In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), meaning-making is also seen as a relational process. A meaner (the participant who makes meaning) does not stand outside the system of meaning but is shaped by it — the meaner is inextricably entangled within the semiotic field, and their construals instantiate potential meanings from a web of relations. This entanglement means that meaning-making is not simply the isolated act of a conscious individual, but the collapsing of a field of potentialities — a dynamic interaction between what can be meant and who is meaning.
1. The Meaner and the Field of Potential
In the quantum metaphor, the meaner is the observer — but unlike a detached observer in classical physics, the meaner is a participant in the act of observation. The semiotic field, like the quantum system, is not a passive backdrop but a co-constitutive environment. The meaner and the field are entangled in a relational system — the field influences the meaner, and the meaner influences the field. This dynamic interaction is the collapse of the potentialities inherent in the system.
For example, when we perceive an object, we are not passively receiving information; we are actively participating in the instantiation of a meaning. Our perception is shaped by our past experiences, social contexts, and the affordances of the environment. These influences act as the semiotic ‘field’ that conditions what we can see, what we can desire, what we can know. Our perception doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s a collapse of possibilities, shaped by relational forces.
Similarly, when we experience emotions like love or fear, we are not merely ‘feeling’ a private, inner state. Instead, those emotions emerge from interactions within our field — with other people, objects, or even our past experiences. Love is not a static state within us; it is the collapse of relational potentials that involve our histories, our attachments, and our social and cultural contexts. Fear arises from an entangled set of past experiences, future possibilities, and relational dynamics that determine the specific collapse of that emotional wavefunction.
The meaner does not observe from outside the field; they are an active participant in the collapse of relational potentials.
2. The Relational Field: Meaning Is Co-Constructed
This shift in perspective — from the meaner as an isolated agent to the meaner as an entangled participant — has profound implications for understanding semiotic processes. Meaning is not just “in the head” of the individual, nor is it something imposed on the world. Meaning emerges through the interaction between the meaner and the field. The field of potential meanings is shaped by social, cultural, historical, and interpersonal contexts. These contexts don’t just sit passively; they co-create meaning with the meaner.
This also applies to verbal processes in SFL. When we speak, we are not simply transmitting pre-formed ideas from one mind to another. Language itself is a collapse of semiotic potentials that emerge from the relationship between the speaker and the cultural and social systems that structure their language. In other words, the language we speak is not a neutral medium; it is a relational process through which meaning is continually co-constructed. The utterance is an instantiation of a field of possibilities, shaped by the interference of social codes, personal histories, and the immediate context.
When we speak, we collapse possibilities, co-creating meaning with the world around us.
3. The Recursive Semiotic Field: Memory, Identity, and Meaning
Just as quantum mechanics suggests that past measurements affect future outcomes (through entanglement), in our semiotic model, past collapses influence future ones. Our meanings are recursive, building upon previous collapses of potentialities. Memory, as the semiotic trace of past meanings, shapes how we interpret the present.
For example, when we hear a word or a phrase, our past experiences — our history of meaning — collapse the wavefunction of that word, shaping the interpretation in the present. If someone says "freedom," the meaning of that word is not simply what it is in a dictionary but is a collapse of all the relational potentialities attached to that term in our past: our political beliefs, our family dynamics, our understanding of history. The word “freedom” carries within it the residue of all the meanings that have been collapsed in the past.
This is also how identity works in a semiotic field: identity is a recursive wavefunction, influenced by past collapses and shaping future construals. Our sense of self is not static but is continually redefined through the collapse of potentialities in each act of meaning. Who we are is not a pre-existing essence, but a relational construct that emerges through the entanglement of past and present meanings.
Identity is not a fixed point but a dynamic, recursive collapse within an entangled semiotic field.
By diving into the entangled meaner, we see meaning-making as a dynamic, co-constructed process, shaped by the relational field in which it unfolds. The collapse of potentialities is not a solitary act of the individual mind but a co-instantiation between the meaner and their cultural, social, and historical context.
This brings us back to the quantum metaphor: meaning is not something that just emerges from the individual; it is a process shaped by entanglement, both with other minds and with the cultural systems that structure our perceptions, emotions, desires, and cognition.
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