Thus far, we have seen how value systems act on meaning through constraint, recruitment, and obligation.
Now we examine what happens when pressures diverge: misalignment.
Misalignment is inevitable
No two actors experience identical pressures:
social expectations differ,
biological conditions vary,
histories and experiences are unique.
Consequently, construals often diverge even under similar circumstances.
This divergence produces tension, disagreement, and negotiation.
Misalignment is productive
Misalignment is not failure.
It is a generator of possibility:
new meanings can emerge,
existing pressures are tested and sometimes adjusted,
coordination practices evolve.
Conflict reveals the boundaries of intelligibility without collapsing meaning into value.
Negotiation and adaptation
Actors respond to misalignment in multiple ways:
adjusting construals to reduce tension,
persisting in their interpretation to test stability,
engaging others to clarify or justify.
These processes are iterative and relational.
They illustrate how meaning is practiced under constraint.
Social tension as a field
Tension is not only interpersonal.
It shapes the field itself:
stabilising some norms,
highlighting weak points,
prompting reconfiguration.
Value systems remain non-semiotic, but their effects ripple through the field of construal.
From tension to change
Interpersonal misalignment is a mechanism of evolution in meaning.
Through repeated negotiation and adaptive practice:
some construals become more widely intelligible,
others are discarded,
and new spaces of possibility open.
This explains how social life produces novelty without collapsing into rule-following.
Looking ahead
With misalignment and tension clarified, we can now examine power asymmetries in interpersonal meaning.
Post 7: Power, Silence, and the Shaping of Intelligibility will show how uneven constraints create differential access to meaning — making some voices louder, others quieter, and some meanings fragile or invisible.
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