On one level the shifter[NOTE 26] is a grammatico-linguistic particle, 'This', 'Here', 'Now', or 'I', referred to variously as demonstrative, indexical, or deictic.[NOTE 27] I am extrapolating from the grammatical definition of a shifter and using it as a concept as a way of expressing the dynamic movement of signification; for example, the 'shift" from literal to figurative registers. Thus, on another level, the shifter brings in the notion of metaphor (to carry over, transfer), trope (turning), and irony (to say the opposite of what you mean, or to mean the opposite of what you say -- "the use of words to express something other than and esp. the opposite of the literal meaning"). On the level of the body it brings in the notion of digestion as the assimilation and transformation of energies from outside in and inside out. The double meaning of words, the very function of doubleness[NOTE 28] or du-plicity in metaphor (two in one and one in two); the third level would be the moment of the movement itself between literal (proper) and figurative, the movement of sense (again two levels as sensory and intelligible), and of course the Aufhebung, meaning both to cancel and preserve, and the pun of meinung as 'mine' and 'meaning'. In short, language points: it points to its own process as a function, and it points out its own function as part of that process:
The proper meaning of pronouns -- as shifters and indicators of the utterance -- is inseparable from a reference to the instance of discourse. The articulation -- the shifting -- that they effect is not from the nonlinguistic (tangible indication) to the linguistic, but from langue to parole [Code/Message]. Deixis, or indication -- with which their peculiar character has been identified, from antiquity on -- does not simply demonstrate an unnamed object, but above all the very instance of discourse, its taking place. The place indicated by demonstratio, and from which only every other indication is possible, is a place of language. Indication is the category within which language refers to its own taking place (Agamben 25).
Language is the locus of turning away from and turning into, of reflexivity and self-reflection, of conventional structure and metaphorical invention, and therefore is to be regarded as a shifter, not merely on the grammatical scale but also on the conceptual scale. Thus, we can substitute any of a number of the concepts of in-betweenness for "Appearance" in the following statement: "It is the semblance or show in Appearance that makes possible the subtle translation of physical motion into metaphysical evaluation[. . . .] Yet Appearance, the converter of actuality into semblance, is itself pure shift, pure transference, pure variation. Paradoxically, then, the ontological strata and system that sublimate themselves above the level of the sensible rest upon a factor of pure difference"(Sussman 34). Things, words, the 'I' and ideas that point to, through and beyond themselves facilitate the transitions between the sensuous and the metaphorical and allow for the reciprocal exchanges between the no longer literal and the not yet conceptual. In other words, they are pure shifters.