Preface: A New Architecture of Meaning

What if the foundations of our understanding — of self, reality, and knowledge — were built on a hidden assumption? A tacit belief that the world is made up of isolated things, discrete entities locked in place?
This series challenges that assumption by proposing a relational ontology of meaning: a view where meaning is not static or contained but is dynamic, emergent, and fundamentally interwoven with interaction.
From the birth of the self in the semiotic interplay of caregiver and child, to the ghosts of metaphysical grammar haunting theology and science, to the reconstruction of thought itself as a semiotic engine, this collection explores how meaning potential underpins everything we know and are.
Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, semiotics, and contemporary philosophy, we unravel how meaning is enacted and individuated — and how our reality is less a world of things than a web of relations.
Whether you are a student of language, philosophy, cognitive science, or simply a curious mind, these essays invite you to rethink what it means to be.
To read these pages is to embark on a journey where to mean is to be, and to be is to relate.
Welcome to the architecture of meaning — the world remade.

1 Not Substance, but Relation

Western thought has long been preoccupied with things — with substances, entities, and essences. Philosophers have searched for the ultimate building blocks of reality: atoms, ideas, selves, substances, subjects. But what if this entire metaphysical project has been shaped not by insight into the world, but by the form of the language used to describe it?

This piece argues for a relational ontology of meaning: a view in which reality is not made of things with properties, but of meanings enacted through relations. Meaning is not contained in objects or residing in minds; it emerges through patterned interaction — semiotically, socially, and systemically.

In place of a world composed of static entities, we are invited to see a world construed in motion — not because reality itself is reducible to language, but because language is the means by which we make sense of what-is. And the model of language we draw on makes all the difference.

From Substances to Systems

Traditional metaphysics begins with things: God, soul, matter, mind, truth. These are often conceived as self-subsistent entities — each with its own inner nature, existing independently of its relations. This view is so deeply ingrained that it is rarely questioned.

But from a systemic-functional perspective, this starting point is itself a theoretical choice — one heavily shaped by the architecture of the clause. When grammar makes meaning in terms of Subject + Process + Complement, it predisposes us to see the world in terms of agent + action + patient. This, as earlier series have explored, is not an innocent projection. It is an ontological commitment, albeit an unconscious one.

In contrast, a relational ontology begins not with things but with systems of options. In the SFL tradition, the architecture of meaning is not substance-based, but relational:

A system is a set of options — potential ways of meaning.
An instance is a selection from those options.
Meaning arises through relation: between selected features, between strata, between individuals and collectives, between potential and actual.

This model reverses the metaphysical default. It does not treat meaning as carried by forms or stored in minds. It treats meaning as a pattern of relations instantiated through use.

Three Planes of Relation

In place of metaphysical dualisms (e.g. mind vs body, idea vs matter), a relational ontology recognises three interwoven planes of meaning-making:

Stratification – the relation between levels of symbolic abstraction
(semantics realised by lexicogrammar, which is realised by phonology)
Instantiation – the relation between potential and actual
(a system of meaning is instantiated as text, and texts accumulate into system)
Individuation – the relation between collective and personal meaning potential
(the self is not given, but formed through differential access and repeated instantiation)

Each plane is constituted by relation, not by substance. Stratification is not a stack of layers; it is a system of realisation relationships. Instantiation is not a sequence of outputs; it is a dynamic of probabilistic actualisation. Individuation is not the revelation of a pre-existing inner essence; it is the ongoing shaping of a personal semiotic profile through patterned participation in collective meaning.

These planes are not metaphorical. They constitute a semiotic ontology: an account of reality in which what-is is construed not through things, but through the patterned unfolding of meaning in context.

2 Reification as Ontological Error

If the world is not made of things but of relations, then how did it come to seem otherwise? The short answer is: we reified our own semiotic resources. We mistook our ways of meaning for the structure of the world. And once reified, those ways of meaning began to masquerade as metaphysical truths.

This is not a new insight. Philosophers from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein have warned of the perils of treating language as a transparent window on reality. What a relational ontology adds is a precise account of how reification works, and how deeply grammar is implicated in it.

From Meaning Function to Metaphysical Category

In the systemic-functional model, grammatical structure enacts meaning across three simultaneous metafunctions:

Experiential: construing experience as configurations of process, participant, and circumstance
Interpersonal: enacting roles and relationships between speakers
Textual: organising information flow in context

These are not domains of content, but functions of language in use. The clause functions simultaneously in all three ways — not to describe what is, but to enact meaning in context.

But when these grammatical functions are stripped of their semiotic role and treated as ontological categories, reification occurs:

The Subject becomes the essential Self
The Process becomes an Action or Force in the world
The Complement becomes a Thing that is acted upon

This is not simply a mistake in philosophical interpretation — it is a structural risk built into the architecture of the clause. Language construes meaning through function, but those functions are easily misread as entities.

God as Grammatical Projection

As explored in the earlier Grammar and the Ghost in the Machine series, one of the clearest examples of reification is theological:

In the beginning, God created...

This clause is not merely a declaration of faith. It is a projection of a particular semantic configuration: a Subject acting on a Complement through a transitive Process. And it sets the template for an entire metaphysics of agency. God becomes the ultimate Subject; creation becomes the ultimate action.

But this is not a neutral observation — it is a grammatical decision mistaken for metaphysical fact. The clause did not merely express belief in a creator; it structured belief around the transitive grammar of action. It became possible to imagine divinity itself in the image of the clause.

The same holds for Cartesian metaphysics. I think, therefore I am presumes that “I” is an independent Subject, thinking is an autonomous Process, and “being” is a resultant state. But each of these is a grammatical projection. There is no necessity that existence be transitive, or that subjectivity be singular and stable. The metaphysics derives from the syntax.

Science in the Image of the Clause

The same transitive logic finds its way into scientific discourse:

Gravity pulls.
Electrons flow.
Forces act.
Laws govern.

These are not simple descriptions. They are clauses: structured configurations of Subject, Process, and Complement. The world, in scientific narration, becomes a cascade of entities acting upon entities. Even where science resists metaphysical speculation, it often cannot escape grammatical reification.

In this light, both theology and science are not merely different genres of thought. They are semantic enactments shaped by the same underlying architecture: the clause as the organising unit of meaning, projected onto the cosmos.

Undoing the Illusion

To unthink reification is not to abandon meaning, but to locate it properly: not in the things language names, but in the systems of choice from which language draws.

This is the heart of Halliday’s system/instance framework. Systems are not categories of things; they are sets of potential relations. An instance does not point to an essence; it selects from a network of meaning possibilities. And over time, these selections form patterned tendencies — probabilistic potentials that evolve with use.

Reification short-circuits this dynamic. It freezes potential into substance. It treats the instantiation as the reality, and forgets the system that made it possible. It mistakes functional relation for ontological identity.

A relational ontology refuses this move. It keeps meaning in motion, refusing to let a semantic configuration harden into a metaphysical object.

3 Relational Being and the Cline of Instantiation

If language is not a system of labels for things, but a semiotic system for enacting meaning in context, then our ontology must reflect this. Being is not a state. It is a relation — and more precisely, a relation in motion.

This is the insight encoded in what Halliday called the cline of instantiation. The cline describes the relation between the system (the total meaning potential of a language or a speaker) and its instances (actual selections made in context). Meaning does not exist in either pole alone — it is the tension between them that constitutes semiosis.

To apply this to ontology is to say: what is, is what has been instantiated from potential. And what is not (yet) is still real — as potential.

Being as Selection from Meaning Potential

The cline of instantiation is not a continuum of degree, but a semiotic relation: a functional dependence of instance on system, and of system on the sum of its instantiations.

In this view:

A system is not a repository of rules or forms, but a structured potential — a network of options available for meaning.
An instance is not an object or utterance per se, but a selection: a particular realisation of meaning from that potential.

And over time, the instances themselves modify the potential. Meaning potential evolves by use.

This means that being is not fixed, but is inferred from patterns of instantiation. What something is cannot be defined in isolation, only in relation to the systems it realises and the contexts in which it is realised.

Relational Ontology: Not Essence, but Relation

Traditional metaphysics looks for essences — underlying substances or forms that define what a thing is. But in a relational ontology grounded in semiosis, essence gives way to relation:

A clause is not a thing, but a relation among systemic choices.
A person is not an essence, but a trajectory of instantiations across time and context.
Even identity is not a fixed self but a pattern of semiotic individuation — a personalisation of shared potential.

This perspective reshapes how we understand everything from agency to knowledge. A scientific law, for instance, is not a truth about reality but a pattern of meaning instantiations, regularised in a way that allows prediction. It is a kind of grammatical condensation: a semantic habit mistaken for a necessity.

Grammatical Being Is Not Ontological Being

The implications here are profound. If being is construed semiotically — and instantiated through grammar — then we must learn to distinguish grammatical being from ontological being.

To say The universe expands is not to identify an objective fact in neutral terms. It is to deploy a clause, with a Subject (the universe) and a Process (expands), in a transitive configuration. That configuration construes experience in a particular way — but does not prove that the universe is a ‘thing’ that ‘does’ something.

The clause realises a semantic construal, not a metaphysical entity.

And that is enough. For meaning does not require metaphysical guarantees — it requires semiotic accountability: coherence within a system of relations.

The Metaphysics of the Actual

In a relational ontology, the actual is not more real than the potential. It is simply more contextually salient. Potential meaning is not a shadowy prelude to reality — it is part of the architecture of being.

Every instance draws from a system; every system is shaped by instances. This reciprocal movement is the ontological rhythm of meaning: from potential to actual, and from actual back into potential, through memory, abstraction, and re-selection.

To be is to be instantiated.

To become is to be instantiated again — differently.

Part 4: The Individual as a Meaning System

What is a person?

Western thought often answers with some version of essentialism: the soul, the self, the rational mind, the subject of consciousness. But if we take the cline of instantiation seriously — if we understand meaning as a structured potential realised in context — then the individual is not a thing at all.

The individual is a system of meaning potential, continually reshaped by the meanings it instantiates and the meanings instantiated around it.

This is not a metaphor. It is a semiotic fact.

From System to Instance: Personalisation of Meaning

In Halliday’s framework, every speaker draws from the larger system of language — what he called the “meaning potential of the language as a whole.” But no individual realises the full system. Instead, each speaker develops a subsystem: a personalised repertoire of choices shaped by the contexts they’ve lived through, the meanings they’ve made, and the communities they inhabit.

This is individuation: the relation between the meaning potential of the system and the meaning potential of the individual.

Just as instances actualise the system, individuals are partial, patterned systems of the collective semiotic potential. The self is not separate from language. It is a particular way language has been actualised — and can be actualised again.

Instantiating the Self: Meaning as Becoming

If an individual is a system of meaning potential, then personhood is not a static identity but a trajectory of instantiations:

The meanings I have made are my history.
The meanings I can make are my potential.
The meanings I am making now are my becoming.

Every utterance is a selection — not just from the lexicon, but from the self. And over time, these selections accrue. Just as language evolves through use, so does the self. We become what we mean.

This is not a metaphorical claim. It is a grammatical one. The self is not a substance that uses language — it is a pattern of language in use.

The Individual as a Site of Semiotic Tension

What gives rise to individuality, then, is not separation from the system, but a particular relation to it.

Each individual negotiates tensions between:

Collective potential (language, culture, discourse)
Personal potential (the individual’s meaning system)
Instantial variation (the selections made moment by moment)

This triadic tension is where individuation lives. The self is not reducible to its system, nor to its instances. It is a site of semiotic resonance — where systemic meaning meets contextual selection in ways that are never fully predictable, never fully stable, and never entirely repeatable.

To speak is not only to mean. It is to become.

You Are Not a Thing. You Are a System.

This reframes our understanding of identity, agency, and social life. It means:

You are not a self-contained subject.
You are a semiotic self — a personalised organisation of meaning potential.
Your individuality is not prior to language.
It is realised through language, over time.

This also has ethical force. If each person is a system of meanings in motion — not a fixed category — then dialogue is not just interaction. It is a site of mutual becoming. To engage another person is to enter a shared field of potential. And what emerges is not given in advance.

5 The Relational Ethics of Meaning

Ethics as Semiotic Responsibility

If the individual is not a self-contained substance but a semiotic system of meaning in relation, then ethics is fundamentally about how we engage with that system—how we participate in each other’s meaning-making and individuation.

Ethics is not primarily about rules or laws. It is about responsibility in the unfolding of meaning.

To speak, listen, respond, and interpret is to affect the semiotic potentials of others — to alter their fields of possible meanings and identities.

Meaning is Never Solo

Because meaning is always realised in interaction — always relational — every act of communication is an ethical act.

When we speak, we do not simply transmit information. We enter into a dynamic process where:

We acknowledge the other’s meaning potential.
We negotiate meanings without fixing or reducing.
We create openings for alternative instantiations.

To deny the semiotic personhood of another — to treat them as a fixed object or a mere conduit — is to close down their potential to become.

The Ethics of Indeterminacy

Relational ontology acknowledges that meaning is never fully determined. This uncertainty is a source of creativity — but also of vulnerability.

Ethical meaning-making requires:

Tolerance for ambiguity — allowing meanings to unfold without premature closure.
Openness to transformation — embracing that identities and meanings evolve through interaction.
Careful listening — respecting how others instantiate their meaning potentials.

The ethical act is to support the semiotic freedom of the other, even when it challenges our own meanings.

Interdependence and Semiotic Ecology

Ethics emerges not just between isolated individuals, but within a web of semiotic relations — a shared ecology of meaning.

Our meanings depend on others’ meanings, and the community’s shared potentials.

This demands a relational humility:

Recognising that our own meaning potentials are co-constituted by others.
Understanding that we are part of a larger semiotic system, not autonomous islands.

Ethics is care for this semiotic ecosystem — nurturing the conditions for meaningful dialogue and shared becoming.

Conclusion: Ethics as Semiotic Praxis

In this relational ontology, ethics is an ongoing praxis of meaning — a continuous engagement with the semiotic potentials of self and other.

It demands that we approach communication as a shared creation, not a mere transaction.

And in doing so, we participate in the co-creation of selves, societies, and realities — always in flux, always becoming.

Coda: Becoming in Relation — The Future of Meaning

As we conclude this journey through a relational ontology of meaning, a vital insight emerges: the world is not composed of isolated things, but of relations — of meaning always in motion, always becoming.

This view invites us to rethink long-standing assumptions about self, knowledge, and reality itself. The individual is never a fixed entity, but a semiotic process continuously shaped by interaction with others. Meaning is not a static code or mere representation, but a living architecture enacted and re-enacted in dialogue.

Such a perspective transforms philosophy, science, and theology — revealing how much of what we call “reality” is an unfolding semiotic performance, a dance of potentials actualised through encounter.

The implications are profound:

For identity: We are not born but made — constantly individuating through relation.
For knowledge: Truths are not fixed but provisional, emerging through semiotic negotiation.
For ethics: Responsibility lies in nurturing others’ meaning potentials, sustaining the shared semiotic ecosystem.
For being: Existence itself is less a “thing” and more a becoming, a dynamic web of relational meaning.

To embrace this is to live with humility and openness — to recognise that our own meanings and selves are intertwined with the world’s ongoing story.

The path ahead is one of continuous dialogue — with others, with ourselves, and with the ever-unfolding semiotic cosmos.

In the end, to be is to mean — and to mean is to relate.

Worlds Within Meaning

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27 June 2025

The World is Not Made of Things: A Relational Ontology of Meaning