Conditionality

Agency (Who or What is doing this?)

Conditionality

0.0 MARY: Agents also act in relationships that we call conditionality: the assertions of facts; requirements when something must be done; possibilities that present themselves.

0.23 MARY: Here is a rough map of conditionalities across different forms of meaning. If we parse text using traditional grammar, we may find different moods, the “is” of indicative mood, the “must” of imperative mood, and the “could” of “subjunctive” mood. In speech, we might find the self-evident factualness of the talking you and me, the things we are talking about expressed in a matter-of-fact tone; or we might hear commands like “stop;” or in the case of mere possibility we might hear a tone of uncertainty in the modulation of the speaker’s voice.

1.02 MARY: In reality, it’s much more complicated than this – here is Jennifer Coates’s map of modal auxiliaries in English. Often it is hard to figure out what is going on from the words alone.

1.17: MARY: The reason why it is hard is because the one meaning is always ready to become another. A mere possibility can turn into an assertable reality. Or an assertable reality may prove to have been not so assertable after all, in retrospect a possibility only. An assertion may be conditional upon possibility. After a requirement has been acted upon, we can make an assertion about it. And any other number of combinations or subtly nuanced intermediate points. Again, we want to say that meanings are always on the move.

Reference: Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, 2020, Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, pp. 237-39.

2.02 BILL: In his 1901 novel, “The First Men on the Moon,” H.G. Wells speaks in a series of narrative assertions, but we know that this are only a future possibility.

Reference: Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, 2020, Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, p. 257.

2.12 BILL: Now this quote from Ludwig in Wittgenstein from his late work, “On Certainty:”

“Suppose some adult told a child that he had been on the moon. The child tells me the story, and I say it was only a joke, the man hadn’t been on the moon; no one has ever been on the moon; the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or ﬂy there ... But a child will not ordinarily stick to such a belief and will soon be convinced by what we tell him seriously … If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been to the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it.”

This is a pretty definite assertion, but in retrospect, it was only a possibility that humans would never find a way to go to the moon. “On Certainty” was not published until 1969, ironically the year of the first moon landing.

Reference: Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, 2020, Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, pp. 253-56.

3.10 BILL: Now here is one of the photographs taken on the moon in 1969 with the very best camera money could buy at the time, a Hasselblad 500. This is a photograph. Grammatically we would say, it is an assertion.

3.24 BILL: But, according to a poll, 6 per cent of Americans believe the moon landings were faked. Here is a video published by moontruth.com where you can see a stage hand accidentally walking onto the set where the moon landing was being filmed. This is proof that NASA had made it all up.

Assertions are always open to question. Possibilities can always be raised, improbably at times, even stupidly. Our point here is that, as meaning-makers, we always find ourselves moving backwards and forwards across the alternatives of conditionality. So, we stay anxiously alert to conditionality because the lie of the land can always change.

4.03 BILL: Now here is a work of art Siah Armajani, “Moon Landing.” On the screen, the artist has printed the words, “This TV set has witnessed the Apollo 11 mission. It was turned on at 8.32am on Wednesday, July 16, 1969, and was in continuous operation until 11.50 am on Thursday July 24, 1969.”

In case you don’t believe his assertion, the artist has put a padlock at the end of the cable. But do you trust him?

Reference: Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, 2020, Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, pp. 257-58