Expression

“Expression consists for us in incalculability. If I new exactly how he would grimace, move, then there would be no facial expression, no gesture.”

There is a sense in which a smile (for example) is part of a code of expression – so, for instance, it can be represented iconically. But a smile that simply conformed to the code would be expressionless (mechanical). It is a condition of expression that some tweaking or bending of this code must take place. This bending or tweaking of the code (Symbolic) is what is meant be individual expression. Each person negates the Symbolic in his/her own way.

‘Style is the picture of the man’

When the tweaks and deviations assume a quality that has some consistent and distinctive form we term this ‘style’. The tweaks and deviations appear as not just random twitches or kinks in the Symbolic, but form a pattern – the ‘picture of the man’.

(Wittgenstein underlines as important the distinction between ‘Le style c’est homme’ and ‘le style c’est l’homme meme’.?)