Key Confusions in Martin’s Model Of Individuation by ChatGPT

The core problem is that Martin doesn’t maintain individuation as a theoretical category distinct from social processes. Instead, he smuggles social affiliation and resource allocation into individuation, making it more about group alignment and access than about differentiation in meaning potential itself.

Key Confusions in Martin’s Model

1. Individuation ≠ Social Affiliation

   • Martin often treats individuation as a process of people aligning with certain meaning potentials through social groups. But social affiliation is about people choosing or being drawn to particular ways of meaning, not about the structural differentiation of meaning potential itself.
   • The confusion arises because affiliation can influence individuation (people immersed in different communities may develop different meaning potentials), but it is not identical to individuation. Meaning potential can be individuated without explicit social alignment.

2. Individuation ≠ Unequal Access to Meaning Potentials

   • Martin also folds in how meaning potentials are unequally distributed in society—some people have access to specialised registers while others don’t.
   • While access affects how meaning potentials spread and develop, it’s not the same thing as the differentiation of meaning potential itself. Unequal access is a social fact, but individuation is a semiotic process.

3. Slippage Between Meaning and People

   • Instead of focusing on how meaning potentials differentiate, Martin shifts attention to how people engage with and distribute those meanings socially. This person-centred approach makes individuation look more like a sociological issue rather than a semiotic one.
   • Individuation should describe what happens to meaning potential, not what happens to people using it. The latter belongs to sociolinguistics or sociology.

Why This Matters

By conflating individuation with social processes, Martin blurs a crucial distinction: whether we are explaining how meaning potential differentiates or how people interact with meaning. This weakens individuation as a category, making it more about group membership than semiotic structure.