From Mattering to Meaning: V. Metaphor — When Meanings Become Resources

We have reached an important point in our argument.

A difference can matter.

A difference that matters between systems can function as a signal.

A signal can become a sign when it participates in a semiotic system.

But once signs exist, something extraordinary becomes possible.

A meaning can itself become a resource for making another meaning.

We can use one way of construing experience to construe something else.

A journey can become a way of understanding a life.

A container can become a way of understanding an emotion.

A network can become a way of understanding a society.

A musical figure can become a way of understanding a character.

This is metaphor.

And metaphor matters to our argument because it shows that meaning does not merely accumulate. It can generate new meaning from existing meaning.

Meaning was already relational

It is important to be precise about what is new here.

Meaning was relational from the beginning.

A sign means through its relations to other signs, to contexts, to participants and to the larger semiotic system in which it operates.

So metaphor does not mark the moment when meaning becomes relational.

Something more specific happens.

A semiotic system acquires the capacity to make one configuration of meaning a resource for construing another.

Meaning can be reorganised through meaning.

This is a new degree of reflexivity.

Metaphor is not just comparison

We often explain metaphor as comparison.

Someone is described as a lion because they are courageous.

Life is described as a journey because it has beginnings, directions and destinations.

But this makes metaphor sound like a decorative comparison between things.

Something more powerful is happening.

The source domain provides an organisation of relations that can be recruited in the construal of another domain.

A journey contains possibilities such as departure, direction, progress, obstacles, detours and arrival.

When life is construed as a journey, these relations become available for thinking about life.

We can speak of a person's path, turning point, direction or crossroads.

The metaphor has therefore not merely added an image.

It has expanded the possibilities for construing the target domain.

Halliday's junction

This is where Halliday's account of metaphor gives us an especially useful formulation.

He describes metaphoric elements as junctional because they embody a junction of two semantic categories: the meaning of the congruent wording and the meaning of the metaphorical wording.

The important point is that the metaphorical expression does not simply discard one meaning and replace it with another.

The two semantic relations are brought together.

The wording therefore carries a junction of meanings.

That gives us a more precise account of the reflexivity we have been exploring.

A semantic category can be recruited into another semantic relation without disappearing from its original domain.

Meaning is now capable of folding back upon itself.

Grammatical metaphor

Halliday's grammatical metaphor shows this particularly clearly.

Consider the difference between:

The population increased rapidly.

and:

There was a rapid increase in the population.

The event has not changed.

But the construal has.

In the first wording, increased construes the change congruently as a process.

In the second, increase construes that process as a thing-like entity.

This new construal matters because the entity can now participate in further meanings.

We can speak about the increase.

Compare it with another increase.

Measure it.

Explain it.

Attribute causes to it.

The metaphorical wording creates new possibilities for subsequent meaning-making.

A meaning has become a resource for further meaning.

Why this matters

This is more than a linguistic curiosity.

A system that can reinterpret its own meanings gains a new kind of productivity.

It can create distinctions that were not previously available in the same form.

It can reorganise experience.

It can construct new concepts.

It can develop new explanations.

It can make one domain illuminate another.

The semiotic system becomes capable of working upon its own resources.

This is one reason conceptual evolution can be so much faster than biological evolution.

A new biological form requires changes in organisms and populations.

A new semiotic construal can arise in a conversation, a metaphor, an image, a scientific model or a piece of art and spread rapidly through a culture.

The meaning potential can change within a generation.

Metaphor expands potential

We can now return to our distinction between potential and instance.

A novel metaphor is a particular instance of meaning-making.

But if other people adopt it, the relation it establishes can become part of the collective potential.

What was previously an unusual construal becomes a familiar resource.

The process can therefore be represented as:

new construal → repeated use → recognition → conventionalisation → expanded potential

The metaphor changes the system that made it possible.

This is another example of potential and instance entering a recursive relationship.

The potential provides resources for innovation.

Innovations can enlarge the potential.

The power of convention

Once a metaphor becomes familiar, it may no longer feel metaphorical.

We speak of the mouth of a river, the leg of a table, the head of an organisation.

The original cross-domain relation has become ordinary vocabulary.

What was once a novel construal has been absorbed into the semiotic system.

This process is sometimes described as the "dead" metaphor.

But the metaphor is not dead in the interesting sense.

Its history has become sedimented into the potential of the language.

A relation that once had to be actively constructed has become an available possibility for everyone.

Conceptual evolution often works this way.

Innovation becomes convention.

Convention becomes infrastructure.

Infrastructure becomes the starting point for further innovation.

Metaphor is selective

A metaphor does not transfer an entire domain.

When we construe life as a journey, we do not import every property of physical travel.

We select particular relations: direction, obstacles, movement, departure, arrival.

This selectivity is essential.

The source domain contains a large potential of meanings.

The metaphor actualises only some of them in relation to the target.

Metaphor therefore involves selection within a potential.

It does not simply compare two objects wholesale.

This is one reason different metaphors can construe the same phenomenon differently.

Life can be a journey.

It can be a game.

It can be a battle.

It can be a story.

Each metaphor makes some relations available and leaves others in the background.

Metaphor changes what can be asked

Once a domain is construed through another, new questions become possible.

If life is a journey, we can ask:

Where are we going?

Have we lost our way?

What was the turning point?

If an argument is construed as a battle:

Who attacked?

What position was defended?

Which argument defeated the other?

These questions were not simply waiting inside the original concepts.

The metaphor made them available.

This is why metaphor is a mechanism of conceptual affordance.

It changes what can be thought, not merely how something is described.

Metaphor and scientific thought

Science provides many examples.

We speak of genetic codes, neural networks, ecological webs, information flows and molecular machines.

Such expressions are not always merely poetic.

They recruit structured relations from one domain to organise another.

A network brings nodes and connections.

A machine brings parts, functions and operations.

A code brings formal patterns and systematic correspondences.

A flow brings movement and continuity.

Each metaphor makes some distinctions easier to formulate.

It may also make others harder to see.

Metaphor therefore participates in explanation.

It helps determine what kinds of questions a theory can ask.

Metaphor can become a model

Sometimes a metaphor becomes so productive that it develops into a more explicit model.

The original comparison provides a conceptual foothold.

Researchers begin reasoning within it.

New distinctions are added.

The model is tested.

Some aspects survive.

Others are discarded.

Eventually the metaphor may become almost invisible.

The conceptual system it generated remains.

This is an important form of cultural evolution.

A metaphor can be the beginning of a conceptual potential that later becomes highly specialised.

Metaphor and image

Now we can turn toward the visual question that will occupy us in the next post.

If metaphor allows one domain of meaning to become a resource for construing another, might something analogous happen across modes?

An image is not automatically a metaphor.

A painted tree need not be a metaphor for anything.

A photograph need not be metaphorical.

A shape can be repeated for practical or decorative reasons without symbolising.

But an image can participate in a semiotic system where a visual relation is recruited to construe something beyond its immediate appearance.

A tree can become an image of ancestry.

A circle can become associated with cyclical time.

A particular animal can become associated with power, fertility or danger.

The crucial operation is not resemblance alone.

It is the recruitment of one organised relation into the construal of another.

From metaphor to representation

This gives us a new way to think about representation.

Perhaps representation is not simply the ability to copy an object.

Perhaps it involves the ability to make a relation available in another form.

A picture can preserve an appearance.

But it can also organise experience.

It can make a relation spatially available.

It can bring the absent into presence.

It can condense a network of associations into one visible form.

The image becomes a resource for further construal.

That is the direction in which our argument is now moving.

Metaphor and myth

The power of metaphor becomes even greater when several metaphors are connected.

A culture may construe the earth as a mother.

If this relation becomes established, it can generate others.

The earth can give birth.

The earth can be wounded.

The earth can be nourished.

Humans can become children.

A metaphor has become a network of possible meanings.

When such networks are organised into stories, they can become myth.

Myth can therefore be understood partly as the expansion of metaphorical relations into a larger symbolic world.

This does not mean that all myth is reducible to metaphor.

It means that metaphor provides one powerful mechanism by which meanings can become generative.

The metaphorical junction is productive

Halliday's term junction is especially apt here.

The metaphor does not simply choose one semantic category and abandon another.

The expression creates a junction.

The congruent and metaphorical meanings remain available together.

That means the metaphor has a kind of semantic surplus.

We can move between the two construals.

We can exploit their relation.

We can extend it.

We can challenge it.

This is one reason metaphor is so powerful artistically.

A metaphor can be precise without being reducible to a single paraphrase.

Its richness comes from the relation between semantic possibilities.

Meaning can become self-expanding

We can now see the broader consequence.

Once meanings can function as resources for further meanings, the semiotic system can expand without needing a completely new physical environment each time.

It can reuse itself.

A metaphor generates a new construal.

The new construal becomes conventional.

The convention becomes material for another metaphor.

A story combines earlier stories.

A genre transforms previous genres.

An image quotes another image.

A scientific model borrows from another model.

Meaning becomes cumulative.

The system acquires a history of its own transformations.

This is where conceptual evolution begins to accelerate

Biological evolution works through variation, inheritance and selection across generations.

Cultural semiosis can operate similar processes much more rapidly.

A new expression is tried.

Others adopt it.

The relation becomes familiar.

It enters the collective reservoir.

Future speakers now inherit the new possibility.

The same happens in music, art, science and myth.

An innovation becomes part of the environment in which subsequent innovations occur.

The history of meaning therefore changes the possibilities from which meaning can subsequently be made.

This is why the past can constrain and enable the future.

Metaphor and mattering

We can now reconnect metaphor with our starting point.

A metaphor can alter what distinctions become salient.

A new way of construing a phenomenon can change what seems important about it.

A society that construes an ecosystem as a machine may attend to some relations.

A society that construes it as a web may attend to others.

A person who construes a life event as a turning point may give it a significance it previously lacked.

Metaphor can therefore alter what matters.

The feedback from meaning to value has already begun.

But it is still operating through the expansion of possible construals.

The visual threshold

We are now ready to approach the image.

If meaning can become a resource for meaning, and if semantic relations can be realised through different modes, then a further possibility emerges:

a relation of meaning can itself become materially available in another mode.

A visual form can participate in a symbolic system.

A pattern can become recognisable as significant.

An image can become a resource for construal.

A representation can preserve a relation across time.

The history of visual meaning therefore becomes part of the same story.

But we should approach it carefully.

A mark is not necessarily an image.

An image is not necessarily a representation.

A representation is not necessarily a symbol.

And a symbol is not necessarily detachable from the world it signifies.

Those distinctions will matter.

One meaning can open another world

This is perhaps the deepest thing metaphor teaches us.

Meaning does not merely give us labels for a pre-existing reality.

It gives us new ways of making possibilities available.

A metaphor can reveal a relation.

The relation can become a concept.

The concept can become a convention.

The convention can become a model.

The model can generate new questions.

The questions can generate new meanings.

The semiotic system becomes capable of producing worlds of its own.

And once those worlds can be externalised in images, stories, music and other modes, they can become part of the environment within which future meaning is made.

The next step

We have therefore moved from:

difference → mattering → signal → sign

to:

sign → meaning → metaphor → new meaning potential

The next question is what happens when these new possibilities of construal can be given material form.

What happens when a relation of meaning becomes visible?

When a form can not only matter or signify, but represent?

That is where we meet the image.

And our next question is:

When does an image become a sign?

From Mattering to Meaning: IV. From Signal to Sign

A sound can make us turn our heads.

A movement can make another organism flee.

A gesture can alter what someone does next.

A rhythm can bring several people into coordination.

In each case, a difference makes a difference.

We have called this mattering. When the difference operates between systems in a way that changes their dispositions or behaviour, it can function as a signal.

But a signal is not necessarily a sign.

That distinction takes us to the threshold at the centre of this series:

How does a difference that matters become a difference that means?

A signal can simply trigger a response

Consider an alarm call.

One animal produces a particular sound. Others respond by orienting, hiding or fleeing.

The sound matters because of what it does.

The receiving organism does not need to construct a symbolic proposition equivalent to:

There is a predator nearby.

The relation can be much more direct:

signal → changed disposition

The signal has significance because it changes the possibilities available to the receiver.

This is already a remarkable achievement.

But it is not yet symbolic meaning.

A sign does something more

A sign also makes a difference to us.

A word can make us cautious.

A red light can make us stop.

A gesture can invite us to sit down.

But the sign participates in something additional.

It belongs to a semiotic system in which forms can be construed through their relations to other forms and meanings.

The red light does not merely cause braking. It belongs to a system in which particular colours, positions and sequences have conventional significance.

The word danger does not merely trigger avoidance. It makes a situation available for construal as an instance of danger.

The difference is subtle but profound.

A signal changes what happens.

A sign can change what something means.

Meaning is not hidden inside the form

This distinction also changes how we should think about signs.

It is tempting to imagine a sign as a physical form with a meaning attached to it.

A sound is produced.

A meaning sits somewhere behind it.

An image is made.

Its meaning lies inside it.

But meaning does not work like that.

A sign belongs to a system of relations.

A word means what it does partly because of the alternatives available in the language.

A traffic signal means what it does because of the system of distinctions in which it participates.

An image acquires significance through its relations to other images, practices, conventions and contexts.

Meaning therefore belongs to the system, not to the isolated form.

The particular sign is an instance within that system's meaning potential.

The importance of recurrence

How might a signal begin to acquire this new status?

One possibility is through recurrence.

A particular signal occurs repeatedly.

A response becomes established.

Others learn the pattern.

The signal becomes recognisable.

Its relations to other signals become stable.

Eventually the form can occupy a more general position within the social system.

This does not mean that recurrence automatically creates meaning.

Recognition is not yet semiosis.

But recurrence can create the conditions under which a form becomes something more than a one-off event.

It becomes a recognisable difference within a shared repertoire of distinctions.

From response to recognition

This gives us several possibilities that should not be collapsed.

A system can respond to something without recognising it as a recurring form.

It can recognise a recurring form without treating it symbolically.

And it can eventually participate in a semiotic system in which the form has a conventional meaning.

We might therefore imagine a loose progression:

response → recognition → social stabilisation → symbolic construal

The progression is not a rigid evolutionary ladder.

These relations can coexist.

But it helps us see that the emergence of meaning need not be a single event.

A sign is the result of a new mode of organisation becoming possible.

Social stabilisation

Meaning is fundamentally social in an important sense.

A private association can be powerful without being a cultural sign.

A particular song may remind me of my childhood.

That association matters.

But it is not thereby part of a shared symbolic convention.

A sign must be available beyond one private history.

It must participate in a system of distinctions that others can recognise and use.

This is why social stabilisation matters.

A form becomes reproducible.

Its use becomes recognisable.

Its alternatives become meaningful.

Its relations to other forms become established.

The community has acquired a new semiotic resource.

Convention expands possibility

Convention gives significance a new kind of portability.

A pattern that once mattered in one interaction can now be reproduced in another.

A gesture can travel.

A word can be used in new situations.

A symbol can survive the event that first gave it significance.

A musical motif can recur across an entire film.

The sign therefore allows a relation to become portable across contexts.

That is one of the great powers of semiosis.

Something that once mattered in a particular situation can become part of a larger potential for meaning.

Presence and absence

The ability to carry meaning beyond its original context creates another extraordinary possibility.

A sign can refer to what is not present.

A person's name can be used when the person is absent.

A photograph can evoke someone who has died.

A map can represent a distant landscape.

A story can preserve a past event.

A musical theme can invoke a character who does not appear on screen.

The sign therefore extends the range of social presence.

The absent can become symbolically available.

This is something a simple signal need not do.

Music crosses the threshold

Music gives us a particularly revealing example.

A rhythm can coordinate a group without representing anything.

A melody can create expectation without referring to anything beyond itself.

A piece can become personally significant through memory without acquiring a determinate semantic content.

Then something changes.

A recurring melody becomes associated with a character in a film.

The audience hears it and anticipates the character.

The character need not appear.

The musical figure now participates in a symbolic relation.

Its musical properties remain.

But it has acquired another function.

The music has been recruited into semiosis.

This is an important distinction.

We do not have to conclude that music, considered in itself, is a symbolic system.

It is enough to recognise that music can become a participant in a larger semiotic system.

The film score

This is one reason the film score is such a useful case.

A musical passage may already matter because of its rhythm, timbre, harmony and affective force.

A film can then establish a recurring relation between that passage and a character, place, memory or idea.

Repetition stabilises the association.

The musical event becomes a sign within the film.

And then the film can manipulate the sign.

Play it before the character appears.

Distort it when the character is in danger.

Return to it when a memory is recovered.

Place it against an unexpected image.

The musical resource can now participate in increasingly complex meanings.

Yet it remains music throughout.

A triumphant disaster

Consider the striking experiment of placing triumphant music over footage of a natural disaster.

The music has its own musical organisation and cultural associations.

The images construe catastrophe.

Placed together, they can produce irony, absurdity, satire or something darker.

Where is that meaning?

Not in the music alone.

Not in the images alone.

It arises from their relation within a larger semiotic configuration.

The music has become meaningful through its participation in a system larger than itself.

This is a clue we will return to later.

A sign is a relation within relations

We can now formulate the distinction more carefully.

A signal is a difference that matters within an interaction.

A sign is a difference that participates in a system of symbolic relations.

The sign therefore belongs to a network.

It can be contrasted with other signs.

Combined with them.

Interpreted through them.

Reused in new contexts.

Reinterpreted in the light of later signs.

Its meaning can evolve because its relations can evolve.

This is why meaning is not something a sign possesses permanently.

The sign has a potential

A semiotic system therefore contains a meaning potential.

It is not simply a collection of established signs.

It contains structured possibilities for making meaning.

A particular sign is an instance within that potential.

A novel use can extend the potential.

A convention can stabilise it.

A metaphor can reorganise it.

Different modes can contribute to it.

The semiotic system is therefore capable of evolving.

The potential changes as new meanings become socially available.

What changes at the threshold?

We can now answer our central question.

What is added when a signal becomes a sign?

Not necessarily a stronger response.

Not necessarily greater complexity.

Rather:

the difference becomes available for symbolic construal.

Instead of merely changing another system's behaviour, it can become something through which participants construe another distinction.

A warning sound can become a symbol of danger.

A gesture can become a conventional sign of agreement.

An image can come to stand for an absent person.

A melody can signify a character.

A word can make an experience categorisable.

The system has acquired a new possibility: meaning can be made from the difference.

The emergence of reference

Once this possibility exists, reference can develop.

A sign can stand in a relation to something beyond the immediate event.

The thing referred to may be present or absent.

Concrete or abstract.

Actual or imagined.

Reference therefore expands the range of what a social system can discuss and remember.

But reference is not the whole of meaning.

A sign also belongs to a system of contrasts and relations.

The word home, for example, acquires some of its possibilities from its relation to words and concepts such as away, family, place, belonging and many others.

A sign does not simply point outward.

It also participates inwardly in the system that gives it meaning.

Meaning makes difference portable

This may be the deepest transformation.

Before semiosis, a difference can matter in the situation in which it occurs.

Once it becomes a sign, the distinction can travel.

It can be remembered.

Repeated.

Combined.

Taught.

Reinterpreted.

A community can preserve a distinction long after the original event has disappeared.

This gives culture a new kind of memory.

It also gives culture a new kind of future.

Because signs can be reused, the past can become a resource for constructing possibilities that did not previously exist.

From signal to sign

We can therefore see the path we have travelled.

A difference occurs within a field of possibilities.

It matters because of its consequences.

When its consequences operate between systems, it can function as a signal.

Signals can become socially stabilised.

Stable differences can become recognisable.

And when a form enters a semiotic potential, it can become a sign.

The difference is no longer merely something that happens.

It has become something that can be construed.

That is the threshold into meaning.

But something even more remarkable happens after that.

Once a system can make one thing mean something, it acquires the possibility of making meanings themselves into resources.

A meaning can be related to another meaning.

A process can be construed as a thing.

A journey can construe a life.

A network can construe a society.

A musical figure can construe a character.

The semiotic system begins to work with its own resources.

And that brings us to the next transformation:

What happens when meanings become resources for making further meanings?

From Mattering to Meaning: III. When a Difference Matters

We have established two things.

A system has a potential: a structured field of possibilities.

An event can be an instance: one particular actualisation within that field.

But possibility alone does not give us value.

A system can actualise one possibility rather than another without either possibility mattering very much.

So we can now ask the question at the heart of this post:

When does a difference matter?

The answer begins with consequence.

A difference matters when its particularity makes a consequential difference to the organisation of a system.

That sounds simple.

But it takes us into the origins of value.

Not every difference matters

The world is full of differences.

One patch of light differs from another.

The air changes temperature.

A sound occurs.

A chemical concentration rises.

A movement takes place.

Most of these differences are irrelevant to most systems.

Others are consequential.

A tiny change in temperature can affect an organism's regulation.

A faint sound can redirect attention.

A chemical trace can trigger a behavioural response.

A subtle change in rhythm can alter an entire musical performance.

The size of the difference is therefore not what makes it matter.

What matters is its consequence within an organised system.

We can put the idea simply:

A difference matters when it changes what the system can do, become or maintain.

Value is relational

This means that value is not simply a property of an object.

A sound does not possess value in isolation.

It matters to an organism.

A gesture matters within an interaction.

A musical event matters within a performance.

A place matters within a history of relations.

The same event can therefore matter differently in different systems.

A sound that means nothing to one listener may be immensely important to another.

A temperature change that is trivial for one organism may be dangerous for another.

Value is relational because consequence is relational.

Something matters to something.

Biological value

This brings us to the biological roots of value.

Gerald Edelman's idea of biological value is useful here because it locates value within the organisation of living systems rather than treating it as a later psychological addition.

An organism cannot respond equally to every possible state.

Its continued organisation depends upon differences among conditions.

Some support viability.

Some threaten it.

Some changes recruit responses.

Others do not.

The organism therefore inhabits a world that is already differentially structured according to consequence.

It does not first encounter a completely neutral world and then add value to it.

Its organisation has already made some differences matter.

Mattering without evaluation

This does not require conscious judgement.

An organism need not think:

This is valuable.

A change in temperature can affect it before it knows anything about temperature.

A sound can alter its behaviour before it identifies its source.

A chemical signal can change its internal state without ever becoming a symbolic representation.

Value is therefore not synonymous with preference.

It is a feature of the organisation of a system that some differences have greater consequences than others.

This is one reason mattering is a useful term.

It allows us to talk about significance without assuming a mind standing outside the event and evaluating it.

A world of differential consequence

We can therefore imagine a living system as inhabiting a field in which possibilities are not equivalent.

Some states are easier to maintain.

Some are dangerous.

Some changes open possibilities.

Others close them.

The system is organised around these differences.

Its responses are selective.

Its history matters.

Its present condition matters.

The same event can therefore have different consequences depending on the state of the system encountering it.

Mattering is dynamic.

It is not simply a fixed property of a stimulus.

The instance matters because it changes the future

This returns us to the distinction from the previous post.

An instance is one actualisation within a potential.

Why should that actualisation matter?

Because it can alter the possibilities that follow.

A particular event changes what the system can do next.

A nutrient makes some metabolic processes possible.

A threatening movement makes escape more urgent.

A musical phrase changes what can plausibly follow.

A word changes the possibilities of a conversation.

Mattering is therefore closely connected to future possibility.

An instance matters partly because it changes the field from which subsequent instances can arise.

The actual enters the history of the possible.

Music makes this particularly clear

Consider a musical phrase.

A performer begins with a potential for many possible continuations.

A particular chord is played.

That chord changes what the listener expects.

A phrase can establish a direction.

A delay can prolong it.

A deviation can disrupt it.

A return can fulfil an expectation.

The musical event matters because it changes the possibilities of the music that follows.

This is a form of value that does not depend upon symbolic representation.

The event is significant because of its position within an organised temporal system.

The groove

The same principle operates socially within an ensemble.

A drummer's timing affects the bassist.

The bassist responds.

The drummer hears the response.

Other players adjust.

The listeners become coupled to the resulting pattern.

A tiny difference in timing can change the character of the whole performance.

The difference matters because it reorganises relationships.

This is not merely an individual response.

It is value distributed across a system of interaction.

The groove is a particularly vivid example of socially emergent value.

Its significance is not contained in any one player's action.

It arises from the consequences that circulate among the participants.

From organism to organism

This brings us to an important expansion of the idea of value.

Within an organism, a difference can matter because it alters internal organisation.

Between organisms, a difference can matter because it alters interaction.

One organism becomes part of another's environment.

A movement can attract or repel.

A sound can recruit or inhibit.

A posture can invite or threaten.

A gesture can coordinate action.

Mattering has therefore become interorganism.

The value of an instance can now belong partly to the relation between systems.

And this is where the possibility of signalling begins to emerge.

The social difference

Suppose one organism changes its behaviour and another responds.

The response changes the first organism's possibilities.

The first adjusts again.

The second responds again.

The interaction develops a pattern.

What began as an event has become part of a relation.

Now a particular instance can matter not merely because of its effect on one organism but because it changes the organisation of the interaction itself.

A social system is beginning to appear.

This does not yet require symbolic meaning.

Coordination can emerge through differences that matter.

Repetition gives value a history

An instance can also become significant through repetition.

A single event may matter intensely and then disappear.

A recurring event becomes familiar.

Familiarity creates expectation.

Expectation changes the consequences of subsequent instances.

A repeated pattern can become socially stabilised.

A practice can form.

The significance of the original difference may become part of a history.

This gives us a possible pathway:

mattering → repetition → expectation → practice

The sequence is not inevitable.

But it shows how value can become durable.

From private significance to shared significance

A difference may initially matter only to one organism.

Over time, similar relations can matter to several.

A particular place can become important to a community.

A song can become associated with an event.

A ritual action can acquire collective significance.

A musical pattern can become part of a shared practice.

The value is no longer merely individual.

It is becoming social.

This is one of the ways culture accumulates.

It does not begin with an archive of symbols.

It can begin with histories of what has mattered.

Repertoire and what can become salient

Our previous discussion of meaning potential gives us one further insight.

Participants do not all encounter a cultural world with identical resources.

Their repertoires differ.

This affects which distinctions they can readily notice and construe.

A trained musician may hear a rhythmic relation that another listener barely notices.

Someone familiar with a tradition may recognise a gesture that appears ordinary to an outsider.

A scientific observer may notice a pattern in an image that another person sees only as noise.

This means that repertoire shapes the field of possible salience.

But it is important not to confuse salience with value.

A distinction can be available for noticing without being consequential.

So we can preserve the distinction:

repertoire shapes access to distinctions; consequence makes a distinction matter.

Mattering is not interpretation

This distinction also prevents us from making value dependent upon conscious interpretation.

An organism can respond before it interprets.

A performer can coordinate without verbalising what they are doing.

A listener can feel rhythmic tension without formulating a theory of harmony.

A social practice can persist without an explicit account of its value.

Meaning may later provide such an account.

But mattering can precede it.

This is why the emergence of meaning must be explained from a world that already possesses organised value.

When value becomes social

As patterns of mattering stabilise, they can become part of shared practice.

A group may learn what to attend to.

What to avoid.

What to repeat.

What to celebrate.

What to protect.

The significance of an instance becomes distributed across the social system.

At this point, one organism's production of a particular instance can matter predictably to others.

And that gives us a new possibility:

signalling.

The signal

A signal is an instance that matters within a relation between systems.

A sound can recruit a response.

A gesture can alter another organism's behaviour.

A rhythmic cue can coordinate an ensemble.

The crucial point is that the signal need not represent anything.

Its significance lies in its consequences.

We can represent the basic relation like this:

instance → changed disposition

The receiver does not have to formulate a symbolic interpretation.

The instance matters because it changes what the receiver can or is likely to do.

That is enough for signalling.

Signal before sign

The distinction between signal and sign will become central to the rest of our investigation.

A signal can matter without meaning.

A sign can mean because it participates in a semiotic system.

The sign is not simply a stronger or more sophisticated signal.

It introduces a new kind of organisation.

The difference becomes available not merely to response but to symbolic construal.

We are now approaching the threshold at which mattering becomes meaning.

But the transition is not automatic

Not every signal becomes a sign.

A bird's alarm call can be highly effective without becoming symbolic in the human sense.

A rhythmic cue can coordinate a performance without representing anything.

A repeated social behaviour can become habitual without becoming a sign.

Mattering can stabilise.

Signalling can stabilise.

And yet semiosis need not follow.

The emergence of meaning therefore requires something additional.

We will need to ask what kind of system can make a difference available as a difference that can be construed.

What we have learned so far

We began with possibility.

A potential provides structured alternatives.

An instance actualises one of them.

Now we have added value.

An instance matters when its particularity has consequences for the organisation of a system.

Those consequences can occur within an organism.

They can occur between organisms.

They can become socially distributed.

Repeated significance can produce expectation and practice.

And when a consequential difference operates between systems, signalling becomes possible.

We have therefore moved from:

possibility → actuality

to:

actuality → consequence → value → signalling

The next step is the decisive one.

At some point, a difference that matters may become available not merely to response but to construal.

Something can begin to function not only as an event that changes what another system does, but as a form through which something can be understood.

That is where the sign appears.

When does a signal become a sign?

From Mattering to Meaning: II. Possibility and Actuality

A difference does not occur in isolation.

A particular sound is one sound among possible sounds. A particular utterance is one utterance among possible utterances. A particular action is one action among possible actions.

The particular becomes intelligible partly because there are alternatives.

This gives us the next step in our investigation:

How does a possibility become an actuality?

The answer takes us to the relation between potential and instance.

Potential is not an invisible thing

The word potential can be misleading.

It might suggest that behind every actual event there is some hidden object called its potential, waiting to emerge.

That is not what we mean.

A potential is not another thing.

It is a structured range of possibilities.

A language has a potential for meaning.

A musical system has a potential for musical organisation.

A social practice has a potential for action.

A living system has possibilities for states and responses.

The potential therefore belongs to the organisation of a system.

It concerns what can happen within that organisation.

An instance is one particular actualisation of those possibilities.

potential ↔ instance

This is not a relation between two separate things. They are complementary perspectives on the same organised process.

Possibility is structured

Potential does not mean that anything whatsoever is possible.

A language does not permit every conceivable combination of words.

A musical system does not make every possible sound equally available as a musical choice.

A social practice does not make every imaginable action intelligible within itself.

Possibility is constrained.

Indeed, constraint is part of what makes a potential a potential of a particular kind.

A musical tradition makes some things easy to produce and recognise, others difficult, and still others almost unintelligible within its conventions.

The same is true of language and social practice.

A potential is therefore not an empty space.

It is a structured field of alternatives.

Instance as actualisation

A particular event selects one path through that field.

A speaker produces one utterance rather than another.

A musician chooses one phrasing rather than another.

A participant performs one action rather than another.

The result is an instance.

We can therefore say that a potential is actualised in an instance.

The word actualised matters here.

We are not saying that the potential is transformed into a different substance. Nor are we saying that the potential somehow manufactures the event.

We are saying that a particular event occurs as one determinate possibility within a larger field of possibilities.

The instance is particular.

The potential is more general.

Their relation makes the particular intelligible without reducing it to the general.

Language and utterance

Language offers a familiar example.

A sentence spoken at a particular moment is a physical event. It has a particular speaker, time, place and intonation.

But we recognise it as an utterance in a language because it belongs to a much larger meaning potential.

The language makes countless possible utterances available.

The speaker actualises one of them.

The utterance is therefore both particular and recognisable as belonging to something larger.

It does not need to be identical to another utterance to belong to the same potential.

Indeed, its individuality depends upon the possibility of saying something else.

Music and performance

Music makes the same relation audible.

A performance is a particular event.

It has a particular tempo, articulation, dynamic profile, balance and phrasing.

Another musician might perform the same piece differently.

Both performances can nevertheless belong to the same musical potential.

Neither has to be a perfect copy of some ideal performance.

Each is a particular actualisation of possibilities offered by the musical system.

This also explains why a musical performance can surprise us without becoming unintelligible.

A performer can do something unexpected within the potential.

The surprise comes from the difference between what was possible, what was expected, and what was actually selected.

The potential exceeds the instance

No single instance exhausts its potential.

One sentence does not exhaust a language.

One performance does not exhaust a musical tradition.

One enactment does not exhaust a social practice.

The potential therefore always exceeds the actuality.

This excess is important because it makes novelty possible.

A new utterance can be produced.

A new musical phrase can be invented.

A familiar practice can be adapted to a new circumstance.

A new image can be created from an existing visual tradition.

Novelty does not necessarily require escaping the system.

A new instance can reveal a possibility already contained within it.

And occasionally an unusual instance can enlarge the potential itself.

The instance can change the potential

This is where the relation becomes evolutionary.

A new musical technique may be taken up by other musicians.

A new expression may spread through a language.

A new artistic practice may become a convention.

A new social practice may become normal.

What began as one actualisation can alter what later participants regard as possible.

The potential is therefore not a fixed catalogue.

It has a history.

It contains possibilities inherited from earlier actualisations, but those possibilities can be extended, restricted or reorganised by what happens.

So the relation is recursive:

potential → instance → altered potential

The present can change the possibilities of the future.

Potential and expectation

A potential also provides the background against which expectation becomes possible.

A rhythm establishes possibilities for what may happen next.

A language makes some continuations more likely or more recognisable than others.

A social practice establishes expectations about what participants will do.

This is why particular events can matter.

A difference is significant partly because it occurs against an organised field of alternatives.

A beat placed where expected may stabilise a pattern.

A beat placed unexpectedly may disrupt it.

A familiar phrase may confirm an expectation.

An unusual phrase may force a new construal.

Potential therefore provides the background against which actuality acquires consequence.

The climate and the weather

Climate and weather provide a useful analogy.

Today's weather is a particular configuration of atmospheric conditions.

Climate concerns longer-term patterns and the range of conditions characteristic of a region.

One storm is not the climate.

Nor is climate simply a collection of individual storms.

They are complementary perspectives on atmospheric organisation.

Potential and instance can be understood in a similar way.

The potential concerns the structured field of possibilities.

The instance concerns one particular actualisation within that field.

The analogy is not exact, but it helps us resist the temptation to imagine potential and instance as two separate entities.

Subpotentials

The movement from potential to instance does not have to be immediate.

A broad potential can contain subpotentials: more specialised regions of possibility.

A language, for example, contains more specialised possibilities associated with different contexts of use.

A musical culture can contain increasingly specific traditions and practices.

A broader social practice can contain more specialised forms of action.

The general relation can therefore be represented schematically as:

potential → subpotential → instance

From the other pole, the same middle level can be viewed as an instance type: a recognisable kind of instance recurring within the broader potential.

The two descriptions reflect the complementary perspectives we began with.

From the potential side, we see a subpotential.

From the instance side, we see an instance type.

We need not choose between them.

The terminology simply reminds us that the middle of the cline can be viewed from either pole.

The actual is more determinate

Potential and instance are therefore not symmetrical in every respect.

The potential leaves alternatives open.

The instance selects one determinate configuration.

This means that actualisation involves determination.

A potential may contain many possible ways of continuing.

An instance commits the system, at least for the moment, to one of them.

A speaker has possibilities for what to say and then says something particular.

A musician has possibilities for how a phrase might unfold and then plays one version.

A participant has possible actions and then performs one.

Actuality is therefore possibility made determinate.

But actuality does not exhaust possibility

At the same time, the instance does not close the potential.

The musician's choice becomes the starting point for further choices.

The utterance changes the possibilities of the conversation.

The social action changes what others can do next.

Each actuality therefore enters a continuing field of possibility.

This gives us another important relation:

actuality opens further possibility.

The instance is not the end of the potential.

It changes the conditions under which the next instance can occur.

The world is therefore not a sequence of isolated actual events.

It is a history of actualisations continually reshaping what is possible next.

Why this matters for mattering

We can now see why potential and instance belong near the beginning of our investigation of meaning.

Something can matter partly because it is a particular actualisation among alternatives.

A difference becomes discernible against a field of possibilities.

A choice changes what can happen next.

A deviation can matter because it departs from an established potential.

A return can matter because it re-actualises something that had become expected.

Mattering therefore depends upon more than isolated events.

It depends upon structured possibility.

Potential gives us the field.

Instance gives us the particular event.

Value will enter when that particular event has consequences for an organised system.

That is our next step.

What this does not yet explain

We still have not explained why one actualisation should matter more than another.

Two possible events can both occur within the same potential.

One may be consequential.

The other may be irrelevant.

A language permits many sentences, but some change a conversation dramatically while others do not.

A musical system permits many possible phrases, but some transform a performance while others pass almost unnoticed.

A social practice permits many actions, but some alter relationships and others do nothing significant.

Potential gives us possibility.

It does not by itself give us value.

For that, we need consequence.

From possibility to actuality, and from actuality to value

We can now see the shape of the argument.

A system has a structured potential.

A particular possibility is actualised.

That actuality changes the subsequent field of possibilities.

Sometimes the change has consequences for an organism, an interaction or a social system.

Then the instance matters.

So the next step is not another theory of possibility.

It is a theory of value.

We began this series by asking how meaning could emerge from a world already capable of mattering.

We can now formulate the first part of the answer:

Mattering requires particular differences within a field of structured possibility.

The potential provides the alternatives.

The instance makes one of them actual.

And when that actuality makes a consequential difference, it acquires value.

That is where we are going next.

When does an instance matter?