Exemplification

Exemplification is Goodman's term for the referential mode in which a symbol refers to properties it literally possesses by selecting and highlighting them. A tailor's swatch exemplifies the color and texture of the fabric—it does not denote the fabric (it is a piece of the fabric, not a label for it) but refers to color and texture by possessing those properties and making them salient. Exemplification is reference running in the opposite direction from denotation: where denotation goes from symbol to subject, exemplification goes from possessed property back to the label. The swatch possesses the color red; it exemplifies redness. A painting exemplifies the density of its brushwork, the warmth of its palette, the rhythmic arrangement of its forms—not by depicting these properties (you cannot paint a picture of brushwork density) but by possessing them and directing attention to them. Exemplification is the primary mode through which aesthetic works achieve their cognitive contribution, because it is through exemplification that the formal properties of the work—the specific configuration