1 Resonance and Dissonance in the Meaning Field
We live in a field of meanings — not as isolated islands of thought, but as vibrational nodes in a system of interdependent potentials. Each act of meaning doesn’t stand alone; it resonates. It trembles into being in relation to other meanings, other speakers, other histories.
This is the nature of semiosis: not additive, but relational. Meaning arises not from what a form “is” but from how it is selected in contrast with what it is not, in a system that only functions because it is shared.
But that system is not neutral. It is charged with resonance and dissonance.
Meaning as Vibration, Not Location
When you speak, think, gesture, or write, you’re not placing a fixed object into a void. You’re striking a chord. Your construal of experience hums against the background of what could have been construed — and what others have construed before you.
Some meanings resonate — they strike a familiar chord, they stabilise, they echo. These are the meanings that feel “obvious,” “natural,” “what everyone knows.” Others jar — they rub against expected patterns, dislodge assumptions, provoke re-tuning. These are dissonant meanings, and they often signal potential for transformation.
This is not just metaphor. It’s a model. Just as in a physical field, where particles respond to forces and potentials, the semiotic field is shaped by systemic pressures and tensions — the affordances and resistances of culture, discourse, and social relation.
The Relational Ontology of Meaning
This view implies a relational ontology. Meanings don’t exist in isolation. They are not properties of words, minds, or objects. They are relations: selections made in systems of potential, shaped by prior selections and shaping future ones. They resonate not just within a single utterance, but across the broader field of meaning itself.
And this field is collective.
We do not generate meaning alone. Even our most private construals are shaped by systems we did not invent — by grammars, codes, conventions, histories. The field of resonance is shared, even when individual patterns of selection differ. That’s why meaning can fail, or rupture, or change. It’s also why it can be felt — sometimes intensely — even in silence.
Tuning and De-tuning the Field
This model invites us to think not just about individual acts of meaning-making, but about their cumulative effects. When a certain construal is repeated, reinforced, canonised — it amplifies. It creates a resonance chamber. The more a meaning resonates, the more naturalised it becomes, until we forget it is a construal at all.
But the field can be tuned otherwise.
A single dissonant act may not collapse the system, but enough of them, or one at the right moment, can retune the whole field. It’s through these ruptures that new potentials open up — not from outside the field, but from within its dynamics.
Dissonance is not noise. It’s possibility.
Interpersonal Resonance
Resonance doesn’t just operate at the level of systems and cultures. It also hums between people. When we speak to each other — even when we misunderstand — we are negotiating resonance. We are testing for shared frequencies, adjusting our selections in real time, seeking alignment or registering difference.
Some conversations amplify us. Others distort. Some dissonances are generative; others are exclusions in disguise.
To become more aware of resonance is to become more attuned to the ethics of meaning-making. Whose meanings are amplified? Whose are muffled? Where does dissonance get punished, and where is it cultivated?
Towards a Field Ethics
If meaning is a field phenomenon, then ethics is not only about what we say, but how we affect the field. What patterns do we stabilise or disrupt? What potentials do we amplify or suppress? What resonances do we invite or ignore?
Resonance is not harmony. It is relational intensity. Sometimes the most ethical thing to do is to produce dissonance — to destabilise a field that has grown too rigid, too exclusive, too false.
We are all tuning forks in this system. We do not control the field, but we participate in its shaping. And when we mean — when we really mean — we do more than express ourselves. We shift the system.
2 Semiotic Gravity and Cultural Mass
We move through culture as if through a gravitational field — not pulled by invisible forces, but by systems of value that weigh some meanings more heavily than others.
What we call “common sense,” “normal,” “obvious,” “just how it is” — these are meanings with cultural mass. They anchor the semiotic field. They bend the space around them. They make other meanings orbit.
This is semiotic gravity.
Cultural Mass: The Weight of Normality
Not all meanings are equal. Some have been repeated so often, reinforced so widely, embedded so deeply in institutions, language, and daily life, that they acquire mass. They become attractors in the meaning field.
Think of the idea of “success.” Or “woman.” Or “nature.” Or “intelligence.” These are not just signs; they are gravitational wells. Meanings fall toward them. They stabilise what can be said, felt, or imagined.
That’s not inherently oppressive — but it is never neutral.
The mass of a meaning is a function of its history. And history is not democratic.
The Mechanics of the Meaning Field
If we follow this metaphor — or rather, this model — semiotic gravity helps us understand why some meanings are harder to escape. Just as physical bodies bend spacetime, cultural institutions bend meaning space.
Media, education, law, religion, science, discourse — all these structures give mass to particular construals. They make some meanings feel “natural” and others deviant. The field tilts.
The result is semiotic inertia: once a dominant meaning is in motion, it tends to stay in motion — unless something of sufficient force (dissonance, rupture, resistance) deflects it.
The Mass of Identity
Identities, too, acquire cultural mass. Not just in how others see us, but in how our own selections become gravitationally shaped by the field.
To be born into a culture is to be born into its gravity — to have certain identities weigh more heavily, to have the meanings available to you already bent by massed norms.
This is not destiny, but it is drag. Meaning-making takes more energy when your identity resists the gravitational pull.
And yet, those resisting identities often generate the most powerful dissonances — the most transformative shifts in the field.
Escaping the Pull
Just as satellites can escape gravity, so can meanings. But it takes force — repetition, solidarity, discourse, art, critique, embodiment.
When counter-cultural meanings gain momentum, they can create new centres of mass — alternate attractors in the field. This is what cultural change looks like: not just new content, but new curvatures in the space of meaning.
Sometimes the most radical thing one can do is to make a different selection — again and again, with others, until that selection bends the field.
Field Awareness and Field Ethics
To move ethically through a semiotic field is to know where the gravity lies — and whom it crushes.
It means asking: Whose meanings are heavy? Whose are light? What norms have become planetary, pulling all others into orbit? And where are the Lagrange points — the spaces of possibility held between competing attractors?
It also means understanding our own mass: how our patterns of meaning-making contribute to the field’s shape.
To act consciously in the meaning field is to either reinforce or redistribute its gravity.
3 Attention as Field Navigation
After considering the forces that shape the meaning field — the semiotic gravity that anchors certain meanings and the cultural mass that distorts others — we turn to the agent: the meaner.
The meaner isn't simply a passive recipient of meaning, swept along by gravitational forces. Instead, they are an active participant in navigating the meaning field, choosing where to direct attention and, ultimately, what meaning to actualise.
Navigating Through Semiotic Space
The meaning field is vast and multifaceted, with countless potential meanings in constant flux. As a meaner, you don't just passively accept what is in front of you. You actively direct attention, choosing which meanings to engage with, which to ignore, and how to move through the space.
Attention is, in this sense, the navigation tool through a world of interdependent, ever-changing meanings.
But attention is not unlimited — it is a resource. You can only focus on so much at once. This means you must constantly make choices about where your attention goes, and those choices are not made in a vacuum.
You are always navigating within cultural, historical, and social systems of meaning — and those systems exert their own forms of gravity.
The Ethics of Attention: What We Choose to See
The question of where to direct attention isn't just a practical one — it's deeply ethical.
Who gets to decide what deserves our attention? Who benefits from what we choose to ignore? And what forms of meaning are invisible because of the ways we’ve been conditioned to direct our focus?
By focusing on one thing, you may not just neglect others; you may be complicit in sustaining the semiotic inertia that upholds cultural norms and power structures.
For example, focusing only on the voices of those in power means perpetuating a meaning field that is biased, limited, and oppressive. Conversely, shifting attention toward neglected voices can disrupt the semiotic gravity that keeps certain meanings dominant.
Attention as a Form of Agency
In every moment of attention, the meaner exercises agency. But this agency is relational. The forces of semiotic gravity influence where attention naturally goes, but the meaner can choose to counteract that pull.
This is where field navigation becomes an art. It requires awareness of the field’s forces, the ability to distinguish between the gravitational pull of dominant meanings and the more subtle currents of meaning on the margins.
Attention is not neutral. It’s an active, embodied act of meaning-making. It can either sustain the field’s structure or seek new ways of navigating it.
Neurosemiotics and Attention
From a neurosemiotic perspective, attention involves both cognitive and bodily processes. The brain’s neural networks filter out some meanings and amplify others, based on sensory input, past experience, and cultural conditioning.
In this sense, attention isn’t just a mental process; it’s a bodily one. Our attention is shaped by the way we move through the world, how we engage with others, and how we interact with the environments we inhabit.
Just as the body navigates physical space, so too does the meaner navigate the semiotic space of culture.
The Role of Ethical Navigation in Collective Fields
When we consider the meaner’s navigation of the field, we must recognise that this navigation doesn't happen in isolation. It’s a relational act. The choices made by one meaner ripple out, affecting the larger field.
As such, ethical navigation means considering the collective impact of our attention. What are we contributing to? How are we reinforcing or disrupting the dominant norms?
In a world where so many meanings are already weighed down by semiotic gravity, the choice of what to focus on becomes even more significant. Each moment of attention is a decision, not just for oneself, but for the field as a whole.
Attention and Transformation: The Potential for Change
Attention, however, also offers potential for transformation. By directing our focus in new ways, we can challenge and reshape the meaning field itself.
It’s not just about responding to the field; it’s about actively changing the field through how we navigate it. As new meanings gain attention, they can accumulate enough semiotic mass to create alternative centres of gravity.
In this way, the act of attention becomes an act of creation, transformation, and liberation.
4 The Temporality of Meaning Potentials
Having explored the meaning field as a relational, semiotic terrain, it's time to introduce the dimension of time. We’ve considered the forces that shape the field, the meaner as the active agent navigating through it, and the ethical dimensions that influence attention. But to understand the full dynamics of meaning, we must situate it in time — the unfolding of construals, the rhythms of resonance, and the way meaning potentials shift across histories, contexts, and trajectories.
The Unfolding of Construals
Meaning is not a static entity. It is temporal, always unfolding and changing as it is construed over time. Each moment of construal builds upon what came before, creating a chain of meaning that moves through past, present, and future.
In this sense, meaning is not fully actualised in any given instant. Instead, it is an ongoing process, continuously actualising and then re-actualising as new potentials arise and existing ones evolve.
Like a river flowing through a landscape, meaning moves along time, carving paths, shifting direction, and shaping its environment.
Resonance and Rhythms in Meaning Making
The act of construal is not only about sequencing isolated moments of meaning. It is also about resonance — how meanings echo through time.
When a meaning arises, it does not emerge in isolation. It resonates with previous construals, intertwining with past meanings and carrying their reverberations forward. These resonances create rhythms within the meaning field — recurring patterns of interpretation that shape how we experience the present.
Consider a word or phrase that carries layers of history with it. It isn’t just a symbol in the moment; it reverberates with the meanings it has accumulated over time. This layered quality of meaning gives rise to the rhythms we experience in the present moment, rhythms that can accelerate or slow down, depending on the intensity and volume of past meanings.
These rhythms are key to understanding how meaning is temporalised. They show us that meaning isn’t just constructed anew in each moment; it’s built from what has come before.
Layered Potentials Across Contexts and Trajectories
Meaning potentials also exist in multiple layers across time, history, and context. What a word or concept means today may not be the same as it meant in the past. This reflects how meaning potential is not merely a product of the present moment, but a network of interwoven possibilities across different points in time.
Each construal is influenced by its temporal trajectory — its history and the context in which it emerges. Take, for example, a cultural or social practice: what it means today is shaped by its evolution over time, influenced by the practices that preceded it and the meanings that accumulated in previous generations.
This brings us to the concept of temporal context: the ways in which meaning potentials shift and evolve in response to changing historical, cultural, and social circumstances.
The Future of Meaning: Anticipation and Potentiality
The temporality of meaning is not confined to the past and present; it also includes the future. What is a meaning in the present moment, but a potential that will continue to unfold? The meaning you assign to something today isn’t fixed — it has a future trajectory. It’s influenced by anticipation, the sense of what might come next.
Meaning is inherently tied to potentiality — the unfolding of what could be. Just as in quantum theory, where a particle’s location is defined in terms of probabilities, so too are meanings defined by potentialities that unfold over time. In this way, the future of meaning is always in flux, not a predetermined outcome, but an ongoing negotiation of what may come to be.
The potentiality of meaning is what allows it to evolve, shift, and adapt. It’s the very stuff of creativity, of change, of evolution in both the individual and collective sense.
Meaning Potentials and Historical Trajectories
History plays a crucial role in the temporality of meaning. What was once a marginal or subversive meaning can gain strength and importance over time, especially as societal contexts shift and historical trajectories change.
Consider how political ideologies, social movements, or scientific theories have gained or lost meaning over decades or centuries. The historical trajectory of these meanings shapes their present form. They are layered with past meanings and struggles, which continue to reverberate in the present.
This process of historical resonance shows how meaning is not just about what is currently constructed but also about the history of its construction — the accumulation of meanings, struggles, and interpretations that precede it.
Temporal Fields of Collective Meaning
As individuals, we are each situated in a collective field of meaning that extends beyond our personal experiences. We are influenced by the temporality of the collective field — the shared historical and cultural contexts that shape the meanings available to us.
This field has its own temporal rhythms: certain meanings gain prominence in particular times or moments, and these rhythms of meaning influence how we as individuals perceive and construe the world. Our attention to certain meanings is shaped by these broader cultural and historical flows.
In this way, the temporality of meaning isn't just about individual experience; it is a collective experience that is situated within the historical flow of meaning-making.
Conclusion: The Life of Meaning
By placing meaning in a temporal context, we see that it is not just a fixed, isolated act of construal, but an ongoing, ever-unfolding process. The meaning potentials we navigate are constantly shifting, resonating with the past, and anticipating the future.
To understand meaning, we must not only grasp what is constructed in the present but also recognise how meaning is layered across time, resonates with historical and cultural currents, and unfolds with infinite potential toward the future.
5 Coda: Patterns in the Field
Having ventured through the various layers of the meaning field — from the relational dynamics of semiotic actualisation and attention, to the unfolding temporality of meaning potentials — it's time to draw together the threads of our exploration. In this concluding post, we will revisit the key themes that have emerged across the previous four entries: relationality, system dynamics, temporality, and the ethics of navigation. These themes form the foundation of a radically dynamic, process-oriented view of meaning-making.
We’ll also reflect on the roles of consciousness and identity as emergent features within this meaning field, not as pre-existing givens, but as dynamic, relational processes that unfold as we navigate this ever-changing terrain.
Relationality: Meaning as a Field of Interdependent Potentials
Throughout this exploration, we've seen that meaning doesn’t arise from a solitary individual acting in isolation. It’s always shaped by relational forces. From the initial posts, we noted how meaning potentials are interdependent. The act of construal doesn’t just depend on the agent (the meaner) but is a dynamic negotiation with the environment, culture, and the meanings constructed by others.
The interpersonal nature of meaning is what makes it such a powerful tool for connection, but also for conflict. We are not merely individual meaning-makers; we are always entangled in the meanings of others, influenced by shared cultural structures and historical trajectories. As we’ve discussed, our identities — which we might consider as attractor states within the meaning field — are not isolated but formed in entanglement with others’ construals.
This relational aspect of meaning-making challenges the traditional notion of the self as a discrete, isolated entity. Instead, we are always in process, in relation, in flow with the world and others. Meaning arises not in a vacuum, but in the space between us and the others we encounter.
System Dynamics: Meaning as a Process of Emergence
A critical insight we've explored is that meaning is not static or fixed but emergent. It arises from the dynamic interaction of multiple forces — the individual (meaner), the collective field, cultural context, and historical trajectory. Each construal is influenced by what has come before, resonating with past meanings and generating new potentials.
This systemic view of meaning-making suggests that consciousness, identity, and even attention are not fixed entities but are shaped by the unfolding dynamics of the field. As we act within this field, we continuously actualise new potentials from the vast reservoir of possible meanings. These interactions create feedback loops that reinforce certain patterns and meanings while leaving others dormant.
Understanding this systemic emergentism allows us to see meaning-making as a living process, not a mechanical or deterministic one. It is a system of relations that is constantly shifting, responsive to context, and influenced by our choices and interpretations.
Temporality: Meaning as an Unfolding Process
The temporal dimension of meaning is perhaps the most fundamental layer of this model. Meaning is not static; it unfolds over time. Our construals are shaped by past experiences and anticipations of the future, making time a central player in how meaning emerges.
We saw that meaning is always in motion, shaped by resonance with previous construals, and guided by the rhythms of the collective field. The temporal layer of meaning-making allows us to understand why we experience continuity and change in our lives. We are not bound by the past but are continuously engaging with it, drawing from it, and reshaping it as we move forward.
This unfolding process is not linear; it’s dynamic and layered. The past influences the present, but the future also exerts a force, shaping the potentials available to us. In this sense, meaning is not only about what is actualised but about what could be — it is fundamentally a process of potentiality.
Ethics of Navigation: The Responsibility of the Meaner
Another core theme of our journey has been the ethics of navigation. As agents navigating the meaning field, we are not passive recipients of meaning, but active participants in its creation. The way we direct our attention, the way we construe experience, and the way we relate to others — all of these choices have ethical implications.
The ethics of meaning-making extend beyond individual decision-making to the collective realm. The meanings we construct together shape our social reality. And because meaning is relational, the ethical implications of our choices affect not just ourselves but others within the system.
This is where we return to the idea of consciousness and identity: these are not fixed features of the world but emergent processes within the meaning field. They emerge in our navigating of the field and in our relationship to it. Consciousness itself, then, is a process of relationality — an ongoing navigation of meaning potentials, ethical decisions, and systemic dynamics.
We are responsible not just for how we construe the world but for how our construals interact with the construals of others. This relationality is central to the ethical responsibility we carry as meaning-makers in the world.
Consciousness and Identity: Emergent Features of the Field
Throughout this series, we’ve seen that consciousness and identity are not foundational, fixed entities, but emergent features of the meaning field. Consciousness arises as we navigate the field, drawing connections between meanings, moments, and potentials. It is not located in a fixed place (like a light in a box) but is a dynamic process of continual construction.
Similarly, identity emerges through the patterns we stabilise over time, entangled with cultural and historical forces, and reflected back to us through the eyes of others. Identity, like consciousness, is not fixed; it’s a process of navigation, emergence, and relational interaction.
In this light, both consciousness and identity are fundamentally fluid, shaped by the meaning systems we engage with. They are processes that arise in the context of systemic relationality, as part of the emergent dynamics of meaning-making.
Conclusion: A Relational, Emergent Ontology of Meaning
As we close this series, we see that meaning is not a static entity that can be grasped in a single moment. It is a dynamic, relational process of interaction between potentials, systems, and agents. It unfolds across time, drawing from the past and anticipating the future.
Consciousness, identity, and attention are not separate, isolated functions but are emergent properties of this system — processes that arise through our navigation of the meaning field. And with this comes an ethical responsibility: as meaning-makers, we are not simply navigators but co-creators of the world we inhabit, constantly shaping and reshaping the meanings that define our collective existence.
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