Dreams, Meaning, and Instantiation: A Systemic Functional Perspective

A dream is an experience that unfolds outside of volitional control. But when do dreams instantiate meaning? Is meaning present in the dream itself, or only when we recall and articulate it? These questions cut to the heart of how we construe experience and meaning, particularly from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL).

Instantiating Meaning: Dreaming vs. Recalling

If we take meaning instantiation as the actualisation of meaning potential, then the experience of dreaming itself is an instantiation of meaning. However, it is an internal instantiation, one that remains within the realm of mental projection. When we recall and recount a dream, we instantiate meaning again—this time verbally, in wording that others (and even our own conscious mind) can engage with explicitly.

This distinction aligns with the SFL notion of process types and their levels of projection:

• Mental processes (e.g., dreaming, imagining, remembering) project meaning, which exists internally at the semantic level.

• Verbal processes (e.g., recounting, describing, narrating) project wording, which realises meaning externally at the lexicogrammatical level.

In this model, dreaming is not merely the generation of potential meaning but an actual instance of meaning at the level of mental projection. The difference between a dream and conscious thought is not that one is meaningful and the other is not, but rather that dreaming operates as an unconscious projection rather than a conscious one.

Dreams as Internalised Discourse

A crucial point follows from this: dreams are not some pre-linguistic, ineffable semiotic system distinct from language. Rather, they are construed within the same semiotic system as waking language use, but in a different mode. The meanings of dreams are the meanings of language because we construe perceptual experiences—even those generated in dreams—as linguistic meanings.

However, because dreams are instantiated in a non-verbalised mode, their structure differs from conventional verbal discourse. Dream logic often operates associatively rather than propositionally, metaphorically rather than literally, and multimodally rather than strictly linguistically. This is why the experience of dreaming often feels difficult to articulate—it is not that dreams are beyond language, but that they were not originally structured in verbal terms. Translating a dream into words requires restructuring the meanings in a different semiotic mode.

Implications for Meaning-Making

This perspective suggests that:

1. Dreaming is an instantiation of meaning, but internally. It is a semiotic process in which experience is construed as meaning at the level of mental projection.

2. Recounting a dream is a second instantiation, but verbally. This process reconfigures the dream’s meaning into a mode that can be explicitly analysed and shared.

3. Dreams are not pre-linguistic, but unconsciously projected linguistic meanings. They follow different organisational principles from waking thought but are still part of the linguistic semiotic system.

The ‘ineffability’ of dreams, then, is not because they exist outside of language, but because they were instantiated in a different mode of linguistic meaning. Converting them into words is not the act of imposing meaning but of restructuring meaning into a new semiotic form. In this way, dreams—and our struggles to articulate them—become a fascinating site of meaning-making, revealing the complexities of instantiation across different modes of experience.