Having traced the relational grammar of biological and value potentials, we now turn to semiotic potential — the domain in which collective systems structure the possibilities for symbolic construal. Just as multicellular organisms and colonies instantiate potentials in cells and agents, so too do cultural and linguistic systems instantiate potentials in individual persons. Yet unlike biological or value potentials, semiotic potential operates in the domain of meaning: it constrains and affords symbolic action rather than functional outcome.
Introducing Semiotic Potential
Semiotic potential is the field of possible symbolic acts within a collective. It encompasses the patterns, categories, and relational structures through which persons can construe the world and each other. Semiotic systems are not “about” coordination in the functional sense, but about structuring possibilities for meaning.
Individuals instantiate semiotic potential through acts of construal: speech, writing, symbolic interaction, and cultural performance. Each act is perspectival, expressing the individual’s alignment with the collective field while simultaneously contributing to its ongoing structuring.
Distinguishing Semiotic from Value Systems
It is crucial to separate semiotic potential from value potential. Whereas value systems organise behaviour toward functional coherence, semiotic systems organise construal toward interpretive coherence. Semiotic potential is actualised in meaning-making acts, not in the direct production of functional outcomes.
Just as an ant colony’s collective potential is realised in coordinated action, a language community’s collective semiotic potential is realised in speech, texts, narratives, and rituals. Individuation occurs relationally: persons express, explore, and align their semiotic potentials with the collective grammar, producing emergent patterns of meaning.
From Colony to Culture
The analogy with multicellularity and colonies remains instructive. In each case, individuation occurs at the relational cut between collective potential and individual potential, and reflexive alignment ensures coherence. In culture, the collective construes what is possible in language and symbolic systems, and individuals actualise these potentials through construals that both express and reshape the collective field.
Language as Systemic Potential
Language is the primary semiotic system through which collective potential is structured and individuated. It defines what meanings are possible, what distinctions can be drawn, and what relational patterns of construal are recognisable. Each utterance or symbolic act is an instantiation: an alignment of individual semiotic potential with collective semiotic constraints.
Perspectival Individuation in Meaning
Individuation in semiotic systems is perspectival. Identity, interpretation, and construal emerge through the interplay of individual capacities and collective affordances. Reflexive alignment allows culture and language to adapt, evolve, and maintain coherence, while preserving the space for diverse instantiations of meaning.
Conclusion
By extending the relational framework to semiotic systems, we see how collective potentials for meaning are instantiated in individual construals. Semiotic systems, like organisms and colonies, are relational grammars: fields of possibility actualised perspectivally and reflexively.
In the next post, Language as Systemic Potential, we will explore in detail how language structures these possibilities, functioning as the collective theory of potential meanings within a community.
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