Modalities
المؤلف:
Bronwen Martin and Felizitas Ringham
المصدر:
Dictionary of Semiotics
الجزء والصفحة:
P85
2025-06-16
413
Modalities
The term modalities designates modal expressions such as wanting, having to, ought, may, being able to, knowing how to do. Modalities modify (or overdetermine) basic statements or utterances. These basic statements can be utterances of state or utterances of doing:
utterances of state:
Jack is rich, (basic)
Jack wants to be rich, (modified)
utterances of doing:
Jack killed the dragon, (basic)
Jack had to kill the dragon, (modified)
The modalities can be positive or negative:
Positive: She could swim 50 meters.
Negative: He was unable to do the washing-up.
The basic modalities governing both statements of state or of doing are:
(a) wanting
(1) utterances of state: wanting-to-be (vouloir etre) - 'He wanted to be rich.'
(2) utterances of doing: wanting-to-do {vouloir /aire) — They want to find the books.'
(b) having to
(1) utterances of state: having-to-be (devoir etre) — 'She had to be clever.'
(2) utterances of doing: having-to-do (devoir/aire) - 'He had to do his homework.'
(c) being able
(1) utterances of state: being-able-to-be (pouvoir etre) - 'She could not have been there.'
(2) utterances of doing: being-able-to-do (pouvoir/aire) - 'He was able to swim the Channel.'
(d) knowing
(1) utterances of state: knowing-how-to-be (savoir etre) - 'He knew how to be evil.'
(2) utterances of doing: knowing-how-to-do (savoir/aire) - 'She knew how to play the piano.'
In the canonical narrative schema of the quest the modalities of wanting-to-do and/or having-to-do are acquired at the stage of the contract. The subject is described as virtual (the virtual subject) and these modalities become the virtualizing modalities. At the qualifying test or stage of competence, the subject acquires in addition the modalities of being-able-to-do and/or knowing-how-to-do. It becomes an actual subject. These modalities therefore are known as the actualizing modalities. The subject is now ready to precede to the next stage, that of the performance.
Further modalities are:
believing: this modal structure governs (or overdetermines) utterances of state - 'She did not believe he would come'.
Mapped out on a semiotic square, the structure of believing would appear as follows:
seeming: here one utterance of state modifies another utterance of state- 'He seems to be an honest person'.
Seeming can be described as a veridictory modality, that is, it relates to the process of truth-telling in a story (veridiction).
See also alethic modalities, epistemic modalities and veridiction.
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