In the previous post we examined value systems: coordination systems that organise behaviour without semiosis. Such systems regulate interaction through reinforcement, alignment, and feedback, but they remain limited to what is immediately present in the situation.
The emergence of meaning requires a deeper transformation.
Behaviour must cease to function solely as action and become available as a semiotic resource. In other words, behaviour must become something that participants can select in order to construe a situation together.
This transformation does not happen all at once. It unfolds through a sequence of structural shifts that gradually move interaction from causal coordination to semiosis.
Behavioural decoupling
The first step is behavioural decoupling.
In a value system, behaviour is tightly bound to the activity that produces it. A threat display is inseparable from the aggressive state that generates it; an alarm cry is inseparable from the immediate perception of danger.
For semiosis to emerge, behaviours must begin to detach from these original contexts. A vocalisation or gesture must become repeatable independently of the activity from which it originated.
At this point the behaviour becomes available for reuse. It is no longer only a reaction; it becomes a resource that can be deployed across situations.
This is the first hint that behaviour is beginning to enter a system of possibilities.
The stylisation of signals
Once behaviours become detachable from their original contexts, they tend to undergo stylisation.
Stylisation stabilises the behaviour so that it becomes recognisable across instances. The signal becomes sharper, more regular, and more distinct from the surrounding flow of action.
Across many animal communication systems we see precisely this process: gestures become exaggerated, movements become rhythmic, vocalisations acquire characteristic patterns. What began as ordinary behaviour becomes a conventionalised display.
Stylisation performs an important systemic function. It transforms fleeting actions into reliable forms that can be recognised and reproduced.
Only when signals become stable in this way can they begin to participate in a system of selectable alternatives.
Shared construal
Yet stylisation alone does not produce meaning.
For semiosis to emerge, interacting participants must begin coordinating their interpretation of these signals. The signal must be treated not merely as behaviour but as something that stands within a shared field of construal.
This does not mean that the signal intrinsically represents some external state of affairs. Rather, the participants align their expectations about how the signal is to be taken.
A vocalisation, gesture, or display now functions within a relational system where its occurrence invites a particular construal.
This is the decisive shift.
Interaction is no longer organised purely through causal coupling between behaviours. It is organised through a system in which behaviours are interpreted relative to a shared potential for meaning.
The emergence of selectable resources
Once behaviours become both stylised and mutually construed, they enter a new kind of organisation.
They become selectable semiotic resources.
Instead of behaviour simply occurring as a response to circumstances, participants now have access to a repertoire of possible signals. Each interaction involves a selection from that repertoire.
This is the earliest form of a semiotic system.
Even at this rudimentary stage we can already recognise the structural relation that later characterises language itself: a system of potential whose instances actualise particular selections.
The appearance of selectable semiotic resources therefore marks the birth of semiosis. Interaction is no longer governed solely by behavioural coordination. It is now organised through a system of meaning potential that participants draw upon in their interactions.
A new kind of organisation
The transition from value systems to semiosis is thus not merely a matter of signals becoming more complex. It is a change in the organising principle of interaction itself.
Behaviour becomes available for selection within a shared system of construal. Once this happens, interaction begins to operate through meaning potential rather than purely through behavioural alignment.
From this point onward, communication is no longer simply something organisms do. It becomes something they mean.
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