In the previous post, we outlined how semiotic systems instantiate meaning through the symbolic activity of consciousness, internally through mental processes and externally through verbal processes. We distinguished between first-order and second-order meaning: the former being the construal of experience (phenomena), the latter the construal of meaning itself (metaphenomena), typically through projection. In this post, we extend that model to include a typology of construed realities.
Meaning arises when experience is construed through symbolic processes. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this symbolic construal is enacted by mental and verbal processes. Each process type instantiates meaning by construing a particular kind of symbolic reality:
| Process Type | Construes | Meaning Order | Reality Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perception | Experience (sensory) | First-order | Perceptual reality |
| Emotion | Experience (affective) | First-order | Emotional reality |
| Cognition (non-human) | Situational anticipation, memory | First-order | Cognitive reality |
| Desideration (non-human) | Needs, tendencies, goals | First-order | Desiderative reality |
| Cognition (human) | Projected knowledge, belief | Second-order | Meta-cognitive reality |
| Desideration (human) | Projected wants, obligations | Second-order | Meta-desiderative reality |
| Verbal processes | Projected meanings as locutions | Second-order | Interpersonal-semiotic reality |
All organisms capable of perception or emotion construe perceptual and emotional realities. Similarly, many species appear to instantiate forms of cognitive and desiderative meaning as well. These construals remain within the domain of first-order meaning: they construe experience directly as meaning.
However, language-using humans are capable of projecting meaning as meaning. This capacity gives rise to second-order meaning: the construal of metaphenomena. The realities construed by human cognition and desideration in this mode can be described as meta-realities.
Meta-cognitive reality: projected knowledge, belief, supposition — meanings about what is known.
Meta-desiderative reality: projected wants, obligations, intentions — meanings about what is desired or demanded.
These meta-realities are made intersubjectively negotiable through verbal processes, which realise projected meanings as locutions. Verbal processes thereby instantiate interpersonal-semiotic reality — not just internal symbolic activity, but meaning made public.
The value of this typology is that it allows us to account for both the continuity and the evolution of symbolic meaning:
All perceiving organisms instantiate first-order realities.
Language enables the projection of meaning as meaning: second-order construals of meta-reality.
This move also helps us clarify the difference between experience, meaning, and reality within the semiotic ontology of SFL:
Experience is not yet meaning.
Meaning arises through construal.
Reality, in this framework, is always a symbolic construct: the world as construed by semiotic systems.
In the next post, we will return to the theme of instantiation and explore how these different orders of meaning and types of reality inform a typology of semiotic instantiation itself.
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