The previous post argued that multimodality rests on a fundamental error:
it mistakes coupling for multiplicity of meaning.
This claim will attract immediate objections.
“Gesture clearly has meaning.”
“Images communicate without words.”
“Music expresses emotion.”
“People interpret these things all the time.”
These objections appear decisive.
They are not.
They are:
symptoms of the very confusion the argument exposes.
1. Not Responses, but Reclassifications
What follow are not “answers” to objections.
They are reclassifications.
Each objection depends on a misidentification:
value mistaken for meaning
coordination mistaken for communication
recognition mistaken for construal
coupling mistaken for semiosis
Once these distinctions are enforced, the objections dissolve.
2. “Gesture Clearly Has Meaning”
Gesture appears meaningful because it is:
structured
responsive
coordinated across bodies
But what is actually occurring?
constraint on action
direction of attention
alignment within a shared field
This is:
value-based coordination.
When gesture occurs with language, the illusion intensifies.
Gesture aligns with:
prosody
reference
discourse organisation
Meaning is present—but it is:
construed linguistically and supported bodily.
Gesture does not have meaning.
It:
participates in systems that do.
3. “Images Communicate Without Words”
Images appear self-sufficient.
But this appearance depends on prior conditions:
learned categories
culturally stabilised interpretations
linguistic framing (explicit or implicit)
Without these, images are:
underdetermined
open
indeterminate
What is taken as intrinsic meaning is:
meaning supplied through language and projected onto the image.
Images do not escape language.
They:
depend on it.
4. “Music Expresses Emotion”
Music is perhaps the strongest case.
So it is said to “mean.”
But what is organised here is not meaning.
It is:
intensity
tension
release
expectation
These are dimensions of:
value.
Music coordinates affect.
It does not:
classify
relate
construe symbolically
Affect is not semiosis.
5. “You Are Being Too Restrictive”
At this point, a familiar move appears:
why not broaden the definition of meaning?
Why not include gesture, image, music as “meaning-making”?
Because an unconstrained concept of meaning explains nothing.
If everything is meaning:
value disappears
coordination disappears
distinction disappears
Analysis becomes:
description without differentiation.
The issue is not inclusiveness.
It is:
analytical precision.
6. “But People Interpret These Things”
Yes.
People interpret gestures, images, and music as meaningful.
This is not evidence that meaning is present.
It is the phenomenon to be explained.
Interpretation involves:
imposing categories
applying linguistic distinctions
construing relations
In other words:
interpretation is the entry of semiosis.
What is interpreted is often:
value
or the effects of coupling
Meaning is not discovered.
It is:
brought to bear.
7. “This Is Just Redefinition”
A final objection:
this is merely redefining terms.
It is not.
It is enforcing distinctions that were previously collapsed:
value vs meaning
coordination vs communication
participation vs semiosis
coupling vs system
Without these distinctions, the field cannot stabilise its object of study.
With them, phenomena that appeared unified become:
analytically tractable.
8. The Pattern Beneath the Objections
All of these objections share a single assumption:
meaning is the default.
From this assumption, it follows that:
any structured phenomenon must be meaningful
any effective interaction must be communicative
any coordinated system must be semiotic
This assumption has guided multimodality from the outset.
It is precisely what must be rejected.
9. The Inversion
The framework developed here inverts that assumption:
meaning is not the default—it is the exception.
Most organisation is:
biological
social
value-based
Semiosis arises only under specific conditions:
symbolic systems
structured construal
coupling with language
10. Final Position
The objections do not weaken the argument.
They confirm it.
they demonstrate how deeply the conflation of value and meaning is embedded in the field.
What appears as resistance is, in fact:
the persistence of the very assumptions that the analysis has brought to light.
To address the objections is not to defend the position.
It is to show:
why the objections had to arise—and why they cannot hold.
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