Abstract
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has long relied on the notion of instantiation to model the relation between language as a system of potential and its enactment in use. However, the dual usage of instantiation—as both a cline between system and instance, and as a process of feature selection—has led to conceptual ambiguities. Drawing on a relational ontology, this paper proposes a refinement: distinguishing clearly between the structural relation and the perspectival shift by which meaning is actualised. It introduces the concept of the cut—a reflexive construal by which structured potential becomes construed event—as a generalisation of instantiation, grounded in a theory of meaning that takes construing as ontologically primary.
1. Introduction: The Power and Ambiguity of Instantiation
The concept of instantiation is foundational in Systemic Functional Linguistics. It provides a theoretical link between language as a potential (system) and language in use (instance). Halliday’s formulation makes clear that language is not a fixed code but a dynamic semiotic resource, structured yet open to contextual activation. Texts instantiate the system; the system is construed through texts.
This dual role is generative, but conceptually unstable. Does instantiation describe a structural relation, or a semiotic activity? Is it a model of emergence or of selection? The present paper proposes that this ambiguity can be resolved by reframing instantiation within a relational ontology of meaning. This involves introducing the concept of the cut—a reflexive operation by which potential is actualised as event.
This aligns closely with Halliday’s conception of system as shorthand for system-&-process, emphasising that the system is not merely a static set of options but inherently tied to the dynamic process of selection and actualisation. The present paper extends this by making explicit the reflexive perspectival mechanism—what we call the cut—that enables this dynamic.
2. Instantiation in SFL: Cline and Process
Within SFL, system refers to the structured potential for meaning—networks of interrelated features from which meanings may be activated. Instance refers to a specific, contextualised enactment of that potential—a text, utterance, or token of semiosis.
Two interlinked perspectives on instantiation are prominent:
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Instantiation as cline: a continuum tracking the partial activation of system in context. This foregrounds the probabilistic, gradient nature of meaning potential.
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Instantiation as process: the semiotic activity by which selections are made from the system according to contextual constraints.
Yet this bifocal account lacks a clearly articulated mechanism for the shift from potential to instance. How exactly is meaning brought forth from potential? What enables the coherence of the instance as an event? The SFL framework leaves this implicit.
3. Enter the Cut: A Relational Ontology of Meaning
Relational ontology begins from a different premise: there is no meaning, and no world, outside of construal. A phenomenon is not a pre-existing object but a construed event—an actualisation of structured potential through reflexive orientation.
In this view, any system—linguistic, social, physical—is a structured potential: a theory of its own possible instances. What we call an instance is not a separate domain but a perspectival shift within the system itself. This shift is called the cut.
The cut is:
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Not temporal: it is not a process unfolding in time.
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Not external: it does not depend on an outside observer.
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Not a stratal realisation: it does not enact the relation between strata, such as semantics and lexicogrammar.
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Perspectival and reflexive: the system cuts itself; the event is a shift in perspective within the system’s own organisation.
The cut is the act of actualisation. It is the ontological basis of instantiation—not in competition with it, but clarifying what instantiation does, and how.
4. Comparison: Instantiation vs. Cut
| Concept | SFL Instantiation | Relational Cut |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Semiotic relation and process | Ontological operation of construal |
| Scope | Language (primarily) | All construed phenomena |
| Temporal? | Often sequential | No — perspectival |
| Agentive? | Often tacit or external | Reflexive |
| Function | Activates system as instance | Actualises potential as event |
The cut generalises the function of instantiation across domains while clarifying its logic. Rather than treating system and instance as separate entities linked by a process, the cut reveals them as co-implicated perspectives in a single construal.
5. Toward a Reflexive Theory of Meaning
The introduction of the cut allows us to reconceptualise instantiation as a reflexive operation of construal. This has implications across the architecture of meaning:
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Logogenesis becomes not merely the sequential unfolding of meaning in text, but a cascade of perspectival cuts—moments of actualisation that draw selectively on structured potential.
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Realisation, in its SFL sense (between strata and axes), remains untouched. The cut does not enact realisation; it reorients the perspective through which strata are construed as functioning in context.
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Context is not an external set of constraints, but part of the same reflexive architecture: construed in and through the very cuts that constitute meaning.
This approach unifies structure and activity under a single ontological model: a system is a structured possibility-space, and every instance is a cut within that space—a perspectival actualisation that brings a phenomenon into being.
6. Conclusion: Honouring Halliday, Extending the Frame
Halliday’s model made a profound conceptual leap by construing language not as a code but as a meaning potential realised in use. The concept of instantiation was his bridge from system to instance.
The present account extends this insight by offering an ontological mechanism for that bridge. The cut is not a substitute for instantiation—it is its reflexive deepening. It allows us to say:
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An instance is not derived from a system as a rule is applied to a structure.
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Rather, an instance is a shift in perspective: a cut through structured potential that makes a phenomenon present as meaning.
This reframing also resonates with Halliday’s system-&-process notion, explicitly accounting for the processual side that is often implicit in the traditional system-instance relation. The cut makes visible the reflexive act by which system and process co-occur as facets of the same construal.
This reframing honours Halliday’s functional orientation while clarifying its metaphysical commitments. It opens a pathway toward a general theory of meaning: not as symbolic encoding, but as the world’s coming-forth through reflexive construal.
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