18.

Zoom out. Jean-François Lyotard claims that the phrase constitutes the minimal element of writing — “[t]he only one that is indubitable [. . .], because it is immediately presupposed” ²⁶ as the most basic of links, to which a genre of both rules and goals might apply. Lyotard argues that the phrase exists to enable an addressor to convey meanings about a referent to an addressee (although none of these roles in such a quadrivium can precede the phrase itself, since they emerge only within relation to each other at the moment when the phrase gets articulated).²⁷ Each phrase follows a set of both customs and motives — but this regimen varies from phrase to phrase such that, when linked, each phrase finds itself articulated in a series of heterogenous, if not incompatible, protocols, all in dispute with each other, unable to reach steady states of signification.