One of the most common responses to a relational account of meaning is a spatial question: If meaning isn’t in the head, where is it? The question feels natural, even unavoidable. But it already carries a mistake.
It assumes that meaning must be located somewhere — as if it were a thing that could be placed, stored, or contained. Heads have simply been the most familiar container.
To ask where meaning is, in this sense, is to have already misdescribed what meaning is.
Why “Where?” Is the Wrong Question
The question inherits the same architecture as the conduit metaphor. If meaning is something transmitted, then it must exist prior to transmission. If it exists, it must be somewhere. If not in language, then in minds.
But meaning is not an object, a substance, or a mental possession. It is not the sort of thing that occupies a location. Treating it as such forces explanation back into containers — and the head is simply the smallest convenient one.
Once meaning is understood relationally, the spatial question dissolves.
Meaning as Relation, Not Location
Meaning exists in relations: between choices in a system, between language and situation, between texts and histories of use. It is constituted by patterns of differentiation, not by occupancy.
This is why meaning can be:
shared without being copied
stabilised without being stored
contested without being lost
None of these make sense if meaning is imagined as something inside individuals. All of them are routine once meaning is understood as systemic and relational.
How Meaning Persists
If meaning is not stored in heads, how does it persist?
It persists in semiotic systems: in the organisation of options, in probabilities of choice, in conventionalised patterns of use. It persists because systems constrain and enable what can be meant next.
This persistence is not psychological continuity but semiotic continuity. Meanings endure because distinctions are reproduced, not because they are remembered in the same form by different individuals.
Coordination Without Containers
One reason the “where” question feels urgent is that coordination looks mysterious without inner meanings. How do people understand one another if meaning is not privately possessed?
The answer is that coordination does not depend on matching inner contents. It depends on alignment within shared systems. Successful coordination occurs when participants orient to similar distinctions made available by language in a situation.
Misunderstanding, likewise, is not a failure of transmission but a divergence in construal.
The Relational Payoff
Once meaning is removed from the head, analysis gains reach. Explanation can address:
how meanings vary systematically across registers
how new meanings emerge historically
how power and value shape what distinctions become available
None of this is visible if meaning is treated as private mental content.
A Reframing
So where is meaning?
Not in the head, and not in language either, if language is treated as an object. Meaning is in the relations that language organises — relations among choices, situations, and histories.
The better question is not where meaning is, but how it is actualised.
And once that question is asked, the head quietly exits the picture.
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