Metasemiotics Without Representation: A Relational Ontology of Semiosis: 6 Completing the Cycle: Semiosis Without Representation

In the previous posts we have traced a path:

1. Construal as first-order world-making (Post 3)

2. Metasemiotic systems as structured potential guiding construals (Post 4)

3. Context as a relational field that shapes and is shaped by construals (Post 5)

Post 6 brings these threads together into a relational, ecological account of semiosis itself.

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1. Semiosis as a Relational Cycle

We can model semiosis as a continuous, recursive cycle:

1. Metasemiotic potentials — systems, categories, and distinctions exist relationally, as what could be made manifest.

2. Constraining context — material, social, and semiotic conditions shape which potentials are activated.

3. Construal — the actualisation of potential, producing a situated world.

4. Feedback — the actualised construal interacts with context, updating and refining future metasemiotic potentials.

This cycle is non-representational: semiosis is not about mapping symbols to pre-existing meanings. It is about relational actualisation, emergence, and ecological effect.

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2. Token–Value Revisited

The example “defining X as Y” illustrates the cycle:

• Metasemiotic: X (Token) and Y (Value) exist as potential roles within the system of relational clauses.

• Contextual: The utterance presumes an accessible, knowable X and a Value that is meaningful in the communicative situation.

• Construal: The speaker actualises the clause, creating a world in which X is identified or assigned Y.

• Feedback: This construal informs future interaction, influencing how X–Y assignments are interpreted, expected, or challenged.

The cycle is dynamic, relational, and situated, not static or unidirectional.

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3. Metasemiotic Systems as Ecological Instruments

Metasemiosis is ecological:

• Systems are embedded in human activity, not abstract grids.

• Grammar, categories, and distinctions exist to enable interaction, guide perception, and mediate action.

• The potentials in a system are not inert; they are activated and reshaped in use.

This aligns with relational ontology:

• Actualisation is perspectival and constrained, not merely reflective.

• Systems exist in a network of relations, including participants, objects, and social-material conditions.

• Meaning emerges in the interaction of construal and world, not as a pre-formed representation.

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4. Implications for Linguistic Theory

1. SFL Revisited: paradigms, process types, and roles can be seen as metasemiotic potentials, relationally situated rather than strictly realised rules.

2. Analysis: must attend to both instance and potential, action and system, utterance and context.

3. Science of Language: semiosis is an ongoing ecological phenomenon, where diversity of construals strengthens analytical insight, rather than complicating it.

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5. Concluding Thought

Semiosis without representation is about doing, not mirroring.

• Words, clauses, and categories are means of relational intervention, not pre-existing symbols.

• Meaning is emergent, situated, and ecological, always shaped by metasemiotic potential, context, and actualisation.

• The cycle of semiosis — potential → construal → context → feedback — captures how language lives and evolves.

By adopting this perspective, we can begin to reimagine the grammar of possibility itself — an account of language as relational, emergent, and fully embedded in the human and ecological world.