Three linguists walk into a roundtable. One believes in atoms, one believes in signs, and one believes in both. What could possibly go wrong?
Participants:
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Dr. Stone – Material realist, fond of data, microscopes, and "getting real".
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Professor Halliday – Semiotic realist, sees meaning as the only reality.
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Professor Matthiessen – Straddles the fence, sees value in both perspectives.
Dr. Stone:
Let’s get right to it. I take “reality” to mean the world that exists whether or not we describe it—the material world. You can observe it, measure it, bump your head on it.
Halliday:
Ah. But I would say that what you’re calling “the world” only becomes real when it’s construed as meaning. Meaning is reality—constructed socially and semiotically.
Dr. Stone:
Meaning describes reality. It isn’t reality itself!
Halliday:
But how do you know reality without meaning? What you experience is not reality—it’s only potential for meaning. When you construe that experience, then you make reality.
Matthiessen:
I think you’re both onto something. Language construes experience and it’s a product of our biological and material embeddedness. Meaning is real, yes—but it’s also grounded in material processes.
Dr. Stone:
So you’re saying meaning emerges from the material?
Matthiessen:
Yes—and vice versa! The semiotic order reconfigures the material through how we act, talk, and make sense. It’s co-articulated.
Halliday:
Hmm. But that risks reintroducing a non-semiotic base as more fundamental. I’d caution against seeing meaning as emerging from the material, rather than transforming experience into meaning.
Dr. Stone:
Wait—so experience isn’t material?
Halliday:
Correct. Experience is not yet meaning, and therefore not yet real. It’s only when we construe experience—through systems of meaning—that we produce reality, whether that’s material-order meaning (phenomena) or semiotic-order meaning (metaphenomena).
Matthiessen:
Well, I wouldn’t want to collapse everything into language. I’d say there’s a world beyond it that language reaches toward.
Halliday:
And I would say: if you can reach it, you’ve construed it. If you haven’t construed it, it doesn’t yet belong to reality.
Dr. Stone:
So your so-called “reality” disappears without language?
Halliday:
Not disappears—doesn’t yet appear.
The discussion continues as coffee is poured, terms are redefined, and reality itself begins to feel like a clause complex.
