Challenging instantiation in modelling movement-based multimodal communication

Abstract

Multimodal discourse analysis has covered in the last 10 to 15 years areas of discourse and text-types that go beyond the traditional boundaries drawn by verbally based communication. Forms of exchange have been explored that incorporate three-dimensional environments, hyper-environments, the interplay between semiotic systems whose materiality involves human body interaction. The successful application of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory to the modelling and analysis of these text-types and the discourses they carry out has shown its unique flexibility and applicability of its principles. However, it has also highlighted the problematic nature of some fundamental theoretical notions like instantiation, which forms a central dimension of SFL theory. The problematic representation of the system–instance relation as a cline, the different interpretations of this representation, and the need to conceptualise the process of realisation in a more context-related way, especially when in multimodal environments, are the central issues addressed by this chapter. Starting with a definition of the current place of instantiation in SFL theory, this chapter will analyse its divergent meanings and address the challenges it poses in terms of realisation and stratification through the example of case studies that involve complex multimodal communication. The aim is to propose a new definition of instantiation.