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Fig. 2.2(i): Roles over time and place

When the writer says “I,” or the image-maker positions their “I”/eye, they are placing “you” or “they” into the position of “I.” The writer or image-maker are meaning that for the moment, you are able to transpose “I” and “you” for the purposes of standing in their metaphorical shoes, to replay the transactivity of their meaning in more-or-less the same terms. Same with “other” – the in-person “you” is transposed into the distant “them.” And for things, there is a grammatical difference between the tangible, seeable, present thing and its distant representation.

Typically in theories of semantics and semiotics, the distancing characteristic of transposition across time and place^§AS1.3 is taken to be a process of symbolization, of standing for. This, for these theories, captures the essence of characteristically human communication. Our theory is flat: there is no difference in the symbolic depth of meaning between present and non-present meanings. There is no distinction between meanings-in and meanings-of. We simply have transpositions across a plane of meaning, in this case, role transpositions – same role in different forms of meaning on one axis of transposition, and different roles transposing into each other on the functional axis. In form, for instance, a spoken role can be supplemented by embodied presence. Or a meaning in person can become a meaning at a distance. On the functional axis, a meaning that was an “I” in person can become a transposed, replayed meaning for “you” or “them” in text or image.

Here, we encounter some important differences in the affordances of forms of meaning. The radical differences between the grammars of speech and text come into view once again. The in-person “I” of speech is typically present. The at-a-distance “I” of writing demands a transposition of agency into “you” or “them” in the replay of meaning. In these senses, text is more like image than speech. In image, the embodied act of sight (the seeing “I”/eye), an image demands a transposition of agency into “you” and “them” as the viewer takes the position of the image-maker. The reader and the viewer are required to assume the position of the writer and artist.

Fig. 2.2(ii): Roles

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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. 212–214. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316459645

Role §MS2.2