Language as Relational Technology: 3 Histories of Use and the Stabilisation of Meaning

In the first two posts of this series, we explored how meaning is actualised relationally through construal, and how system networks channel semiotic potential to stabilise coordination. The next step is to introduce time: how semiotic structures persist, shift, or vanish across repeated acts of use. This temporal dimension explains stability and change without invoking pre-linguistic thoughts or interior content.

Recurrent Instantiation and Semiotic Sedimentation

Every act of construal is an instance of semiotic potential. When similar distinctions are actualised repeatedly in comparable situations, patterns begin to emerge. These patterns are not stored in minds; they sediment in the system itself, weighting choices and shaping probabilities in future instantiations.

We can think of this as semiotic sedimentation:

• Recurrent selections increase the probability of the same distinctions being made again.

• Rare or novel selections have less weight but remain possible, creating potential for innovation.

• Over time, these sediments produce stability: certain distinctions appear robust, familiar, and readily coordinated.

Change Without Interiors

Innovation occurs when new distinctions or configurations are introduced. Crucially, this evolution does not presuppose pre-existing thoughts. Change is driven by:

• Variation in actualisation under different situational conditions,

• Shifts in the weighting of probabilistic pathways within the system,

• Interactions with new semiotic resources.

Histories of use explain why language evolves while remaining functional. Distinctions persist, shift, or vanish as a consequence of repeated instantiation and probabilistic restructuring, not because speakers carry pre-formed meanings in their heads.

Coordinating Through Time

Coordination across time relies on the sedimented probabilities of the system. Speakers, writers, and other language users navigate these stabilized pathways, drawing on recurrent patterns without needing interior templates. Alignment emerges naturally:

• Highly probable distinctions are easily coordinated.

• Less probable distinctions may create surprise, innovation, or misalignment.

• Patterns of stability and change are visible to analysts in system networks and actualised instances.

Implications for Analysis

Histories of use provide a lens for understanding the dynamics of semiotic possibility:

• Analysts can track which distinctions persist and which fade over time.

• Innovation can be studied as the creation of new probabilistic configurations, not as the emergence of pre-linguistic thought.

• The evolution of meaning is observable through patterns of actualisation, sedimentation, and probability, all relational and external to any interior domain.

This post completes the temporal dimension of the current arc. Together with construal and system networks, histories of use explain how language achieves stability, flexibility, and evolution entirely within a relational semiotic framework.