These dimensions provide the scaffolding through which meaning emerges, interacts, and evolves. Each metafunction is a relational axis, structuring potential in its own way while influencing the others, producing a multidimensional lattice of possibilities.
Consider a narrative describing a storm. Ideational potential includes the forces of wind, rain, and tide, as well as the participants affected—humans, trees, animals. Choosing one process over another—say, “the wind tore the leaves” instead of “the rain soaked the ground”—is a cut that actualises a specific slice of potential. Each choice constrains and enables subsequent differentiation: the selection of participants, effects, and relational configurations emerges from the ideational field.
Ideational meaning is thus both structured and generative. Constraints—such as systemic rules, experiential coherence, or ecological plausibility—define edges within which differentiation occurs. Within these edges, potential proliferates, creating relationally meaningful structures that map experience onto the semantic lattice.
For example, the choice of modality—“must” versus “may”—does not merely encode procedural information; it delineates a network of social and affective potentials. Each choice actualises a relational cut, creating niches of power, obligation, and engagement within the semantic ecology.
Interpersonal differentiation is ecological: one act of alignment reshapes surrounding possibilities. A directive, a question, or a declaration modifies relational topology, producing emergent potentials for response, negotiation, or resistance. Just as a river delta structures habitats, the interpersonal axis structures niches of influence and interaction.
Consider thematic organisation in a paragraph. The choice of given-new structure, cohesion devices, or foregrounding is a cut in the semantic field: it actualises paths of interpretation while excluding alternative flows. This dimension shapes the ecology of meaning, establishing relational channels through which ideational and interpersonal potentials propagate.
Textual differentiation is recursive: the positioning of one element affects the emergence of subsequent elements, producing cascading effects across the semantic lattice. Edges and constraints in the textual dimension focus emergence, enabling interpretive differentiation and sustaining coherence within relational networks.
This multidimensional interaction mirrors the ecological logic of possible worlds explored in Series 1. Actualisation is perspectival and relational: a cut along one axis transforms relational potential across the lattice. Semantic emergence is not linear; it is multidimensional, co-evolving, and contingent on prior and concurrent cuts.
A traveller’s path—an actualised utterance—interacts with all layers simultaneously. The route chosen reshapes the landscape: it produces relational differentiation in ideational topography, realigns interpersonal niches, and follows or modifies channels in the textual layer. Each actualisation is a multidimensional cut, producing emergent patterns that resonate across the semantic ecology.
Temporal edges preserve coherence while enabling novelty. Historical cuts act as scaffolding, stabilising relational potentials across the lattice. Emergence is perspectival, ecological, and historically conditioned: each new utterance interacts with a dense network of prior cuts, edges, and relational niches.
This generative logic parallels natural systems. Just as topographical boundaries guide rivers, ecological niches channel species interactions, and tidal edges shape microhabitats, metafunctional constraints structure relational potential, allowing meaning to proliferate without dissolving into incoherence.
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Ideational: structures experiential reality
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Interpersonal: structures relational alignment and influence
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Textual: structures connectivity and interpretive flow
Together, these dimensions form a multidimensional lattice of semantic potential. Cuts, edges, and constraints operate across all axes, producing emergent, ecological, and perspectival patterns of meaning.
In the next post, “Instantiation as Perspectival Actualisation”, we will explore how individual semantic events—utterances, constructions, and textual moves—act as cuts through this lattice, actualising relational potential across ideational, interpersonal, and textual dimensions.
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