed meaning (the redesigned).^§MS0.4.1 Every such act is equally and in concert a mental act and a materially manifest act. It is a never-to-be-repeated conjunction of transposition across meaning forms and meaning functions.

“Instance,” to restate this in somewhat different terms, stands in contrast with “concept.” These are the two canonical forms of specification. If a concept stands for something general, something of which two or more instances may exist, an instance stands only for itself. It is just one thing. For the moment at least, an instance is irreducible in its singularity, its uniqueness. Here is a proper noun written down, “Mary Kalantzis,” or we could show you a photo that is unmistakably just her, or you may experience her bodily presence if you happen to be in the same space and time, or you may see and hear that bodily presence in a video. A related concept is “person,” which may be two if she is speaking to another one, or billions if we consider all those alive today.

Consider, then, the map of multimodal specification in Fig. 1.1.1, anticipating ideas that will be outlined in greater detail as this part unfolds:

Fig. 1.1.1: Specification

On the horizontal axis, through the process of specification, forms can be transposed for each other. Or transposable forms can be juxtaposed, creating both redundancy by virtue of the parallelism and supplementary meaning by virtue of the irreducibly unique affordances of each form of meaning.

The rule of both instantiation and conceptualization is meaningful minimalism. Some redundancy is helpful, but there can be too much, so specify just enough for the transposition to indicate either one-ness and singularity, or multiplicity and generality. Specify just enough to be definite in the determination of this particular instance or general concept; just enough to disambiguate; and no more than is necessary.

On the vertical axis, within the function of reference, its possibilities are always on the move; each possibility can be transposed for another. An instantiation is ever-ready to be framed as an instance of a concept, or a concept is ever-ready to be manifest and exemplified in an instance. A concept is defined by criterial aspects that are worthy of our attention across more than one instance. And here arises another rule of meaningful minimalism: the fewer the criterial features, the more serviceable the concept.

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²² Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, 2011, The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen, London, UK: Allen Lane, pp. 203–11.

²³ http://www.sciencealert.com/cern-discovers-higgs-like-particle

²⁴ Charles Taylor, 2016, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

²⁵ Terrence W. Deacon, 1997, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

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Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. 2020. Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 83-87. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316459645

Instance §MS1.1.1