Rethinking Meaning How meaning arises through use and relationship

We use the word meaning all the time, often assuming it is clear and stable. The problem is that meaning is usually treated as something contained in words rather than something that arises in use and relationship. A relational view shifts attention from definitions to interaction, context, and what meaning makes possible.

On Meaning

We use the word meaning constantly. We ask what something means, what someone meant, or what gives our lives meaning. The word itself traces back to Middle English meninge, meaning “sense,” “intention,” or “what is meant.” It stems from the Old English mænan, meaning to intend, to signify, to tell, or to have in mind, and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root meino-, meaning opinion, intent, or thought.

From its origin, meaning has been bound to intention, to what someone holds in mind or seeks to express. Over time, its use expanded beyond what was intended to include what was signified or implied.

The Conventional View

In everyday use, meaning refers to what something signifies, expresses, or represents. It is often treated as a link between a word and what it denotes, between a symbol and what it denotes. Dictionaries and philosophers of language tend to describe meaning in this way, as a relation between sign and referent, expression and idea, speaker and listener.

This is a tidy, representational model. Meaning appears as something that can be defined, transmitted, and shared. It assumes that meaning resides in the words themselves, that if we use the correct symbols, the intended sense will be received as sent.

This view is useful, particularly when precision is critical. Yet it is incomplete. It captures meaning as a thing to be carried from one place to another, rather than as something that forms between people, places, and contexts.

From Description to Relation

To glimpse another way of thinking about meaning, imagine a garden. Descriptively, we can say a garden is a bounded area of land where plants are cultivated. That definition tells us what a garden is in structural terms. But we can also think of a garden in terms of what it does, of what it affords.

Affordance Is About Possibility **

Understanding action through the relationship between people and things

We respond to the world not only through thought but also through what feels possible. Sometimes things invite action without explanation. Understanding affordance helps us notice these silent cues and shape conditions that make different actions more likely. Continue reading

For one person, the garden is a place to rest and breathe. For another, it is a site of care and cultivation. For a child, it may be a space for play. For a bee, nourishment. For a worm, shelter. Each relation gives rise to a different sense of what the garden means.

Meaning, in this view, does not reside in the garden itself. It arises in the encounter between the garden and the beings that engage with it. It is created through the interplay of attention, purpose, and response.

Function and Affordance

This shift, from description to function, moves us closer to a relational understanding of meaning. Descriptive information identifies and categorises. It tells us what something is. Functional information places that thing in relation to experience, purpose, and activity. It tells us what something makes possible.

Making Sense of Functional Information

Viewing things by how they work, not just how they look

Complex systems are all around us, but understanding them isn’t just about recognizing their appearance. The real challenge is explaining how they work and why they persist. Functional information provides a practical approach to viewing structure in terms of its use, value, and consequences. Continue reading

When we pay attention to function, we begin to see how meaning arises through use, through interaction, through the meeting of capacities and contexts. A garden becomes meaningful not because of what it is, but because of what it does in relation to those who engage with it, and what they, in turn, bring to it. Meaning is not static. It is enacted.

Three Layers of Understanding

We can think of this relational process in three overlapping layers:

• Descriptive — what something is, for example, a garden, a text, a conversation
• Functional — what it affords, for example, rest, nourishment, reading, dialogue
• Relational — how those affordances are taken up differently by different beings in different contexts

Meaning arises when these layers meet. It is not a property of things but a pattern of relationships. It is cultural, personal, and ecological, always contextual and constantly in motion.

Meaning Emerges in Relationship

A garden is never only a garden. It becomes what it means through relationship, through the many forms of life and attention that touch it. Meaning lives in this between: between observer and observed, self and world, being and environment.

When we speak of meaning as emergent, we acknowledge that it cannot be reduced to its parts. It does not belong to any single mind or object but to the dynamic pattern that connects them. Gregory Bateson put it succinctly: the pattern that connects is the meaning. Meaning is the coherence that arises when separate elements, words, gestures, perceptions, and intentions come into relationship in a way that makes sense.

This sense-making is not fixed. It shifts with time, perspective, and context. What a place, a gesture, or a relationship means to one person at one moment may mean something different later, or to someone else. Meaning evolves as the relationships evolve.

We might say that meaning is not in things but through them, carried in the currents of relationship that bind a world together. It is in the living feedback between perceiver and perceived, speaker and listener, organism and environment. It emerges when boundaries touch and begin to communicate.

To find meaning is not to uncover a hidden essence but to enter more fully into relationship, to notice the subtle exchanges that give rise to understanding, purpose, and value. Meaning is not found but formed, not possessed but participated in.

Relationality Explained

Things only make sense in relation

We often talk about people, information, and systems as if they exist independently. This hides how meaning, behaviour, and understanding actually arise through connection and context. A relational view shifts attention from isolated things to interactions, patterns, and the conditions from which meaning emerges. Continue reading

Closing Reflection

Meaning is not the answer to a question. It is the ongoing conversation between things, the resonance that arises when parts connect in living patterns. To live meaningfully is to live relationally, aware that our words, actions, and perceptions are part of a larger field of relationship that is continually shaping and reshaping what the world means.

Meaning is not something we pin down once and for all. We pay attention to how meaning shows up in use, in relationship, and in what becomes possible. We notice where understanding holds and where it breaks, and we stay open to adjusting how we speak, listen, and act together.