This is the nature of semiosis: not additive, but relational. Meaning arises not from what a form “is” but from how it is selected in contrast with what it is not, in a system that only functions because it is shared.
But that system is not neutral. It is charged with resonance and dissonance.
Meaning as Vibration, Not Location
When you speak, think, gesture, or write, you’re not placing a fixed object into a void. You’re striking a chord. Your construal of experience hums against the background of what could have been construed — and what others have construed before you.
Some meanings resonate — they strike a familiar chord, they stabilise, they echo. These are the meanings that feel “obvious,” “natural,” “what everyone knows.” Others jar — they rub against expected patterns, dislodge assumptions, provoke re-tuning. These are dissonant meanings, and they often signal potential for transformation.
This is not just metaphor. It’s a model. Just as in a physical field, where particles respond to forces and potentials, the semiotic field is shaped by systemic pressures and tensions — the affordances and resistances of culture, discourse, and social relation.
The Relational Ontology of Meaning
This view implies a relational ontology. Meanings don’t exist in isolation. They are not properties of words, minds, or objects. They are relations: selections made in systems of potential, shaped by prior selections and shaping future ones. They resonate not just within a single utterance, but across the broader field of meaning itself.
And this field is collective.
We do not generate meaning alone. Even our most private construals are shaped by systems we did not invent — by grammars, codes, conventions, histories. The field of resonance is shared, even when individual patterns of selection differ. That’s why meaning can fail, or rupture, or change. It’s also why it can be felt — sometimes intensely — even in silence.
Tuning and De-tuning the Field
This model invites us to think not just about individual acts of meaning-making, but about their cumulative effects. When a certain construal is repeated, reinforced, canonised — it amplifies. It creates a resonance chamber. The more a meaning resonates, the more naturalised it becomes, until we forget it is a construal at all.
But the field can be tuned otherwise.
A single dissonant act may not collapse the system, but enough of them, or one at the right moment, can retune the whole field. It’s through these ruptures that new potentials open up — not from outside the field, but from within its dynamics.
Dissonance is not noise. It’s possibility.
Interpersonal Resonance
Resonance doesn’t just operate at the level of systems and cultures. It also hums between people. When we speak to each other — even when we misunderstand — we are negotiating resonance. We are testing for shared frequencies, adjusting our selections in real time, seeking alignment or registering difference.
Some conversations amplify us. Others distort. Some dissonances are generative; others are exclusions in disguise.
To become more aware of resonance is to become more attuned to the ethics of meaning-making. Whose meanings are amplified? Whose are muffled? Where does dissonance get punished, and where is it cultivated?
Towards a Field Ethics
If meaning is a field phenomenon, then ethics is not only about what we say, but how we affect the field. What patterns do we stabilise or disrupt? What potentials do we amplify or suppress? What resonances do we invite or ignore?
Resonance is not harmony. It is relational intensity. Sometimes the most ethical thing to do is to produce dissonance — to destabilise a field that has grown too rigid, too exclusive, too false.
We are all tuning forks in this system. We do not control the field, but we participate in its shaping. And when we mean — when we really mean — we do more than express ourselves. We shift the system.
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