If constraint arises from misaligned readiness, then risk is what actors face when they attempt to act or speak within that misalignment.
Risk is not accidental to interpersonal meaning.
It is constitutive of it.
Speaking as exposure
To speak is not merely to articulate a meaning.
It is to expose one’s readiness to the field:
one’s inclinations,
one’s abilities,
one’s anticipation of uptake.
An utterance places a construal into circulation without knowing whether it will be taken up, ignored, resisted, or sanctioned.
Speech is therefore never neutral.
Risk without intention
Risk does not require conscious calculation.
Actors often feel risk before they can name it:
hesitation,
tightening,
delay,
withdrawal.
These are not failures of confidence.
They are sensitivity to uneven readiness in the field.
Actualisation under uncertainty
To actualise a construal — to move from potential to event — is to commit readiness under uncertainty.
No amount of ability guarantees uptake.
No amount of inclination ensures safety.
Actualisation is always a wager.
Courage without heroism
Courage, in this framework, is not moral virtue or personal trait.
It is the willingness to actualise under misalignment:
to speak despite anticipated sanction,
to persist despite weak uptake,
to risk misunderstanding or exclusion.
Courage is relational, situational, and costly.
Silence as strategic readiness
Silence is often misread as absence: of meaning, of agency, of voice.
Within this account, silence can be understood as skilled withholding:
preserving readiness for a different moment,
avoiding unsustainable exposure,
recognising when alignment is insufficient.
Silence, too, can be courageous.
Why this matters
Understanding risk as intrinsic to meaning allows us to:
explain why speaking can feel dangerous without invoking repression,
recognise silence as rational rather than deficient,
understand courage without moralising it.
Interpersonal meaning is not merely exchanged.
It is risked.
Looking ahead
Risk is not evenly distributed.
Some actors face greater exposure than others when they speak or act.
The next post will examine how power shapes readiness by amplifying some risks and muting others.
Post 6: Power as Unequal Readiness — Who Gets to Mean will take up this question.
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