Having shown that meaning is relational and cannot be stored, we now turn to its structural counterpart:
Misalignment is not exception; it is part of meaning itself.
Misunderstanding as structural
When participants construe differently, misunderstandings occur.
Ambiguity emerges.
Events are interpreted variably.
These are not flaws to be corrected, but natural consequences of meaning being an emergent, relational event.
Alignment is always partial
No construal perfectly overlaps with another.
No object is universally stabilised.
Some degree of misalignment is inevitable whenever meaning is enacted.
This partial alignment is not a problem — it is the engine of flexibility and innovation.
Productive misalignment
Misalignment can generate novelty:
conflicting construals reveal hidden assumptions,
divergent interpretations produce new distinctions,
uncertainty opens spaces for reconfiguration.
Meaning depends on this play between coherence and divergence.
Misalignment in practice
In discourse, learning, and collaboration, misalignment signals opportunities for attention:
it invites participants to negotiate distinctions,
to refine understanding,
and to recalibrate shared fields of intelligibility.
Without misalignment, meaning would ossify.
Not a call for relativism
Recognising misalignment as structural is not a license for arbitrariness.
Some construals are better attuned to the relational context than others.
Good meaning practices are sensitive to the situation, capable of sustaining intelligibility while accommodating variation.
Looking ahead
With misalignment and ambiguity acknowledged as features rather than bugs, the next post explores how meaning changes what can be thought.
Post 7: Meaning Changes What Can Be Thought traces the evolutionary dimension of meaning, showing how relational activity reshapes the field of conceivable distinctions and possibilities.
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