Relational Systems: A New Foundation for Linguistics: 2 Semantics as Horizon Metabolism: Language as a Semiotic Physiology

In the previous post, we reframed construal as a relational cut — the differentiation that brings a horizon into being.

This post takes the next step:

once a horizon exists, how does it live?

Semantics becomes the metabolism that sustains, regulates, and transforms horizons as they circulate through the field.

This is not metaphor.

It is a structural claim:

meaning behaves like an organism because semiosis is a form of life.

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1. If Construal is the Cut, Semantics is the Metabolism

A horizon, once cut, does not persist by magic.

It must be sustained.

In relational ontology:

• a horizon is an energetic structure

• it must regulate flows of differentiation

• it must maintain coherence across time

• it must resist collapse under field pressure

Semantics is therefore the:

operation that maintains the viability of the horizon

between its emergence (the cut) and its actualisation as text.

Just as biological life requires metabolic cycles to maintain its form,

a semantic horizon requires metabolic cycles to maintain its meaning.

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2. Meaning is Not Stored — It Circulates

Traditional semantics treats meaning as:

• stored in the language system

• encoded in lexicogrammar

• retrieved or decoded by a cognising subject

Under a relational, metabolic model:

meaning is not stored.

meaning circulates.

A horizon is energetic:

it persists only as long as the system supports the metabolic flows that stabilise it.

This leads to three consequences:

1. Semantic potential is dynamic

A system is not an inventory but a regulated field of possible metabolic patterns.

2. Horizons decay

Without semantic maintenance, meaning disintegrates —

a process analogous to metabolic collapse in biology.

3. Interpretation is a metabolic operation

To “interpret” is not to decode but to re-stabilise a horizon within a field.

Meaning is alive because meaning requires maintenance.

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3. The Three Metabolic Systems of Semantics

Semantics has three metabolic subsystems, corresponding to the three metafunctions —

but now reconceived ecologically:

1. Experiential Metabolism: Horizon Structuring

Sustains the differentiation between:

• process

• participant

• circumstance

This is the metabolic regulation of what counts as a phenomenon.

2. Interpersonal Metabolism: Horizon Tensioning

Regulates the energetic relations between:

• commitment

• involvement

• stance

• obligation

• alignment

This is the metabolic dynamic of how horizons coexist with others.

3. Textual Metabolism: Horizon Cohesion

Regulates how horizons remain viable across:

• sequences

• phases

• thematic flows

• cohesive links

• information waves

This is the metabolic architecture that keeps meaning from collapsing in time.

Halliday’s metafunctions become metabolic subsystems, each maintaining different aspects of horizon viability.

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4. Horizon Collapse: The Death of Meaning

When metabolic regulation fails, horizons decay.

There are several pathways of semantic death:

1. Entropic decay

The horizon loses coherence as distinctions blur or overload.

2. Energetic starvation

Insufficient interpersonal tension to animate the horizon.

3. Structural collapse

Textual metabolism cannot sustain sequential viability; the horizon falls apart in time.

Semantic collapse is not interpretive failure.

It is ecological failure — the metabolic death of a horizon.

This reframes phenomena such as:

• incoherence

• ambiguity

• breakdown of genre

• shifting register

• horizon drift

as metabolic events, not psychological errors.

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5. Semantics is Not Above Grammar; It Is the Space Grammar Breathes Within

Halliday’s architecture remains intact, but its ontology shifts.

Semantics is not a stratum “above” lexicogrammar.

Semantics is the regulatory space within which lexicogrammar operates as the organ of actualisation.

Grammar becomes:

the physiological machinery that instantiates the metabolic patterns of semantics.

Lexicogrammar does not encode meaning.

It materialises it.

Semantic metabolism is the living condition;

grammar is the muscle that moves.

This preserves SFL’s stratification while removing the representational residue that sometimes obscures the dynamics.

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6. Field as the Ecological Constraint on Metabolism

Field (in the Hallidayan sense) becomes the:

• regulator of metabolic energy

• limiter on viable horizon structures

• selection environment for semantic forms

Field is not external context.

It is the ecological condition within which semantic metabolism operates.

Different fields → different metabolic pressures

Different pressures → different horizon types

Different horizon types → different grammatical organisations

This gives register a fully ecological grounding:

register is a metabolic adaptation.

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7. Why This Rewrites Semantics

Reframing semantics as metabolism:

1. Solves the representation problem

Meaning is not something language describes but something language sustains.

2. Grounds metafunctions biologically

They become metabolic subsystems, not structural categories.

3. Integrates context, system, and instance

Through energy regulation, not symbolic mapping.

4. Reconfigures interpretation

As metabolic reacquisition, not decoding.

5. Rewrites the basis of semantic change

Meaning changes because metabolic cycles evolve under ecological pressures.

This gives us a new foundation for the entire Hallidayan architecture.