From Choice to Change: Integrating Semogenesis, Instantiation, Individuation, and Reconstrual

In recent posts, we’ve traced how meaning is actualised (through instantiation), personalised (through individuation), and transformed (through reconstrual). We’ve also introduced the metaphor of delicacy in flux to describe the dynamic, evolving nature of fine-grained system choices. Now, we take a step back and weave these threads together through the lens of semogenesis—the generation of meaning across three interconnected time-scales: logogenesis, ontogenesis, and phylogenesis.

What emerges is a picture of language as a living, moving system: shaped by its use in the moment, sculpted over a lifetime, and reoriented through cultural history.

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Logogenesis and Instantiation: Meaning in the Moment

Logogenesis refers to how meaning unfolds in context, moment by moment. It is the time-scale of discourse.

Here, meaning potential becomes actualised through instantiation:

• The system is activated by context.

• Delicate choices are made—some habitual, some novel.

• These choices leave faint impressions on the system.

In this frame, delicacy in flux captures the immediacy of meaning in motion. The semiotic system breathes with each utterance.

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Ontogenesis and Individuation: Meaning in the Life-Course

Ontogenesis traces the emergence of meaning potential across a person’s development. It is the time-scale of learning and becoming.

Here, the system is individuated:

• Some resources are acquired early; others remain inaccessible.

• Social location, experience, and interaction shape the repertoire.

• What is delicate for one may be basic for another.

Here, delicacy in flux signals the differentiation of the system across persons. Meaning potential is both shared and uneven.

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Phylogenesis and Reconstrual: Meaning in Cultural Evolution

Phylogenesis reflects the transformation of meaning systems across generations. It is the time-scale of cultural semiosis.

Here, meaning is reconstrued:

• Systems shift as practices, disciplines, and ideologies evolve.

• What was once myth may become science—or vice versa.

• New delicacies emerge, old ones fade.

Here, delicacy in flux refers to the historical reorganisation of the system itself.

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Integration: A Living Model of Meaning

By aligning these three dimensions, we begin to see a recursive ecology:

Across all three orders:

• The system is not fixed, but responsive.

• Delicacy is not static, but contingent.

• Meaning is not stored, but lived.

Language is a history of delicate becoming—moment by moment, person by person, culture by culture.

This is the power of semogenesis: to hold together the pulse of choice, the arc of development, and the sweep of history within a single, evolving semiotic field.

And this is the role of a theory of meaning that lives in time: not to describe a finished system, but to map its flux.