Abstract
CONSCIOUSNESS is the basic context governing the emergence of both meaning and expression. Modes of expression are developed to cope with developing modalities of consciousness and meaning but, because meaning and its expression are not identical, not only may expression be inadequate but its examination does not yield a proper understanding of the modalities of consciousness and meaning. This latter understanding is to be sought by attending to one’s own conscious acts of meaning, to the modalities in which one operates. Accordingly, although frequent reference will be made throughout this paper to expression, attention is constantly directed to consciousness in an effort to work out the nature of the basic context and so go some way towards providing a general field within which instances of meaning could be related to each other.