Modes, modalités et modalisations

Mood, modality, and modalization constitute a central area of inquiry across linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, and sociology. While mood defines the conditions of assertability of propositions, modality—together with temporality and aspectuality—shapes the states and actions of enunciative actors in terms of knowledge, will, and belief. Modalization further involves the rhetorical and pragmatic negotiation of action, redistributing modal charges within narrative and practical scenes. This issue of Signata/Annals of Semiotics revisits these concepts through an interdisciplinary dialogue, assessing their syntactic, semantic, and actantial dimensions, as well as their role in destabilizing enunciative configurations. The volume extends modal analysis beyond verb-centered approaches to include institutional contexts, practices, and non-verbal semioses, with particular attention to visual manifestations and the relationship between modalization and spatialization.