1 Memes and Meaning: Situating Cultural Replication in a General Model of Meaning
In recent decades, memes have become a dominant mode of cultural expression — compressed units of significance that travel swiftly across social media, mutate in form, and reappear in altered yet recognisable guises. Originally coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) to describe units of cultural transmission, memes have since taken on a life of their own in both popular and scholarly discourse.
But what are memes, really, from the perspective of a general theory of meaning? Rather than treating memes as a separate class of cultural replicators, this post argues that memes are best understood as a subset of meaning instances: actualisations of meaning potential that exhibit high re-instantiability in cultural systems. This reframing allows us to situate memetics within a relational, stratified, and instantiational model of meaning — one that integrates insights from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), theories of individuation, and the dynamics of cultural memory.
1. From Memetics to Meaning: Shifting the Frame
The original Dawkinsian conception of memes was framed in analogy with genes: cultural units that replicate via imitation, undergo variation, and are subject to selection. While this heuristic proved generative, it also left memetics vulnerable to criticism for its lack of grounding in a coherent theory of meaning.
A better way forward is to see memes not as discrete, gene-like entities, but as meaning instances — instantiations of meaning potential that succeed in achieving re-instantiability across cultural contexts. Memes, then, are not outside the semiotic system; they are emergent products of it, shaped by the same dynamics that govern all meaning-making.
2. Memes as Meaning Instances with High Reselection Potential
In SFL, meaning arises through the instantiation of structured meaning potential — a network of semantic options that is actualised in context. Each actualisation is a meaning instance, and some of these instances acquire high salience within a culture. Memes are just such instances: they crystallise a relation between meaning and context in a way that prompts repetition, transformation, and sharing.
What makes a meme successful is not merely its form, but its fit with the evolving cultural system. Memes tend to:
Resonantly instantiate meanings already latent in collective potential,
Achieve recognisability through semiotic patterning,
Trigger value-weighted responses that prompt re-instantiation,
Form their own instantial systems (e.g. meme templates, hashtags, tropes).
Memes are not reducible to their words or images; they are units of meaning in motion — stratified semiotic events that circulate within collective memory and undergo variation through instantiation.
3. Memory, Instantiation, and the Reselection of Meaning
As we’ve argued elsewhere, memory is not the retrieval of a past state but the systemic capacity to reinstantiate a performance. In this sense, memory is a semiotic process: a dynamic reselection of past meaning potential in new contexts. Cultural memory, then, is not a static archive but a selection pressure on the evolution of meaning.
Memes flourish within this system because they are tuned to the rhythms of cultural memory. Their success depends on how well they activate shared systems of value and expectation. They must balance redundancy (to be recognisable) and novelty (to be interesting). In doing so, they serve as probes into the active regions of collective meaning potential.
4. Individuation and the Circulation of Cultural Form
From the perspective of individuation — the relation between collective meaning potential and the differing meaning potentials of individual meaners — memes occupy a particularly interesting position. They originate from specific instantiations (individuals producing a meme), but quickly move into a shared symbolic resource space, where they become collective semiotic tools.
This circulation is not trivial. It involves:
The de-individuation of certain meaning instances (they become group property),
The formation of instantial systems that can be drawn upon and transformed,
The potential for memes to shape collective identity, especially through myth-like repetition.
Memes thus contribute to the social semiotic infrastructure of a culture — not merely reflecting meanings, but helping to structure how meaning is made.
5. Rethinking Memetics: A Semiotic Account
What does this reframing achieve?
It grounds memes in a relational, stratified ontology of meaning.
It sees memetic activity as part of the instantiation cycle within a social semiotic system.
It identifies memory, individuation, and context as key selection pressures in memetic success.
It dissolves the false dichotomy between biological and cultural replication by treating meaning — not imitation — as the unit of analysis.
Crucially, it allows us to locate memes within a general model of meaning, rather than outside or parallel to it.
Conclusion: Memes as Meaning in Motion
In the end, memes are not a special category of cultural life, but rather an especially visible subset of how meaning circulates, adapts, and evolves within a culture. When viewed through the lens of systemic-functional semiotics, memes become meaning instances subject to the same pressures of selection, instantiation, and individuation that shape all meaning-making.
What makes memes special is not that they are unique, but that they are highly traceable semiotic events — revealing, through their form and function, the evolving contours of collective memory and shared potential.
In short: memes are meaning in motion — and understanding them means understanding meaning itself.
2 From Meme to Meaning: Integrating Memes into a General Theory of Meaning
In contemporary culture, memes are often treated as fleeting curiosities—humorous images or phrases that ricochet through social media. But beneath this surface lies a deeper semiotic structure. If we adopt the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), where meaning is understood as a stratified and instantiated phenomenon, then memes offer an important case study for how meaning is individuated, instantiated, and realised across social contexts. To place memes within a general model of meaning, we must first move beyond the popular usage and develop a more systemic understanding of what memes are.
Memes as Meaning Instances
In our general model, meaning is not substance but potential, structured as a system and actualised as instances. This is the foundation of SFL’s cline of instantiation, which relates meaning potential (system) to meaning instance (text). Memes, in their most visible form, are clearly meaning instances. They are semiotic artefacts—configurations of wording, imagery, and logic—that function within social discourse. Like all meaning instances, they are:
Semiotically stratified: They have a semantic value, realised through lexicogrammar and other strata like visual imagery.
Contextually situated: Their interpretation depends on field, tenor, and mode.
Instantial: They draw selectively on meaning potential in order to be actualised.
Meme-Types: Constrained Patterns of Instantiation
We propose the term meme-type to capture the semiotic space between the instance and the full system. A meme-type is a recurrent, recognisable pattern of meaning-making that allows multiple instantiations while constraining what counts as a valid variation. Meme-types operate like small-scale meaning potentials, often tightly individuated within communities or discourses. They are:
Culturally shared: Their semiotic constraints are learned and recognised collectively.
Structurally constrained: They have internal expectations (e.g., a particular image paired with a two-part caption).
Flexible but bounded: Variation is possible, but the meme breaks down if the constraint space is violated.
A meme-type, then, is not an instance, nor is it a system in the SFL sense. It is a subsystem within the social semiotic, positioned between instance and system along the cline of instantiation. As such, meme-types can be understood as proto-systems of meaning that emerge through collective memory and practice.
Individuation and the Meme-User
In SFL, individuation refers to the relationship between the collective meaning potential and the meaning potential of individual language users. Memes offer a vivid example of how individuation plays out semiotically. Each meme-user accesses a meme-type from the collective semiotic pool and produces a new instantiation—an individuated meaning instance.
This process is inherently dialogic: the meme-type provides affordances, while the user introduces variation. Through repeated instantiation, meme-users both reproduce and evolve the meme-type, subtly shifting its system of values, references, and implications.
Memes are thus a site of semiotic negotiation: They balance reproducibility and individuation.
Memes instantiate memory: Each new meme recalls previous instantiations and updates the collective sense of what the meme-type means.
The Role of Memory in Meme Evolution
Here, Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) offers insight into the material substrate of this semiotic process. Memory, in Edelman’s model, is not the retrieval of stored content, but the selective reactivation of neural circuits. Memory is a property of the system, expressed in the ability to repeat a performance, not to recover a record.
When applied to culture, this suggests that collective memory functions as a selection pressure on the evolution of memes. Just as neural groups are selected for their adaptive value, meme-types are selected and stabilised through social memory:
Memes persist because they are remembered in usable forms.
New instantiations reinforce or modify the structure of the meme-type.
Cultural memory acts as a kind of semiotic fitness landscape.
Thus, the cultural evolution of meme-types parallels the neural evolution of repertoires in the brain. Both are shaped by selection histories that privilege certain patterns of activation over others.
Toward a General Model of Memes in Meaning
By situating memes within the cline of instantiation, and distinguishing between meme-types and meme instances, we can develop a systemic-functional account of memetics. This model is not about the replication of units, as in Dawkins’ original metaphor, but about the activation of constrained semiotic potentials within social systems. Memes are:
Instantiations of semiotic meaning.
Selections from collective meaning potential.
Realisations of cultural memory in context.
And meme-types are:
Provisional proto-systems of meaning.
Sites of individuation within a shared culture.
Cultural attractors that stabilise certain values and orientations.
In this way, we not only align memes with the SFL model of meaning, but we also show how memetics and semiotics can be integrated within a relational ontology. This opens the way for future explorations—of individuation, instantiation, and evolution—as we continue mapping the dynamic semiotic systems that shape our shared realities.
3 Relational Ontology, Instantiation, and Individuation: Groundwork for a Systemic Model of Memes
To understand how memes function within a general theory of meaning, we must carefully reconstruct the conceptual architecture that supports their integration. In particular, we must ground our model in a relational ontology and distinguish between the processes of instantiation and individuation. These concepts allow us to treat memes not merely as cultural curiosities or replicators, but as meaningful formations within evolving semiotic systems. This post provides the theoretical groundwork to support a more precise systemic-functional account of memetics.
Relational Ontology: Meaning as Emergent Structure
A relational ontology begins by refusing to treat entities as self-contained substances. Instead, what exists is constituted by relations. In systemic-functional linguistics (SFL), meaning is relationally defined: a clause is meaningful not by what it is in itself, but by the role it plays within a system of options.
In this framework:
Meaning is not a thing but a structured potential, shaped by its position in a system of interrelated possibilities.
Meaning instances are actualised configurations of these potentials in context.
Semiotic strata (semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology) are related by realisation, not composition.
Crucially, meaning is not made of words or sounds. It is construed through symbolic abstraction and actualised through semiotic choice. This ontology opens the door to modelling memes as emergent formations in meaning space.
Instantiation: From Potential to Instance
Instantiation refers to the movement from a system of potential meanings to actualised instances of meaning. In SFL:
The system represents the meaning potential of a semiotic system.
The instance is a actualised configuration (e.g., a clause, a meme).
The cline of instantiation runs between these poles, allowing us to locate partial or recurrent structures between full generality and specific occurrence.
When we encounter a meme in the wild (say, an image macro with a familiar format), we are seeing a meaning instance that draws on a semiotic system. But it also belongs to a meme-type—a recognisable pattern of instantiation that is neither a fully general system nor a one-off instance. It sits somewhere along the cline.
Individuation: Who Has Access to What Potential?
Individuation refers to the relation between collective meaning potential (what a culture or community can mean) and individual meaning potential (what a person can mean). Meaning is not equally distributed:
Some individuals have access to highly elaborated meaning systems (e.g., specialists).
Others operate within more restricted or differently configured potentials.
Memes, in this context, become a space of semiotic individuation. The collective recognises a meme-type as valid, but each instantiation reflects the individuated meaning potential of the meme-maker. This dynamic allows memes to evolve, shift, or fracture over time.
Why This Matters for Memetics
Previous models of memetics, particularly the one advanced by Dawkins, treated memes as cultural replicators—quasi-biological units transmitted through imitation. But this view is incompatible with a relational, semiotic model of meaning. Instead, we argue:
Memes are meaning instances: actualised selections from potential.
Meme-types are semiotic attractors: constrained proto-systems formed through recurrent instantiation.
Meme evolution is driven by instantiation pressure (how memes are actualised) and individuation pressure (who can mean what within the meme-type).
This shifts the emphasis from replication to variation within constraint—a fundamentally semiotic process.
Next Steps
The next phase of the project will integrate this framework into an account of the meaning economy, where meme-types serve as provisional symbolic formations shaped by memory, context, and constraint.
In short, we are moving from a metaphorical to a systemic-functional model of memes, grounded in relational ontology and sensitive to the clines of both instantiation and individuation.
4 Value and Selection in the Meaning Economy: Rethinking Memes Beyond Replication
In many accounts of memetics, memes are imagined as cultural genes: replicable units that spread by copying themselves across minds and media. This metaphor has been remarkably generative, but it also carries baggage—especially the idea that meme propagation depends primarily on faithful replication. In a semiotic model grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a different view emerges: one in which meaning is not copied, but instantiated, and value, not fidelity, is the central currency.
Rather than asking whether a meme is replicated accurately, we ask what makes a meme worth instantiating again. This is where value and selection become central.
Memes as Value-Laden Instantiations
In SFL, meanings are structured as systems of potential, and each instance of meaning draws selectively on that potential in a particular context. Memes, on this model, are not fixed units but instantiations of semiotic potential—each one an actualised expression of a meme-type or meme-template, shaped by a particular social and cultural context.
What determines which meme-types persist and which vanish is not simply their structure or recognisability, but the value they carry within the social system. This value may be symbolic (e.g. status, alignment, identity), emotional (e.g. humour, outrage, nostalgia), or pragmatic (e.g. clarity, brevity, timeliness).
In other words, memes succeed because they matter, not because they reproduce flawlessly.
Selection, not Fidelity
This is not to say that memes aren’t replicated. But replication in a semiotic economy is always selective, and always mediated by social meaning. Each new instantiation is:
An interpretation, not a mechanical copy.
A reactivation of a pattern of meaning, not a duplication of form.
Contextually motivated, rather than structurally determined.
So we don’t discard the idea of replication entirely—we reframe it. What spreads is not a static unit, but a semiotic potential, constrained and reshaped by cultural memory and communicative purpose.
In this light, selection and replication are not opposed, but entangled. It is selection that guides replication, and replication that makes selection visible. Every meme that circulates reflects both the value system of the culture and the interpretive agency of the meme-user.
The Meaning Economy
This brings us to a broader insight: memes operate within what we can call a meaning economy. In this economy:
Semiotic forms accrue value based on how well they serve communicative, affective, or ideological functions.
Users act as semiotic agents, choosing which forms to reinstantiate based on perceived value.
Memes compete and evolve through selection histories—not natural selection, but cultural selection driven by shared values and shifting contexts.
What this economy selects for is not survival in a literal sense, but resonance, relevance, and recognisability. A successful meme-type is one that people want to use again, know how to adapt, and feel aligns with their communicative goals.
Conclusion: Memes as Semiotic Selection Events
By moving from a replication model to a value-based selection model, we gain a more flexible and culturally sensitive understanding of memes. In the meaning economy, a meme spreads not because it replicates, but because it is revalued and reselected, again and again, by users navigating a shared semiotic field.
Memes, then, are not just signs that travel—they are selection events, where individual meaning-makers reinstantiate cultural memory according to what matters here and now.
5 Semiotic Attractors: How Meme-Types Stabilise Meaning in the Symbolic Economy
In our ongoing effort to integrate memes into a general theory of meaning, we’ve proposed that memes should not be understood primarily as replicators, but as semiotic selections—symbolic acts actualised from constrained meaning potentials. We’ve argued that meme-types, situated between individual instances and the full cultural system, act as proto-systems of meaning that coordinate shared memory and symbolic value.
But this raises a deeper question: why do some meme-types endure and spread while others fade? What gives certain configurations of meaning a gravitational pull on collective attention?
This post introduces the concept of semiotic attractors: meme-types that achieve relative stability and recognisability across time and context, exerting selection pressure within the symbolic economy. These attractors help explain the evolution of cultural meaning not in terms of mechanical replication, but in terms of systemically organised patterns of expectation, value, and memory.
From Variability to Convergence
Every meme instance is an act of individuation—an actualised meaning that draws from shared meaning potential. But over time, repeated selections tend to converge on preferred forms. Meme-types that are especially resonant—culturally salient, emotionally charged, structurally efficient—become convergent attractors in the symbolic system.
This convergence is not enforced from above but emerges from below, through collective behaviour. Meme-types that are easier to remember, adapt, and interpret gain symbolic momentum. Over time, they begin to define the constraints of the meme-type itself, retroactively shaping what “counts” as a valid or recognisable instance.
Such attractors are semiotic, not statistical. Their stability depends not just on frequency of use, but on their function in the system of meaning:
They structure expectations within a discourse community.
They encode implicit values, stances, or ideological positions.
They become shorthand for complex cultural positions.
Attractors and the Symbolic Economy
In our earlier model, we framed meme selection in terms of symbolic value: memes succeed not by raw replication, but by negotiating values like status, identification, or emotional resonance. Semiotic attractors are the symbolic analogues of ecological niches—they stabilise around cultural affordances that offer communicative payoffs.
For example:
"Distracted Boyfriend" stabilised around gender and relationship commentary.
"Two Buttons" emerged as a frame for moral ambiguity or indecision.
"Woman Yelling at a Cat" consolidated around emotional excess and contrast.
These meme-types attract new instantiations that reinforce their semiotic centre while also permitting variation. Their persistence lies in their ability to accommodate difference while maintaining identity—a balancing act made possible by their status as constrained systems of meaning.
Cultural Memory and Path Dependency
Just as Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection proposes that biological memory arises from the reactivation of previously successful neural circuits, cultural memory privileges meme-types that have already proven communicatively effective.
This introduces path dependency into memetic evolution. The more a meme-type is instantiated, the more it becomes:
Available in memory.
Expected in discourse.
Embedded in practices of interpretation.
Meme-types thus create semiotic inertia: new instances are evaluated not only on their novelty or creativity, but also on their recognisability and alignment with prior forms. Attractors act as memory traces—not fixed templates, but gravitational centres that orient symbolic production.
Semiotic Landscapes and Meaning Ecology
If we zoom out, we can imagine culture as a semiotic landscape—a meaning ecology in which meme-types compete, cooperate, and evolve. Within this landscape:
Some meme-types dominate particular niches of meaning.
Others form overlapping attractor basins, interacting across discourses.
Still others decay as cultural relevance wanes.
This metaphor allows us to model meaning evolution not as linear inheritance, but as dynamic equilibrium. Meme-types rise or fall depending on their fit within shifting fields of value, identity, and cultural memory.
Conclusion: Toward a Dynamic Theory of Meaning
By understanding meme-types as semiotic attractors, we move beyond static taxonomies or replication metaphors. We begin to see memes not just as the byproducts of culture, but as active participants in the structuring of shared meaning.
This also reinforces our larger theoretical project: that meaning is not a substance passed from mind to mind, but a semiotic system that emerges from the interplay of memory, value, and selection. Meme-types become the attractor basins of this process—converging fields of symbolic energy that organise, constrain, and evolve the forms that meaning can take.
In future posts, we’ll explore how these attractors interact with individuation—how meme-users negotiate personal expression within shared structures—and how this negotiation shapes the ongoing evolution of the social semiotic itself.
6 Instantiating the Self: Memes, Individuation, and the Semiotic Construction of Identity
Now that we’ve situated memes within a general theory of meaning—as constrained selections from collective potential—and explored how meme-types stabilise as semiotic attractors, we’re ready to explore how memes participate in a more personal process: the individuation of the self.
From an SFL-informed perspective, individuation refers to the relation between the collective meaning potential and the meaning potential of individual meaners. This isn’t just about what meanings are available—it’s about how each person develops their own semiotic repertoire by selectively appropriating, adapting, and actualising from the shared symbolic environment.
In this view, memes are a key site of individuation: they are where users actively position themselves within the symbolic economy.
Memes as Resources for Identity Work
When we make a meme—or share, remix, or reinterpret one—we aren’t just reproducing a cultural pattern. We’re doing identity work. Each meme instance says something about:
What we find funny, troubling, or valuable.
How we position ourselves in relation to others.
Which discourses we align with or resist.
Memes are thus tools of semiotic affiliation. They let us claim belonging, signal stance, or perform distance. And because meme-types are attractors that already carry social valence, selecting one is also selecting a position within a field of values.
The Dialectic of Constraint and Creativity
Individuation is never free play. The meme-type constrains what counts as a legitimate instance. But the user’s selection and variation assert a point of view, a sensibility, a stance. Individuation is therefore a dialectic between system and instance—between the shared constraints of the meme-type and the creative particularity of the meme-user.
This is clearest in cases where memes are:
Recontextualised (used in a different cultural or political frame).
Subverted (reworked to critique the meme-type itself).
Personalised (brought into relation with one’s biography or situation).
Each act of variation redefines the boundary of the type, shifting what future instantiations might mean.
Memes as Markers of Semiotic Capital
In social contexts, especially online, memes also function as a kind of semiotic capital—a resource through which individuals accrue symbolic value. This value isn’t inherent in the meme itself, but in how fluently and creatively a user navigates the field of meme-types.
Fluency in memetic culture:
Demonstrates alignment with cultural groups.
Signals expertise in the implicit rules of variation.
Offers social legitimacy in networks where symbolic play is valued.
Thus, memes are a site where individuation becomes visible—where people perform their semiotic competence in ways that are recognised, rewarded, or resisted by others.
Conclusion: Meme-Use as Semiotic Self-Making
If meme-types are attractors in the symbolic landscape, then meme-users are travellers through that terrain—selecting, varying, and actualising paths that reflect and construct their position in social space.
Memes, in this light, are not trivial. They are semiotic interfaces where collective memory meets individual agency. They are how people construct identities in relation to the values and constraints of their culture.
This is individuation not as isolation, but as relation: becoming a self through the appropriation of shared meaning.
7 Symbolic Technologies: How Memes Extend Cultural Memory
In earlier posts, we developed a general model of meaning informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and used it to reposition memes as meaning instances drawn from constrained semiotic potentials we’ve called meme-types. These meme-types, we argued, are culturally shared, structurally constrained patterns of meaning-making that evolve through selective instantiation. But if meme-types are the semiotic attractors, and memes the actualised expressions of them, then what enables their persistence and transformation over time?
To answer this, we must see memes not simply as instances of meaning, but as symbolic technologies—semiotic tools that cultures use to extend and manage collective memory.
Semiotic Technologies and Collective Cognition
A symbolic technology is a tool for extending cognition and memory beyond the individual. Language itself is the most basic example: a symbolic system that allows meanings to be stored, exchanged, and recombined socially. But symbolic technologies also include writing systems, diagrams, formulae, rituals, genre conventions—and memes.
Each of these technologies mediates between individual memory and collective memory, offering ways to externalise, stabilise, and selectively transmit meaning over time.
Memes, in this view, are micro-technologies of cultural memory. They provide compact, resonant formats for:
Encoding value-laden meaning
Triggering recognition and emotional response
Re-activating shared memory traces
Circulating across networks of social affiliation
Memes don’t store memories in themselves, but they constrain the activation of memory, shaping what is remembered, how it is framed, and for whom it is salient.
Memory as Selection, Not Storage
As we’ve noted before, Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) reframes memory not as storage and retrieval, but as selective reactivation of dynamic patterns. From this perspective, remembering is not recovering a file, but selectively reproducing a pattern of activity that proved adaptive in prior contexts.
The same principle holds for cultural memory. What persists in culture is not stored content, but patterns of meaning-use that remain selectable—usable, recognisable, re-instantiable—in current contexts.
Memes are thus selectable meaning artefacts. They:
Arise from culturally individuated values
Persist through ongoing selection across situations
Act as cues for the reactivation of shared knowledge
Enable communities to coordinate experience over time
The value of a meme is not measured in replication counts alone, but in its fitness within semiotic ecosystems—its resonance, recognisability, and re-instantiability across different meaning contexts.
Memes and the Value Economy
Because memes are semiotic technologies, their survival is governed not by mechanical replication but by symbolic value. They must be worth selecting, which means they must align with the value systems of the communities in which they circulate.
These values may include:
Ideological alignment: memes that affirm group identity
Interpersonal resonance: memes that invite humour, empathy, irony
Contextual relevance: memes that match current events or discourses
Intertextual echo: memes that rework known patterns recognisably
Every meme that spreads has passed a test—not of accuracy or originality, but of semiotic viability in a value-laden cultural field. What is remembered is not the meme itself, but the relevance structure it evokes and reanimates.
Symbolic Tools for Meaning Futures
Understanding memes as symbolic technologies helps us see them not just as fragments of entertainment or ideological noise, but as tools for managing shared futures. They compress, circulate, and reframe values, often in ways that feel spontaneous but are shaped by deep semiotic histories.
In this role, memes:
Extend the reach of collective memory into fast-changing media ecologies
Structure individuation, enabling individuals to position themselves in relation to shared meaning systems
Mediate between system and instance, acting as staging grounds for innovation and revaluation
Far from being ephemeral, memes are part of the semiotic infrastructure that allows cultures to remember, forget, adapt, and evolve.
Looking Ahead
If memes are symbolic technologies for extending memory, then memetic culture is a dynamic site of value negotiation, collective individuation, and semiotic reproduction. In future posts, we’ll explore how this framework helps us understand:
The logic of memetic saturation and burnout
The emergence of new meme-types
The limits of memetic individuation
For now, we’ve taken another step in building a systemic-functional theory of memes—not as things we share, but as ways of sharing meaning across memory, value, and time.
8 Memetic Saturation: When Meaning Wears Out
In our previous posts, we’ve explored memes as symbolic technologies that extend cultural memory and act as constrained semiotic potentials—meme-types—that are selectively instantiated in social contexts. But even the most resonant meme-types eventually fade. Their power weakens, their appeal declines, and their value dissipates. What happens, semiotically, when a meme is “overused”? How can a model of meaning explain memetic burnout?
Let’s consider how memetic saturation fits into the meaning economy.
Saturation as Semiotic Exhaustion
A meme-type reaches saturation when its meaning potential is exhausted—when the space of viable instantiations becomes so overpopulated that further instances no longer feel meaningful. This is not just a matter of repetition. It’s a matter of reducing value through over-instantiation.
From an SFL-informed view:
A meme-type offers a constrained field of meaning potential
Each instantiation narrows that field by reinforcing expectations
As instantiations accumulate, the range of variation diminishes
Eventually, new instances feel derivative, predictable, or hollow
Saturation happens when the relation between meme-type and meme-instance becomes overdetermined—when too many previous instances crowd out the space for individuation.
Value Collapse and Memetic Death
Memes persist as long as they maintain symbolic value. This value may be ideological, affiliative, affective, or ironic. But in saturated meme-types, the value begins to collapse:
Recognition becomes cliché
Alignment feels forced
Emotional charge dissipates
Intertextual play loses its surprise
What was once selection becomes inertia. The meme is repeated not because it means, but because it used to mean.
This is the memetic equivalent of semantic bleaching—the erosion of functional meaning due to overuse. At this point, the meme-type may:
Be abandoned entirely
Be parodied in a meta-memetic fashion
Be recharged through ironic inversion
Be remixed into a new meme-type
Memetic Entropy and the Pressure for Innovation
Saturation creates semiotic entropy—a condition in which the difference between instances no longer makes a difference. The meme-type ceases to function as a meaningful attractor.
But this breakdown also generates a pressure for innovation. When a meme-type loses semiotic traction, the search for new types intensifies:
New templates emerge to express similar values in novel forms
Dormant meme-types may be reactivated with fresh contextual relevance
Burned-out types may be revived through recombination
In this way, saturation is not just the end of a meme-type’s life—it is the semiotic compost from which new meme-types can grow.
Memetic Evolution Is Selective, Not Linear
Crucially, saturation reminds us that memetic evolution is not linear. Memes do not become more “fit” over time in any teleological sense. Instead, they become more or less selectable depending on:
Contextual salience
Cultural mood
Media ecology
Value resonance
What is selectable today may be discarded tomorrow. What was exhausted last year may return with unexpected force. Memes are always context-bound meaning events—not self-contained replicators.
Looking Ahead
Memetic saturation shows us that meaning has limits—not because the system fails, but because it functions too well. When a meme-type overperforms its function, it burns through its semiotic value. But this burnout, in turn, feeds the creative cycle of individuation and system change.
In the next post, we’ll explore how new meme-types emerge: not from nowhere, but from the shifting interplay of memory, value, and individuation in the meaning economy.
9 Emergence in the Meme Economy: Where New Meme-Types Come From
If memetic saturation marks the fading of a meme-type’s semiotic power, emergence is its counterpart: the appearance of new forms that feel fresh, resonant, and meaningful. But new memes don’t just appear—they emerge from the dynamic interaction of system, instance, and social memory. In this post, we ask: how do new meme-types arise within a general model of meaning?
Not Spontaneous, but Selective
A new meme-type isn’t a spark of creation ex nihilo. It’s the reorganisation of available semiotic material under new constraints. Memes emerge from:
Recontextualisation: an existing form is placed in a new setting (e.g., a famous painting becomes a reaction meme)
Recombination: elements from multiple meme-types or discourses are blended
Reframing: a minor variation shifts the interpretive logic of an existing meme
Redundancy breakdown: an ironic or parodic instance opens a new trajectory of meaning
Each of these processes reflects selective activation within the semiotic system—guided not by novelty alone, but by value.
The Role of Value in Emergence
A meme-type only emerges when a form means in a way that is recognisable and desirable within a context. This gives rise to semiotic potential energy—the readiness of a form to be instantiated:
It aligns with a current social mood or event
It offers expressive affordances that previous forms do not
It negotiates tensions or contradictions in existing meanings
This means that new meme-types are not “random mutations.” They are value-driven innovations, shaped by the forces of individuation and cultural selection.
Emergence Is Also Remembering Differently
Because meaning is memory-dependent, emergence is partly a matter of re-seeing the past. A dormant template or phrase can become memetic simply by being reactivated in the right context. Think of how:
An old movie clip becomes a new reaction meme
A vintage ad resurfaces as an ironic commentary
A forgotten phrase is reframed as political critique
This is diachronic individuation: the re-entry of past meaning potential into present meaning selection.
System Pressure and Creative Constraint
From an SFL-informed view, emergence is most likely when:
The existing system is under pressure (e.g., cultural saturation, political urgency)
The current meaning potential fails to capture a collective feeling
A previously peripheral pattern becomes salient
This is where constraint becomes creative: the limits of previous forms provide the framing conditions for new types to appear.
The creative meme-user is not starting from scratch—they are navigating a system of tensions, negotiating value through semiotic play.
Proto-System to Meme-Type
At first, an emerging meme may seem idiosyncratic or unstable. But if it resonates, it stabilises. It becomes a recognisable meme-type—a constrained, shareable field of meaning potential.
The process follows this trajectory:
Novel instance: A meaning act that breaks or bends prior constraints
Recognition: Uptake by others who see its value
Repetition with variation: A pattern begins to form
Stabilisation: A meme-type coheres
Saturation (eventually): The cycle begins again
Conclusion: A Living System of Meaning
Memes do not exist in isolation. They emerge, live, and fade within a living system of meaning—a space where value is negotiated, memory is collective, and constraints are creative. The appearance of a new meme-type is not an anomaly; it’s the sign that the meaning system is alive and responding.
In the next post, we’ll explore the ecology of meme-types: how multiple types coexist, compete, or co-evolve across social contexts.
10 Meme Ecologies: How Meme-Types Coexist and Compete in the Semiotic Environment
Just as organisms exist within ecosystems, meme-types coexist within semiotic ecologies—overlapping fields of meaning where different types interact, compete, and co-evolve. If we’ve so far examined memes as individual trajectories of meaning, we now broaden the lens: what happens when multiple meme-types operate in the same discursive space?
Meaning Is Never Singular
No meme-type exists in a vacuum. Any given meme instance participates in:
The meme-type it instantiates
The register of discourse it draws from (e.g., political critique, fandom, news satire)
The context of situation in which it is interpreted
This means that meme-types are always situated within a network of possible meanings, many of which overlap or diverge in value and function. The result is a semiotic ecosystem where:
Some meme-types reinforce each other
Some compete for uptake and visibility
Some mutate in response to others
Niche Formation: Meme-Types and Contextual Fit
Each meme-type occupies a semiotic niche—a pattern of use, uptake, and function that makes it viable in context. This niche is defined by:
Thematic relevance (what the meme is “about”)
Emotional register (how it positions the audience)
Modal form (image-macro, video clip, text post, etc.)
Platform affordances (e.g., Twitter threads vs. TikTok remixes)
Meme-types flourish when they fit their context while offering enough novelty to invite uptake. If too similar to existing types, they compete directly; if too divergent, they risk being unintelligible.
Competition and Coevolution
Meme ecologies are not zero-sum. Multiple meme-types can:
Coexist by occupying different niches (e.g., sincere vs. ironic)
Interact by cross-referencing or parody (meta-memes)
Merge into hybrid forms (e.g., a popular format used for a new theme)
However, they also compete for visibility, shareability, and symbolic value. Meme-types that fail to resonate or adapt may fade from circulation. Others may rise rapidly by responding to saturation elsewhere (e.g., a minimalist meme gaining popularity after a flood of highly complex ones).
This is memetic coevolution: meme-types shaping each other’s constraints and possibilities over time.
Meme Ecosystems and Social Identity
Meme ecologies also reflect social divisions. Some meme-types:
Signal group membership (e.g., in-jokes within a fandom or subculture)
Mark alignment or stance (e.g., political memes)
Operate across registers (e.g., formal satire vs. absurdist humour)
These divisions create sub-ecologies of meaning—semiotic communities where meme-types evolve under different pressures. A meme that thrives in one community may be incomprehensible or offensive in another.
Emergence and Decline as Ecological Dynamics
From this perspective, meme emergence and meme saturation are not isolated events but ecological phenomena:
A new meme-type may fill a gap or reframe another type
Saturation may drive innovation elsewhere in the system
Communities may conserve or repurpose old meme-types in novel ways
This leads to a dynamic equilibrium: the meme economy maintains stability not by freezing meaning, but by constantly cycling through variation and selection within a bounded ecology.
Conclusion: Memes as Ecosocial Meaning Systems
By thinking in terms of meme ecologies, we shift from a model of isolated replication to one of systemic interaction. Meme-types do not merely spread; they inhabit, adapt, and coexist within a constantly shifting landscape of meaning.
In the next post, we’ll explore how these ecologies are mapped and navigated by meme-users—not just as content creators, but as meaning-makers embedded in their semiotic environments.
11 Navigating Meaning Space: Meme-Users as Agents in Semiotic Ecologies
In our previous post, we explored meme ecologies—semiotic environments where meme-types coexist and evolve. But how do people operate within these spaces? To understand memes as part of a living meaning system, we must consider the role of meme-users: the agents who select, adapt, and actualise memes in context.
Just as organisms navigate ecosystems, meme-users navigate meaning space—a conceptual terrain shaped by social values, constraints, and potentials. Their movement through this space is what animates meme ecologies, turning potential meaning into actual instances.
Meme-Users Are Meaning-Makers
Every meme instantiation involves a set of semiotic decisions:
Which meme-type to draw from
Which features to replicate or vary
Which values to foreground or subvert
Which audience to target
These choices reflect not just individual creativity, but the position of the meme-user in relation to the meme ecology. This position includes:
Knowledge: What meme-types the user is aware of
Competence: How well the user can manipulate them
Alignment: How the user wants to position themselves socially or ideologically
Thus, meme-users are not neutral transmitters—they are semiotic agents, whose actions shape the trajectory of meme-types over time.
Orientation in Meaning Space
Meme-users navigate a dynamic landscape of meaning, where different meme-types carry different symbolic weight. This navigation involves:
Valuation: Judging which meme-types are desirable, viable, or resonant
Strategic uptake: Choosing which types to instantiate for maximum effect
Repositioning: Reframing meme-types to shift their social alignment
For example, a user may take a meme-type associated with sarcasm and use it sincerely, inverting its usual function. Or they might remix a meme-type from another discourse community to comment on current events. These moves expand and reshape the space of potential meaning.
Individuation and the Meme-User’s Repertoire
From an SFL perspective, individuation refers to how individuals develop their own meaning potential from the shared social system. In memetic terms, this means each meme-user cultivates a repertoire of meme-types they can draw on, shaped by:
Cultural affiliation (e.g., fandoms, subcultures)
Platform literacy (e.g., knowing what works on Instagram vs. Reddit)
Personal history (e.g., emotional associations with certain memes)
This repertoire is not fixed; it evolves as users encounter new memes, develop preferences, and internalise semiotic norms. Over time, their individuation feeds back into the meme ecology by:
Reinforcing meme-type constraints
Introducing novel variations
Resisting or rejecting dominant meme-values
Situated Actualisation: No Meme Is Free-Floating
Every meme instance is a situated actualisation: it doesn’t just instantiate a meme-type, but also reflects the semiotic stance and position of the user. This means we can often read a meme not only for its content but for:
Who is likely to have created or shared it
What kind of values or identity it enacts
Where it sits in the broader meme ecology
Even the most “generic” meme carries traces of situated meaning, just as every utterance carries traces of speaker, context, and purpose.
Meme-Users and the Evolution of Meaning
Meme-users are thus the agents of memetic evolution—not because they replicate memes, but because they instantiate meaning selectively. Their actions:
Sustain meme-types through uptake
Modify them through variation
Filter them through networks of alignment and resonance
Meaning space is shaped not by abstract forces, but by these distributed decisions made across time, context, and community. The meme ecology lives because meme-users keep navigating it—testing boundaries, making moves, and shifting values.
Next Steps
In our next post, we’ll explore how meme-types can become cultural attractors: stable configurations of value and form that exert pull within meaning space. These attractors help explain why certain memes persist, converge, or re-emerge over time—even when their specific instantiations fade.
12 Cultural Attractors: Why Some Memes Stick
As we’ve seen, meme ecologies are shaped by the actions of meme-users navigating meaning space. But not all meme-types are equally viable. Some flare briefly and vanish; others persist, morph, and resurface across years or even decades. What gives certain memes this kind of sticking power?
To understand this, we turn to the concept of cultural attractors—semiotic configurations that draw repeated instantiation over time. In the dynamics of meaning, cultural attractors function like gravitational centres: they stabilise value, form, and resonance in the meme ecology.
What Is a Cultural Attractor?
A cultural attractor is not a fixed entity or meme-type, but a tendency: a pattern of convergence in the space of semiotic possibility. These patterns emerge because certain combinations of value, structure, and context are more selectable—more likely to be instantiated, remembered, and circulated.
Cultural attractors arise when:
A meme-type resonates deeply with shared emotional or ideological values
Its structure is easily reproduced or varied within known constraints
It is adaptable across contexts, yet retains recognisable identity
In other words, attractors offer a sweet spot between stability and flexibility. They provide a semiotic affordance that invites variation without losing coherence.
Examples of Cultural Attractors
The “Distracted Boyfriend” meme is not just a single image—it is an attractor for commentary on shifting loyalties, temptations, and priorities.
The “Is This a Pigeon?” meme became an attractor for confused categorisation or mislabelling, abstracting far beyond its anime origins.
Textual snowclones like “X be like: Y” or “Keep Calm and Z” are attractors because they combine familiar form with open-ended content.
Each of these has generated countless instantiations, because they pull meme-users toward familiar structures that invite creative variation.
How Attractors Emerge and Evolve
Cultural attractors are not imposed; they emerge from the repeated actions of meme-users. When a particular pattern proves useful—socially, emotionally, or rhetorically—it becomes more available, more selectable. Over time, this feedback loop of selection and instantiation:
Sharpens the constraints of the meme-type
Deepens its resonance through accumulation of meaning
Encourages metacommentary and self-awareness
Eventually, a meme-type may become a meta-attractor—not just a form to use, but a cultural object to talk about. This is how memes evolve into durable semiotic resources.
Cultural Memory and Meaning Gravity
We can think of cultural attractors as points of meaning gravity. They pull instantiations toward them because:
They are embedded in cultural memory
They carry symbolic value (e.g., status, irony, rebellion)
They make meaning-making easier in specific contexts
This is not a top-down effect. Rather, it’s a kind of distributed convergence, arising from many meme-users making local decisions about what works, what lands, and what’s worth repeating.
Attractors, then, are not static units—they are trajectories of value and form that gain inertia over time.
Why This Matters
Understanding memes as cultural attractors lets us move beyond the idea of “viral content” as random luck or sheer visibility. It helps us see:
Why certain meme-types persist and others don’t
How cultural values become stabilised in form
How meme ecologies organise around symbolic gravity wells
And most importantly, it shows that meaning is not just a matter of expression—but of orientation in relation to cultural forces.
Coming Up Next
In our next post, we’ll ask a deeper question: What is the ontology of a meme-type? If memes are not physical objects or Platonic forms, what kind of thing are they? We’ll explore meme-types as relational configurations—dynamic potentials instantiated through interaction.
13 What Kind of Thing Is a Meme-Type? Exploring the Ontology of Semiotic Patterns
We’ve defined meme-types as constrained, recurrent patterns of meaning-making—semiotic configurations that shape and are shaped by their instantiations. But what kind of thing is a meme-type? It isn’t a material object like a printed image, nor is it an abstract Platonic form hovering timelessly above culture. So what is it?
To answer this, we need to explore the relational ontology of memes. That means treating meme-types not as things-in-themselves, but as configurations of relations: across instances, users, contexts, and histories.
Not a Unit, But a Configuration
The traditional view of memes—as replicable units of culture, akin to genes—treats them as bounded entities that can be copied. But in the systemic-functional model, nothing is simply copied. Meaning is always:
Instantiated in context
Individuated through use
Interpreted by meaning-makers
A meme-type, then, is not a fixed form. It is a zone of semiotic potential—a relational configuration that:
Emerges from recurring patterns of instantiation
Is recognised and reinforced by cultural memory
Is always instantiated differently across contexts
Meme-Types as Instantial Templates
We’ve described meme-types as being higher on the cline of instantiation than meme instances, but lower than full systems. They are template-like, but not templates in the mechanistic sense.
Rather, meme-types are instantial configurations—they function like templates that:
Offer recognisable constraints
Emerge from patterns of past use
Remain open to creative variation
They are neither innate nor imposed, but actualised across time through social semiotic practice. Their “thingness” lies in their relational position within a history of instantiations, not in any intrinsic form.
An Ontology of Potentials
This leads us to a broader ontological point. In a relational ontology informed by SFL:
There are no autonomous objects of meaning
Everything that appears stable is a phase in a process
All semiotic structures are actualisations of potential
So, what kind of thing is a meme-type?
A meme-type is a semiotic potential that emerges from and organises a history of actualised instances. It is not a thing but a phase in a relational configuration—a way of orienting toward possible meanings, grounded in shared memory and selective practice.
Why This Matters
This ontological clarity has important consequences:
It avoids reifying memes as “units” detached from context
It allows us to model how meme-types shift, fracture, or dissolve over time
It highlights the role of meaning-makers in keeping meme-types alive
In this view, the meme-type is less a container and more a resonant orientation—a memory-shaped potential that guides and is guided by social action.
14 How Meme-Types Emerge, Stabilise, and Evolve: A Semiotic Life Cycle
If meme-types are relational semiotic potentials—patterns that arise from recurring instantiations—then we can ask how these patterns come into being, maintain themselves, and change. In this post, we’ll sketch a life cycle of meme-types, framed in terms of emergence, stabilisation, variation, and transformation. This gives us a dynamic, systemic-functional view of memetic evolution.
1. Emergence: From Repetition to Recognition
Meme-types don’t begin as meme-types. They emerge gradually, when:
A configuration of semiotic resources (e.g., image + text pattern) is used repeatedly
Each use reinforces a recognisable relational structure
Cultural memory begins to orient expectations toward that structure
At first, there is no template—only a novel instance. But if that instance is repeated and recontextualised, the structure becomes recognisable, and its potential begins to stabilise.
Emergence is the point at which a usage becomes a pattern.
2. Stabilisation: Constraints and Conventions
As the meme-type takes hold:
It becomes recognisable across contexts and users
Expectations begin to form around what “counts” as a valid variation
Certain semiotic constraints become conventionalised
This is where the meme-type begins to act as an instantial system—a semiotic attractor that:
Constrains instantiation
Supports reproducibility
Encourages resonance with prior uses
At this stage, the meme-type is socially maintained through repetition, recognition, and shared memory.
3. Variation: Individuation and Drift
No two instantiations of a meme-type are exactly alike. Even within constraint, there is semiotic play. Meme-users:
Experiment with variation (e.g., irony, reversal, mixing templates)
Expand the range of possible meanings
Test the edges of recognisability
This is where individuation becomes key. Users actualise the meme-type differently, reflecting:
Their own meaning potential
Their social positioning
Their communicative goals
If enough variations gain traction, the meme-type may drift—its core structure shifting through accumulated instantiations.
4. Transformation or Dissolution
Eventually, a meme-type may:
Transform into a new meme-type, through radical individuation
Fragment into sub-types
Fade from collective memory, losing its recognisability
This process is not unlike language change. A stable structure becomes unstable, and:
The original constraints no longer hold
Users no longer orient to the meme-type
The semiotic memory dissolves or is repurposed
Transformation is not the end of the meme-type—it’s often the beginning of something else.
Why This Life Cycle Matters
Seeing meme-types as dynamic configurations rather than fixed units allows us to:
Account for their emergence and evolution without reifying them
Emphasise the role of semiotic memory and individuation
Understand memes as part of a broader meaning economy, driven by value and selection
This life cycle model offers a nuanced alternative to simplistic replication metaphors. It sees meme-types as temporary stabilisations in an ongoing flow of social semiosis.
What’s Next
In the next post, we’ll explore the tension between meme stability and cultural change. How do dominant meme-types shape discourse—and how do new ones break through?
15 Meme-Tension: Stability, Change, and the Semiotic Politics of Memes
If meme-types stabilise meaning through repetition and shared memory, then cultural change depends on their destabilisation—on meme-types being stretched, contested, or replaced. In this post, we explore how memes act as sites of tension between continuity and change in the meaning economy.
1. Stabilisation as Cultural Gravity
Once a meme-type stabilises, it exerts a kind of semiotic gravity:
It provides a familiar structure for new instantiations
It orients users toward expected logics, formats, and values
It reinforces a particular construal of experience
This is not neutral. Every meme-type brings with it:
A preferred alignment (e.g., irony, critique, nostalgia)
A positioning of social roles (e.g., who is ridiculed, who is affirmed)
A valuation of certain experiences or stances
Stabilised meme-types can become conservative forces in culture, reproducing dominant perspectives even in playful forms.
2. Meme Rupture: Contesting the Template
But meme-types are never fully closed systems. Meme-users sometimes contest the template by:
Reversing the implied stance
Using the form ironically, even against itself
Blending templates to create semiotic dissonance
These ruptures are where cultural change enters the system. They expose the assumptions embedded in meme-types and open space for:
New values
New alignments
New configurations of experience
A template becomes a battleground—no longer just a reproducible structure, but a site of negotiation.
3. Memes as Cultural Levers
Because memes are recognisable and widely shared, they can function as leverage points in cultural discourse:
A well-timed variation can reframe a whole issue
A viral rupture can shift the collective orientation to a meme-type
An unexpected use can reveal hidden assumptions
Memes may appear trivial, but their semiotic positioning gives them real cultural weight. When they evolve, they often carry audiences with them—not just into new jokes, but into new ways of making meaning.
4. The Double Life of Memes
This tension gives memes a double life:
As tools of cultural reproduction, reaffirming shared patterns
As vectors of cultural change, enabling new semiotic movements
The same meme-type can stabilise some meanings while opening room for others. This is why memes are central to the dynamics of cultural memory—not as static records, but as sites of ongoing selection and transformation.
What’s Next
In our next post, we’ll explore the material-semiotic coupling of memes and bodies—how meme recognition, memory, and variation are grounded in the neurobiological processes modelled by the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS).
16 Meme in Mind: Neuronal Group Selection and the Material Grounding of Meaning
If memes are semiotic structures—patterns of meaning instantiated through social interaction—then we must also ask: What grounds these patterns in the body? How does meaning get materially enacted, remembered, and varied in a brain? In this post, we bring memetics into conversation with Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), to model how memes are materially grounded in systems of value-based selection.
1. The Brain as Selectional System
TNGS proposes that the brain is not a logical machine but a selectional system. It develops and adapts through three interlocking processes:
Developmental selection: The formation of diverse neuronal groups in early life
Experiential selection: The strengthening of pathways based on usage and value
Reentrant mapping: Dynamic coordination across brain regions through feedback
This model sees memory not as retrieval of stored content, but as the selective reactivation of distributed neuronal groups. Each act of remembering is an act of re-performance, shaped by value, context, and prior history.
2. Memes and Repertoire Formation
This gives us a powerful analogue for memes. Just as neural repertoires are selected through repeated activation:
Meme-types are shaped by repeated cultural activation
Meme recognition depends on reactivating familiar semiotic patterns
Variation arises from recombination and overlap of prior patterns
The meme economy, like the brain, is not a system of replication but one of re-selection. This aligns memetics with the same ontological commitments as TNGS: variation, selection, and memory are dynamic, embodied, and history-dependent.
3. Value and Attention
In both systems, value directs selection.
In TNGS, synaptic changes are influenced by value signals—neurochemical cues tied to reward, salience, and emotion.
In memetics, cultural value (e.g. humour, status, resonance) directs attention and uptake.
This value orientation shapes what gets remembered and what gets forgotten:
What we attend to gets reinforced
What we share gets stabilised
What we feel gets integrated more deeply into both neural and cultural systems
So memes are not simply signs passed along—they are value-sensitive activations in both brain and culture.
4. From Potential to Instance
Just as neuronal groups actualise potential meaning in thought and action, meme-users actualise semiotic potential in each new meme instance. This connects the cline of instantiation in SFL with the dynamics of selection in TNGS:
System (meaning potential): Cultural memory, collective semiotic repertoire
Instance (actualisation): Specific meme performance in context
Individuation: The unique shaping of meaning potential by the user's own neural and social history
The brain doesn’t store memes. It stores a history of values and selections. Each new meme instance is an emergent, embodied performance, guided by collective memory and personal trajectory.
What’s Next
Now that we’ve linked memetics to its material grounding in the brain, we’re ready to return to the semiotic level to explore the next major topic: individuation. How do meme-users, meme-creators, and meme-audiences each carve out distinct meaning potentials? And how does that shape the ecology of memes in culture?
17 Me, Meme, and Meaning: Individuation in the Meme Ecology
In our exploration so far, we’ve located memes within a general theory of meaning and connected their evolution to the dynamics of neural selection. But there’s another dimension essential to understanding memetic life: individuation. Memes are not just socially shared patterns; they are also personally refracted expressions of meaning. To truly grasp the ecology of memes, we must ask: how does each individual meme-user shape, select, and transform memes from the shared cultural pool?
1. Individuation: From Shared System to Personal Potential
In SFL theory, individuation refers to the relation between the collective meaning potential and the meaning potential of the individual. Each language user develops a partial, situated repertoire shaped by:
Social positioning (community, identity, access)
Personal experience (history of interactions and selections)
Material substrate (neural repertoires, value systems, attention patterns)
No speaker has access to the full system; instead, we each instantiate meaning from a personalised selection of the system, constantly updated by interaction.
2. The Meme-User as Meaning-Maker
Memes make individuation visible. Every new meme instance is shaped by the meme-user’s:
Interpretive lens: How they understand the meme-type and its constraints
Semiotic intention: What they want to say, signal, or joke about
Affective investment: What they care about, find funny, or want to share
This is why meme variation is not just stylistic. It is a window into personal meaning potential. Meme-users don’t just repeat—they reshape.
Some introduce irony or parody
Some misread the meme-type, creating novel (and sometimes viral) variations
Some embed memes in new discourse contexts, reframing their meaning
This dynamic marks memes as sites of individuation within the meaning economy.
3. Interpersonal Meaning: Alignment and Dissonance
Meme usage is rarely solitary. It is usually an act of social positioning:
Aligning with a group or stance
Mocking or disaligning from others
Signalling identity, irony, or belonging
Because individuation happens within a social matrix, memes often mediate relationships. They’re not just messages—they are moves in the semiotic game of interpersonal alignment.
Memes signal shared knowledge
Memes test boundaries of acceptability
Memes become tokens of individuation, charged with affect and stance
4. Individuation and Cultural Dynamics
What happens when enough individuated variations circulate?
The meme-type itself shifts
New variations become prototypes
The collective memory of the meme is updated
Individuation, then, is not a deviation from the system—it’s part of the system’s ongoing evolution. Memes change because people change them. And people change them because they are expressing individuated meaning within shared constraints.
What’s Next
Having mapped the terrain of individuation, we’re now poised to explore how meme-types evolve over time through their instantiation, negotiation, and reframing in discourse. That brings us to our next topic: memes as construals—how memes don’t just express meaning, but actively construe experience.
18 Memes as Construals of Experience: Meaning, Memory, and the Semiotic Order
Memes are often understood in popular culture as forms of expression—clever, funny, emotionally resonant artefacts that circulate online. But from a systemic-functional perspective, memes are not just expressions. They are construals: semiotic acts that shape and organise experience into meaning. This reframing allows us to understand memes not simply as vehicles of cultural transmission, but as key mechanisms in how cultural experience is construed, individuated, and instantiated.
From Experience to Meaning
In our general model, experience is construed in two ontological orders: the material order (phenomena) and the semiotic order (metaphenomena). Meaning is not an inherent property of experience, but a transformation of it. As Halliday emphasises, we live through a construal of the world—and that construal is semiotic.
Memes participate in this construal. They are not simply about experience; they are experiential construals, selections from potential meanings that actively shape how cultural phenomena are understood, evaluated, and remembered.
Memes as Semiotic Construals
Memes don't just replicate or echo ideas—they mediate experience. They highlight, distort, frame, evaluate, and reframe. In doing so, they take potential experience and organise it into meaning:
A meme about inflation construes economic anxiety in a humorous or ironic mode.
A meme about a political figure construes ideology through affective alignment or disalignment.
A nostalgic meme construes past experience as a shared cultural memory.
Each meme is an instantial construal, actualising a particular pattern of values, evaluations, and orientations. Meme-types (and meme-templates) then become shared patterns for construing experience—semiotic attractors that shape not only what can be said, but how experience can be shaped into meaning.
Cultural Memory and the Semiotic Order
In this view, cultural memory is not a repository of experiences, but a system of semiotic construals. What is remembered is not raw experience, but valued construals—the meaning-shapes that have proven resonant, useful, or powerful in a community.
Memes thus instantiate not just personal memory, but collective construals. They circulate as recognisable semiotic patterns, drawing selectively on cultural memory and reconfiguring it in context. The meme economy is, in this way, a system for managing and re-instantiating construals of shared experience.
Individuation and Meaning Potential
Because memes draw on cultural meaning potential, their construals are not idiosyncratic. But individuation plays a crucial role. Each meme-user accesses a semiotic pattern and actualises it in a way that is contextually motivated and socially positioned. This is not just stylistic variation—it is the continual reshaping of the cultural semiotic.
In this sense, memes show us individuation in action: they are points at which the social semiotic system is both maintained and evolved by individual agents drawing on shared construal patterns.
Toward a Semiotic Theory of Memes
To summarise: memes are not just fragments of culture passed from mind to mind. They are semiotic acts of construal, grounded in shared meaning potentials and actualised in context:
They construe experience in patterned, recognisable ways.
They instantiate memory as selective reactivations of cultural construals.
They are points of individuation, allowing social meaning systems to evolve through context-specific acts of construal.
By understanding memes in this way, we integrate them fully into the general model of meaning. They are not anomalies or outliers in the semiotic system; they are products of its regularities—and powerful indicators of how culture construes itself.
19 Memes in the Meaning System: A Synthesis of Semiotic Function, Cultural Evolution, and Individuation
In the age of digital culture, memes have become ubiquitous. They flicker across screens as jokes, reactions, protests, slogans, and micro-narratives. But beneath their immediacy lies a deeper role: memes are agents within the general economy of meaning. This series has reframed memes not as mere cultural curios, but as structured construals within a relational, systemic-functional model of semiosis. Here, we draw the threads together into a single view.
1. Meaning Is Not Inherited—It Is Instantiated
In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), meaning is not a fixed thing handed down across time. It is potential, structured as a system, and instantiated in context. Meaning is actualised—not stored, not transferred, not retrieved, but reconfigured anew in each instance.
Memes participate in this process. They are meaning instances: specific semiotic selections from the larger system, shaped by context, intention, and collective history. Their recognisability lies in their constrained variation—each instantiation recalls a broader pattern while remaining uniquely situated.
2. Meme-Types and Meme-Templates: Meaning Between Instance and System
We introduced the term meme-type to describe patterns of instantiation: recurring configurations that act as semiotic attractors within cultural memory. Meme-types are not full systems, but neither are they mere instances. They occupy a space on the cline of instantiation between instance and system, allowing both novelty and coherence.
Meme-templates, in turn, are highly schematic forms of meme-types that stabilise particular combinations of modalities (e.g., image + caption). They function as instantial systems—not system networks in the SFL sense, but small-scale meaning potentials structured around constraints and expectations.
This dual layer—meme-types as value-laden patterns and meme-templates as semiotic scaffolds—helps explain how memes evolve and stabilise without becoming rigid.
3. Memes Are Construals, Not Just Representations
Memes do not represent culture—they construe it. That is, they select and organise aspects of experience, framing them in ways that are socially meaningful. A meme doesn’t just say “this happened”; it says “this is what happened, and here’s how we’re positioned to it.”
This construal function reveals the semiotic power of memes: they make experience intelligible within a cultural framework. They don’t transmit experience; they transform it into meaning. And they do so through repeated, recognisable, situated acts of semiosis.
4. Individuation: Meaning from the Collective, by the Individual
Individuation refers to the relation between collective meaning potential and the meaning potentials of individual users. In the meme economy, individuation is constant. Each user draws on shared patterns—meme-types, templates, genre expectations—and reconfigures them to fit a new context.
This is how memes evolve: not through blind replication, but through contextually motivated instantiation. Every variation is a potential shift in the collective semiotic system.
5. Memory Is Selection, Not Storage
Drawing from Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), we understand memory not as retrieval but as selective reactivation. In the brain, memories are not stored objects but performances repeated through adaptive selection.
The same holds for memes: cultural memory is not a vault of ideas but a landscape of semiotic constraints. Memes persist not because they are copied, but because they are re-enacted in ways that prove viable. Selection replaces replication as the central mechanism of memetic continuity.
6. Value in the Meme Economy
Memes succeed not by spreading indiscriminately, but by resonating—affectively, interpersonally, ideologically. Their value lies in:
Affective charge (humour, irony, rage, nostalgia)
Cultural positioning (alignment/disalignment with values or events)
Social uptake (recognisability, shareability, reusability)
Thus, memes don’t just pass from person to person—they pass through systems of value. Meaning travels not by transmission, but by resonance and selection.
Conclusion: Memes Are Meaning at Work
In this synthesis, memes emerge not as anomalies, but as paradigmatic instances of semiosis. They:
Instantiate meaning from potential
Construe experience in context
Draw on collective memory while enabling individuation
Operate through selection within value systems
To study memes, then, is not to chase ephemera—it is to watch the meaning system at work. Memes make visible the ongoing processes of instantiation, individuation, and valuation that shape cultural meaning from moment to moment.
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