The Becoming of Possibility: 2 Language, Semiotics, and the Differentiation of Possibility

If social coordination shapes the field of possibility, language is the primary means by which that field becomes finely articulated.

Language does not merely enable communication between already-formed agents. It does not label pre-existing meanings. It does not transmit inner contents from one mind to another.

Language is a technology for cutting possibility.

From Coordination to Differentiation

Coordination alone produces stable patterns of action. Language takes those patterns and differentiates them — making finer distinctions, enabling reflection, and allowing coordination to operate at scale and across time.

Without language, possibilities remain coarse-grained:

• this works / this fails

• approach / avoid

• repeat / abandon

With language, possibility acquires structure:

• reasons can be given

• alternatives can be compared

• norms can be articulated

• futures can be projected

Language does not create possibility from nothing. It refines and multiplies what coordination has already made available.

Semiotics Without Representation

The representational picture of language is deeply misleading. It assumes:

• meanings exist independently

• words stand for those meanings

• language mirrors reality

From a relational ontology perspective, semiotics works differently.

Signs do not point to meanings. They participate in practices that stabilise distinctions. A word matters not because it refers, but because its use reliably makes a difference within coordination.

Meaning is not behind the sign. It is in the patterned use of the sign.

Language as a System of Cuts

Each semiotic system is a repertoire of possible cuts:

• what distinctions can be made

• what relations can be expressed

• what actions can be coordinated

Grammar is not structure imposed on thought. It is a map of available distinctions — what can be foregrounded, backgrounded, attributed, questioned, obligated, or denied.

This is why different languages support different ways of organising experience without trapping speakers in mental cages. They shape possibility, not perception.

Register and the Local Shaping of Possibility

Within a language, different registers further differentiate possibility.

Scientific discourse makes certain kinds of explanation possible while excluding others. Legal language enables specific forms of responsibility and remedy. Intimate conversation allows for vulnerability that would be unintelligible elsewhere.

These are not stylistic choices layered onto meaning. They are distinct semiotic configurations that open and close possibilities of action.

Language is never neutral. Every register is a way of structuring what can happen next.

Metaphor as Possibility Reconfiguration

Metaphor deserves special attention, not as poetic flourish, but as a mechanism of possibility-shift.

A successful metaphor does not describe something more vividly. It reorganises the relational field by importing distinctions from one domain into another.

This is why metaphors can:

• open new avenues of inquiry

• reframe ethical debate

• reorganise scientific understanding

Metaphor is not decoration. It is ontological work.

Language and the Illusion of Interiors

Language also plays a crucial role in generating the illusion of inner spaces.

Because language can refer reflexively — to thoughts, beliefs, feelings, intentions — it creates the appearance of an interior domain populated by mental objects. But reference does not imply location.

Saying “I believe X” is not reporting an inner state. It is taking up a discursive position with normative consequences.

Language does not reveal interiors. It manufactures the grammar in which interiors appear thinkable.

Learning as Expansion of Semiotic Possibility

Learning a language — or a new discourse — is not acquiring representations. It is becoming sensitive to new distinctions and new forms of coordination.

This is why learning feels transformative. It literally expands what can be noticed, articulated, challenged, and enacted.

To learn is to inhabit a richer field of possibility.

The Cut Ahead

If language differentiates possibility, then knowledge itself must be understood not as something stored or possessed, but as something stabilised through semiotically mediated coordination.

The next step is therefore clear.

Knowledge as Stabilised Possibility.

That is where we go next.