Ecologies of Possible Meaning: Semiosis through a Relational Ontology: 2 From World to Meaning: Construal as Ecological Activation

If the previous post re-situated ecology as the patterned relational field that makes semiosis possible, then this post tackles the next step: how meaning happens in that field. Not by representing a world, not by interpreting a world, but by activating a world from within its relational potentials.

In our relational ontology, meaning = reality, not as metaphysical slogan but as ontological discipline. Meaning is not a layer placed over the world; it is the activation of the world’s potentials through construal. And construal is not mental, cognitive, or symbolic: it is ecological. It is what happens when a perspective cuts through the field and makes a world emerge.

1. Construal Is Not Interpretation

Interpretation presupposes a stable, external world waiting to be decoded. Construal cuts that idea off at the root.

Construal is the activation of potential into phenomenon — the shift from system as structured potential to instance as experienced event. What is “there” is what the cut brings forth.

Ecologically, this means:

• there is no environment independent of the organism,

• there is no organism independent of the relational field,

• the “world” is what becomes actual in the act of construal.

This is why meaning and reality cannot be peeled apart without tearing the phenomenon itself.

2. Ecology as the Field of Activation

In Hallidayan terms, context (field–tenor–mode) is realised by semantics. But in our ecological framing, context is not a container or backdrop. It is the ecological configuration of potentials within which the construal unfolds.

Crucially:

• context does not determine meaning;

• meaning does not represent context;

• construal activates an ecological configuration into a phenomenon.

This is why two construals of the “same world” differ: they are not two takes on one object; they are two activations of a relational field.

3. Activation Is Perspectival, Not Temporal

Nothing “becomes meaningful” over time.

Instantiation is not a process unfolding; it is a perspectival shift along a cline from potential to instance.

When the ecological field is cut from a given stance:

• certain affordances light up,

• certain relations become foreground,

• certain dependencies actualise as phenomenon.

The “world” at any moment is the footprint of this cut.

4. Meaning as Ecological Apprehension

To construe is to inhabit an ecological relation.

The phenomenon is not perceived; it is lived as the first-order meaning — the world-for-this-construal.

This is why semiosis is ecological rather than symbolic at the base level. Symbols come later, layered onto the phenomenon. But the phenomenon itself is a meaning-event activated by situated perspective.

5. Why This Matters for an Ecosocial Theory of Semiosis

Ecological activation strips semiosis of any lingering representationalism.

Instead, it yields:

• Non-dual ontology: no separation of world and meaning.

• Situated ontology: each meaning-event is indexed to an ecological stance.

• Social ontology: construal is always already socially patterned — an activation shaped by collective histories of meaning potential.

• Beyond “environment”: the ecological field is not surroundings but the relational weave of potentialities through which meaning emerges.

This post establishes the key pivot: semiosis is ecological because construal is ecological. The next post will show how this activation becomes organised into ecologies of practice — domains of patterned construal across social activity.

Ecologies of Possible Meaning: Semiosis through a Relational Ontology: 1 The Ecology of Possibility

We tend to imagine “ecology” as something external to meaning: the physical environment, the social world, the wider surround in which language operates. In linguistics, this ecological framing usually enters through metaphor: language as adaptive, behaviour as situated, semiosis as responsive to context. These accounts bring important insights, but they lean heavily toward an externalist picture — the world “out there” as the ground against which signs operate.

This series begins from a different premise.

Ecology is not external to semiosis. It is the field of possibility that semiosis cuts.

In the relational ontology that guides this work, a phenomenon is not an object but a perspectival actualisation of potential. Meaning does not attach to an already-structured world; meaning is the structuring. Reality is not the substrate to which language refers; meaning is reality — the reality of a phenomenon as construed.

With this shift, the notion of ecology transforms.

It becomes:

the patterned relational potential from which phenomena can be actualised.

Ecology, in this sense, is neither biological nor social.

It is not a domain of organism–environment couplings, nor a container of sociocultural activities.

It is the relational background of affordance, the structured potential for construal.

This background is not homogeneous or amorphous.

It has internal differentiation: gradients, boundaries, tensions, relational possibilities. These do not exist “in themselves” but emerge in the very same relational fabric that makes any phenomenon possible.

To call this an ecology is to mark three things:

1. It is relational rather than substantive

There are no pre-given objects waiting to be labelled.

Instead, there are relational dispositions that may become objects if cut by an appropriate operation of construal.

2. It is patterned rather than chaotic

Potential is structured.

Not fully determined, not fixed, but rich with differentiations that constrain what can be actualised.

3. It is ecological because it is a field

A field of possibility.

A field in which relations acquire stability, affordance, and salience—not because they are given, but because they are available to be cut.

This conception allows us to speak of:

• material ecology: the patterned potential of the living world, not as an independent “environment” but as structured relational possibility.

• semiotic ecology: the patterned potential encoded in a meaning system, not as a storehouse of forms but as the relational theory a language provides.

• metasemiotic ecology: the patterned potential of interpretive operations that themselves reconfigure potential.

These are not separate domains.

They are different cuts across the same relational field, viewed at different levels of abstraction.

The point of starting here is simple:

semiosis only makes sense when we recognise that meaning emerges by cutting into an ecology of possible meaning, not by mapping linguistic forms onto an external world.

What we call “context” is not a space outside of language, nor a container of situational factors. It is the ecologically relevant subset of potential that a semiotic system can recognise and make meaningful. But that is the topic of a later post.

For now, we mark the first and fundamental move:

Meaning emerges through operations that actualise phenomena from an ecology of possibility.

In this sense, ecology is not what surrounds meaning.

It is what makes meaning possible.

Next post: From World to Meaning: Construal as Ecological Activation.

Ecologies of Possible Meaning: Semiosis through a Relational Ontology: Introduction: Cutting Into Meaning — A Relational Perspective on Semiosis

Language is often treated as a system of signs, a code, or a set of rules. But what if we approached it differently — as a field of relational potential, a dynamic ecology in which meaning is not simply represented, but actively constructed?

This series explores semiosis, metasemiosis, and the ecological activation of meaning through the lens of relational ontology. Our aim is to move beyond traditional frameworks that treat words, clauses, or texts as pre-given entities and instead foreground the perspectival and operational nature of construal.

What to Expect in the Series

• Posts 1–3: Explore how meaning emerges from the ecological field, how construal actualizes potential, and how linguistic structures guide this activation.

• Posts 4–5: Examine metasemiosis — the operations that cut, reorganize, and shape the field itself.

• Post 6: Bring together the threads of metasemiosis and ecology, showing how higher-order semiosis reshapes both context and system.

• Post 7: Compare this approach with existing ecosocial semiotic frameworks, highlighting what relational ontology uniquely explains.

Throughout, you will see that:

• Systems encode possibilities, not fixed meanings.

• Construal is perspectival, a cut into relational potential.

• Context emerges from actualizations of possibility.

• Metasemiosis reorganizes the field, enabling new forms of meaning.

This is a series for readers willing to engage with meaning as dynamic, emergent, and ecological — a series that challenges conventional assumptions about grammar, context, and semiosis itself.