Le circuit entre modulations et modalisations. Nouveau voyage dans le vaste archipel théorique du modal

This contribution aims to explore a new general theoretical framework of the modal, trying to position it as an index of the heterogeneous implicative tensions that occupy the discursive instances and that require local resolutions in order to ensure a stable interpretability of the multiple actantial frames (at the narrative level or at the discourse level) of the semiotic practice. The implications are internal to the mobilizations of linguistic resources but also concern the modal valences of the environment surrounding the discursive scene, reciprocally exchanging stages of fluidity (modulations) and stages of coagulation (modalities), in order to allow for screens of reflexivity (moods) and terrains of transitivity (modalizations). To insist on implication as a key interpretant of the modal means to preserve the relational nature of the latter, to consider it precisely as a valence that does not belong to the subjectivity in the making or to the thematized process, but to the links that interlace tensive balances in a mediating space of multiple perspectives. To inhabit a space (also linguistic) means to tie together a multiplicity of sensory and symbolic implications, and the modal fabric is what guarantees a significance to our expressive gestures, be they conventional or insubordinate, mimetic or imaginative. Our article follows the modal in its deep folds, but without exceeding the figurative threshold of this ecological implication and with the idea of reconstructing modulation circuits thanks to which modal “compositions” and institutional modalizations always find the opportunity to reformulate themselves according to new equilibriums, modal stagnation being the prison of absolute uses (no direct object is given, as in “I want”) without possible transposition or analogization. The semantics of the modal has its own significance in the proportions and in the possible conversions, without being able to reach a final interpretant. Thus, the modal is an unbroken appeal to motive, self-realized intimately or celebrated in public, without leaving the transcendent instances outside a questioning of their possible implication (“God’s will be done”). This is why a common and accomplished macro-narrative is impossible and therefore, behind each modal configuration, there is always a patching up of our individual and/or collective history.