Cuts, Value, and Social Affiliation: 1 Meaning vs Value: Why the Confusion?

Language and social life are often tangled together in analysis. Scholars, and even practitioners of systemic functional linguistics, have long struggled to clarify one persistent problem: what is meaning, and what is value?

Too often, the two are collapsed. Interpersonal meaning is treated as “attitude,” “feeling,” or “ideology.” Social values are assumed to be embedded in language. But this conflation obscures the very processes that make meaning and social affiliation intelligible.

The key insight comes from viewing meaning as actualisation under conditions of vulnerability. Drawing on the framework of metafunctional cuts:

• Ideational meaning exposes phenomena to construal. Without it, nothing can be made intelligible.

• Interpersonal meaning exposes meaning to social risk, uptake, and obligation. It does not dictate values; it only shows where meaning can succeed or fail socially.

• Textual meaning exposes meaning to decay and ensures persistence across time and interaction.

Value, by contrast, belongs to the social field. It is non-symbolic: it structures what is rewarded, sanctioned, or coordinated. Value does not make something meaningful — it shapes the consequences when meaning is actualised socially.

The confusion arises when analysts smuggle value into interpersonal meaning. This leads to three common errors:

1. Psychologisation: treating interpersonal meaning as if it were feelings or intentions.

2. Ideologisation: reducing meaning to social norms or “correct” attitudes.

3. Dimensional layering: assuming meaning and value occupy the same analytic space, when they operate on different surfaces.

Recognising the distinction is the first step toward clarity. Meaning and value are relationally intertwined, but ontologically distinct. Meaning exposes phenomena to the possibility of interpretation and uptake. Value shapes the social consequences of that uptake.

In this series, we will explore how these surfaces intersect in producing social affiliation: the ways communities coordinate, sanction, and sustain alignment. But first, it is crucial to see clearly why meaning and value must be kept separate. Only then can the cuts framework illuminate the mechanisms of social life without collapsing them into one another.