Language and the Differentiation of Possibility: 1 Language as Relational Technology

Language is often treated as a tool for expressing pre-existing thoughts, mirroring reality, or transmitting meaning. From a relational ontology perspective, these assumptions are deeply misleading.

Language is not a conduit for inner content. It is a technology for differentiating possibility.

Language as a System of Relational Cuts

Every act of language selects, stabilises, and structures relational possibilities. A word, a phrase, a clause does not label something that already exists. It participates in a patterned field, shaping which distinctions are salient, which actions are intelligible, and which outcomes are achievable.

In this sense, language is a system of relational cuts:

• It determines what can be noticed or ignored

• It structures expectations of response

• It enables coordination across participants

A sign matters not because it “represents” but because its patterned use reliably changes what can happen next.

Semiotic Function Before Meaning

Semiotic function precedes meaning. Before any “message” is read or interpreted, language constrains and amplifies possibility:

• Who can act, and in what ways

• What outcomes are achievable or recognisable

• How patterns of action can be linked across time or space

This is why systemic functional linguistics is so powerful: it maps the architecture of possibility, not merely the description of text.

Hallidayan Strata as Possibility-Mapping

Halliday’s canonical stratification — semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology — can be understood as successive layers of possibility differentiation:

1. Semantics: delineates distinctions that matter within coordination; defines what patterns are recognisable.

2. Lexicogrammar: operationalises those distinctions in a structured system of choices; encodes constraints and affordances.

3. Phonology/graphology: transmits and stabilises distinctions across medium and time.

Each stratum does not “express meaning” in the interiorist sense. Each stratum sculpts the field of action, opening and closing paths of possibility.

Implications for SFL Analysis

Viewing language this way shifts analytic focus:

• From internal meaning or intention → to patterned coordination and differentiation

• From truth/falsity → to stability, recognisability, and reproducibility

• From the individual speaker → to the systemic affordances of the semiotic field

An analyst trained in SFL is already equipped to see this: system networks, choices in mood or transitivity, and register variation are technology in action, shaping what can be done, said, and coordinated.

Why This Matters

Recasting language as relational technology allows us to:

• Understand creativity and novelty as emergent, not interior

• Situate knowledge, value, and ethics within structured fields rather than minds

• Map the consequences of technology, register, or institutional change in practical semiotic terms

It is the first step toward a fully relational account of language that bridges SFL and the broader ontology of possibility.