1 Language as Theory’s Condition of Possibility
Scientific theories, philosophical arguments, religious cosmologies — each of these may seem to open a window onto something outside of language: a world of objects, of ideas, of truths. Yet none of them can be formulated, communicated, or even thought without language. Theories do not merely travel through language as a vehicle; they are realised in language as meaning. And because of this, the architecture of language is also the architecture of theorising.
This blog adopts a simple but far-reaching proposition:
A theory of language has the potential to reconstrue the language of theories — because theories are realised in language.
What does it mean to say that a theory is realised in language? In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), meaning is stratified: what we say (or write or think) involves relations between different levels of symbolic abstraction. At one level, there is semantics — the meanings we make. At another, lexicogrammar — the wordings we use to realise those meanings. At yet another, phonology or graphology — the sounds or written forms we use to realise the wordings.
These levels are not separate codes; they are linked through realisation — a symbolic relation in which one level is the expression of another. In this sense, the semantic content of a theory is not independent of its expression: it is made possible by the symbolic architecture through which it is realised.
This has profound implications. It means that when a scientist proposes a law of nature, or when a philosopher defines a category of thought, or when a myth-maker names the origin of things, they are drawing on the same semiotic resources: the capacity of language to make meaning across levels of abstraction. It also means that the categories of science, philosophy, and myth can be examined not only for what they claim about the world, but for how they function as construals of meaning.
Language, then, is not just the medium of theory. It is its material. And if we want to understand how theories work — how they construct their objects, project their categories, and shape our understanding of the world — we need a model of the semiotic processes at work.
SFL offers such a model. Unlike formal linguistic theories that treat language as a syntactic code, SFL treats language as a social semiotic: a meaning-making system shaped by and shaping human experience. It equips us with tools — like realisation, instantiation, and individuation — for mapping how meaning is structured, how it becomes actual, and how it varies across contexts and communities.
In the posts that follow, we will explore how these tools can illuminate the symbolic architecture behind scientific, philosophical, and cultural theories — not to judge them from the outside, but to make visible their internal logics. Our aim is not to replace disciplinary knowledge, but to deepen its foundations by asking:
What becomes possible when we take the architecture of meaning as a starting point for inquiry?
2 Realisation and the Architecture of Meaning
To understand how theories work, we need to understand how meaning works. At the heart of meaning-making in language is the concept of realisation: the symbolic relation between different levels of abstraction. In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), realisation is not just a matter of encoding meaning in words — it is a layered architecture that enables meaning to take form.
In the SFL model, meaning is stratified into levels:
Semantics: the level of meaning — what is meant.
Lexicogrammar: the level of wording — how the meaning is worded.
Phonology/graphology: the level of sounding or writing — how the wording is expressed.
Each level realises the one above it. That is:
Wording is the realisation of meaning. Sound or writing is the realisation of wording.
This is not a material chain of causality, but a symbolic architecture. It is not that a thought causes a sentence or that a sentence causes a sound. Rather, each level is a symbolic abstraction of the one below it, and each meaning instance is an enactment of this relation: a semantic structure is realised in a grammatical structure, which is realised in a phonological or graphical structure.
To say that realisation is a symbolic relation is to highlight its character as identifying: it says what this is at a higher level of abstraction. For example:
A given grammatical structure is the expression of a particular semantic structure.
A sequence of phonemes is the expression of a particular grammatical structure.
In this sense, realisation organises language as a hierarchy of construal. The higher stratum construes experience in more abstract, semantic terms. The lower stratum construes that semantic meaning in terms of linguistic form. And it is only through these layers that meaning can be actualised in the world — in speech, in writing, in thought.
So why does this matter for theory?
Because every theory — scientific, philosophical, cultural — must travel through this architecture. Its concepts are not free-floating ideas; they are meanings realised in wordings. And those wordings are not neutral containers; they are structured, patterned, and shaped by the systems of grammar and discourse in which they are embedded.
If a theory defines “energy” as the capacity to do work, or “being” as that which is, or “grace” as divine favour, it is drawing on semiotic resources to make those categories meaningful. The theory’s sense of what exists, what is possible, and what is real depends on the symbolic architecture through which such meanings are construed and realised.
To understand a theory, then, is not only to trace its logic or test its claims. It is to examine how its meanings are realised — what symbolic systems they depend on, what assumptions they encode, what alternative construals they exclude.
This is not a purely linguistic concern. It is epistemological. It opens the possibility of seeing theory as constructed meaning, and invites us to explore how different theoretical traditions draw on different architectures of meaning — different ways of realising experience.
In the next post, we will examine the second major semiotic relation in the SFL framework: instantiation — the relation between meaning potential and meaning instance. If realisation explains how a theory is structured, instantiation explains how it is used.
3 Instantiation – From Potential to Instance
If realisation is the symbolic relation between levels of abstraction — semantics, grammar, and expression — then instantiation is the relation between what is possible and what is actual. It is the semiotic process through which meaning potential becomes meaning instance.
In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), every language is a system of choices. At any given moment, speakers draw from a vast repertoire of possibilities — a meaning potential — to produce a particular text. That text, whether spoken or written, is an instance of that potential.
So, what does this mean?
It means that language is not a fixed code. It is a system organised around potential, and every instance of language use is a selection from that potential. Over time, repeated instances contribute to the probabilities of future instances — reinforcing or shifting the contours of the system itself. In this way:
The system shapes the instance; the instance reshapes the system.
This dialectic between potential and instance lies at the heart of all meaning-making, and by extension, all theorising.
Theories, too, have meaning potentials. A theory of gravity does not exist solely in a single equation or paragraph. It exists in the full range of meanings that can be activated within its conceptual framework. A given explanation or application is an instantiation — one realisation of many possible ones.
Importantly, the concept of instantiation also applies beyond language. It offers a lens through which we can understand scientific models, philosophical arguments, and even cultural performances as instances of broader semiotic systems. For example:
A climate model is an instantiation of the potential meanings available in climate science.
A legal ruling is an instantiation of the interpretive potential of legal precedent and statute.
A ritual is an instantiation of a culture’s potential meanings about life, death, or the sacred.
By thinking in terms of instantiation, we resist the illusion that theories are static bodies of knowledge. We see instead that they live through their use — in what they make possible, in how they are deployed, and in what they bring into being.
This has deep implications for how we understand inquiry. It shifts us from a model of truth as correspondence (matching a theory to reality) to a model of meaning as selection — of what we bring forth, highlight, or foreground in the act of making meaning. Theories are not simply mirrors; they are modes of participation in a semiotic system.
In our next post, we will turn to the third major SFL relation: individuation — the relation between the collective meaning potential of a community or system and the particular meaning potentials of individual users. Individuation will help us understand how theories vary, evolve, and specialise through their deployment by different communities of meaning.
4 Individuation – Meaning, Community, and Difference
Language is not just a system of options (potential) and their expressions (instances). It is also a shared resource. And yet, no two speakers mean in exactly the same way.
This tension between the collective and the particular is what Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) calls individuation — the relation between the meaning potential of a community (the system) and the meaning potential of individual users (their repertoires, voices, registers, styles).
Individuation acknowledges that:
We don’t all have equal access to the same systems of meaning. Our histories, communities, and experiences shape how — and what — we are able to mean.
In linguistic terms, individuation helps us understand why a physicist, a poet, and a child all speak English but do so with vastly different resources. Their meaning potentials are differently developed. The physicist has access to specialised semantic domains; the poet might foreground affect and rhythm; the child is still building their systemic repertoire.
But the principle extends far beyond language.
In science, individuation explains why different disciplines have different interpretive frameworks. The language of neuroscience is not the language of anthropology — even when they investigate overlapping questions. Each field instantiates meanings from a shared cultural and linguistic pool, but through distinct, individuated systems.
Even within a field, individuation plays out in schools of thought, methodological preferences, or regional traditions. A scientist trained in Kyoto may not frame their work in the same way as one trained in Chicago — not because of a failure of reason, but because of differences in meaning potential: in disciplinary lineage, educational environment, conceptual metaphors, and more.
Individuation also provides a powerful counter to the idea of a "view from nowhere." Every act of meaning is shaped by its locatedness in a history of practice, a community of discourse, and a personal trajectory. To individuate is to participate with difference — to speak as someone, somewhere, with some kind of voice.
And this matters deeply for theory. Because theories are realised in language, their very shape is influenced by the individuated meaning potential of those who build them. The more diverse our communities of inquiry, the richer and more reflexive our theories can become.
Individuation, then, is not a barrier to objectivity — it is a precondition for depth. It reminds us that the richness of our theoretical systems lies not in erasing difference, but in cultivating and accounting for it.
In our final post of the series, we will bring these insights together to consider what it means to use a theory of language to reconstrue the language of theories, and why this might be one of the most generative moves available to human thought.
5 Why Language Matters – The Architecture of Meaning Across Domains
Why use a theory of language to reconstrue science, philosophy, or myth? Because all of them are realised in language.
Language is not a passive medium into which ideas are poured. It is a semiotic architecture that makes ideation, abstraction, and system-building possible in the first place. Its internal organisation — its relations between potential and instance, between content and expression, between the collective and the individuated — provides a grammar for theory itself.
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) gives us tools for recognising this grammar. With its distinctions between:
Instantiation: the relation between system and instance,
Realisation: the relation between levels of symbolic abstraction,
Individuation: the relation between shared meaning systems and individual repertoires,
…we are equipped to understand how ideas take form, move through communities, and become structured systems of knowledge.
This meta-series has made a modest claim: that these linguistic distinctions have explanatory power beyond language. They are not metaphors imported into other domains — they are formal relations intrinsic to the systems in which those domains are expressed.
When we say a gene is instantiated through its activation, or a scientific tradition individuates knowledge through its lineage of thinkers, or a myth is realised in narrative and ritual, we are not drawing loose analogies. We are uncovering homologous architectures of meaning — recurring structural patterns that help us understand how knowledge becomes knowable.
This is not to reduce science, philosophy, or religion to language, but to acknowledge that their articulation, transmission, and evolution are linguistically mediated. Any field that relies on theorisation, explanation, or modelling relies — whether tacitly or explicitly — on a semiotic infrastructure.
And so, we offer this orientation:
This blog uses a theory of language to reconstrue the language of theories.Because theories are realised in language, a theory of language has the potential to renovate the entire history of human thought.
Such renovation is not an act of demolition, but of reflexive architecture. It helps us see the scaffolding beneath the walls — to understand how knowledge is constructed, sustained, and made to mean.
And that is why language matters.
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