If Post 1 established the relational ground of semiosis, Post 2 examines the moment of semiotic actualisation: the event in which relational potential becomes symbolic value. This is the semiotic event itself, the cut that interprets, the first-order instantiation of meaning in a relational ecology.
1. Construal vs. Instantiation: The Perspectival Cut
Instantiations—what relational ontology has framed as “actualisations”—are not themselves semiotic. They are events of potential closure in the ecological field: a metabolic readout, a behavioural outcome, a coordinated alignment.
Construal, by contrast, is the perspectival cut:
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It is first-order meaning realised in a relational field.
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It is reflexive: the act simultaneously actualises a pathway and renders it legible within the horizon.
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It is not a representation of an external world; it is the appearance of relational potential as world-in-motion.
The perspectival cut distinguishes what is selected, stabilised, and made salient from the background of possibilities, without implying that there is a pre-given “thing” being represented.
In relational terms: construal is the relational event of turning readiness into semiotic actuality.
2. Meaning as Reflexive Relational Modulation
Every construal is reflexive:
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It modulates the relational field it emerges from.
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It sets up conditions for further construals.
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It creates a loop of semiotic feedback, where the horizon of potential is continuously reoriented.
Unlike simple instantiation, which leaves the background field largely unaltered, construal is recursive and generative. It does not merely act; it interprets the field of action as meaningful.
This reflexivity explains why semiotic systems—language, culture, myth—are not reducible to computation or signalling: they are self-reconfiguring ecologies of potential.
3. From Relational Ecology to Semiotic Ecology
A relational ecology is a field of potential relations: a horizon of inclinations, readiness, and actualisable pathways. Construal converts this into a semiotic ecology:
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Nodes are no longer just positions in the field; they are meaningful sites, relationally poised for further construal.
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Pathways are no longer just actualisation routes; they are semiotic channels, carrying symbolic value across horizons.
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The field itself becomes semiotic terrain, structured by prior cuts and open to further recursive interpretations.
Semiotic ecology = relational ecology + reflexive construals that stabilise symbolic potential.
The shift is subtle but decisive: semiotics emerges when the relational field itself becomes interpretable.
4. The Semiotic Event in Practice
A semiotic event is not merely an “instance of communication” or a “meaningful action.” It is:
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A local cut in the relational horizon—a selection of potential actualisations.
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A relational modulation—it reconfigures the surrounding field of inclinations.
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A projection of symbolic value—it carries semiotic potential into future construals.
All three features occur simultaneously. There is no “internal representation” or “signal carrier” mediating between the event and the field: the event is the semiotic effect.
In Hallidayan terms, the semiotic event is where meaning construes meaning, prior to the imposition of field, tenor, or mode. Context is emergent from the cut, not imposed on it.
5. The Philosophical Significance
Construal as semiotic event resolves several longstanding confusions:
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It dissolves the false duality between subject and object: meaning arises in the relational field, not inside a head.
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It removes the need for “codes” or “symbols” as prior ontological entities: symbols are stabilised relational potentials.
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It grounds semiotic recursion: each event produces conditions for subsequent construals, generating complex semiotic ecologies without reference to external systems of value.
Semiotic events are therefore first-order phenomena: not behaviours, not representations, not outputs, but actualisations of symbolic relationality.
6. The Takeaway
The cut that interprets is the nexus of relational ecology and semiotic ecology.
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Relational ecology provides the field, the potentials, the horizons.
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Construal actualises a semiotic event, producing symbolic value.
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Semiotic ecology is the emergent network of reflexive cuts that stabilises, extends, and propagates meaning.
Every subsequent post in this series will examine how these cuts give rise to symbolic horizons, contexts, and higher-order semiotic structures, leading from individual events to fully-fledged systems of recursive meaning.
In short: construal is the event that turns possibility into symbolic reality.
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