Stabilizing Communicative Exchanges

Once the intrinsic tension (dynamic duality) is applied to communicative elements, Centres form that can affect each other. In looking at these influences, the splitting of three Levels: Significance-L3, Term-L5 and Meaning-L6 demands attention. If there are disjunctions here, a communicative event will go astray. Each pole requires input from the other to stabilize an exchange.

L6: Meanings—New or Usual

As meanings are about making sense of reality, any unfamiliar, original or unorthodox meaning-L6U will be experienced as a challenge to the usual standard meaning-L6C, sometimes an extremely forceful one.

Of course some new meanings struggle or die out because usual meanings have considerable potency: e.g. the usual meanings-L6C of 'sign' or 'symbol' may actively obstruct website visitors from grasping the new meanings offered here.

A person who starts addressing a group of friends by saying "first let us define a few terms" sets them a tough task. He has usually taken ordinary words and loaded them with something new. The obstructive effect in the listeners’ minds of the usual meaning may make constructive participation in the discussion rather difficult for them.

Although this website does not define concepts, some may have a similar reaction to the two meanings of meaning, the conventional and the unusual, that has beem introduced here. However, a standard meaning cannot block a new meaning for those who find it necessary. It is the task of this framework to demonstrate this necessity

Link between Centres in Level-6: new meaning v usual meaning.

ClosedExamples:

'Gay' used to just mean 'joyful', carefree' 'happy'. During the 20th century. 'gay' took on a new meaning. It came to refer to persons, practices and culture associated with homosexuality. People found it more and more difficult to use it in its original sense, until by the close of the 20th century, 'homosexual' became the usual meaning.

'The final solution' took on a new meaning during the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Its effect was to almost obliterate the usual meaning such that many have discomfort in using the phrase almost a century later.

L5: Terms—Conventional or Invented

Standard or conventional terms-L5C and new or invented terms-L5U affect each other. Dictionaries of etymology (in the case of verbal terms) explain how and when a term originated. The implication is clear: existing common terms were new at some time in the past.

Many invented names-L5U disappear while others persist and soon become accepted as the norm. Sometimes a new imaginative name replaces the current standard name in an attempt to inject life. The standard may slowly become obsolete, fall from use and be viewed as archaic.

It is noticeable that many things or processes have a wide range of applicable names (i.e. synonyms), often with minimal or rather subtle shades of differences in their reference.

A benign tolerant influence seems to apply. Conventional naming must accept or tolerate unfamiliar terms when communication demands this. In general, people seem to prefer those terms with which they are familiar. The exception is where the invented term parallels an invented object or activity of interest to them, and there is no current term.

Link between Centres in Level-5: idiosyncratic naming v conventional naming

New terms draw upon those that are conventional. Neologisms, for example, often take bits of known terms relevant to the topic and push them together (e.g. psycholinguistics); or they put a conventional prefix or suffix onto an existing term (e.g. neocons). Sometimes new terms work because they intentionally echo an existing term e.g. podcast derives from broadcast, webinar derives from seminar.

In an acronym, the first letters of a series of words make a word that may never have existed before perhaps because the entity is new e.g. 'radar' was generated by the invention of "radio detection and ranging". 'Laser' has a similar origin.

Not all new names are neologisms: e.g. businesses must give new names to new products; and every new company has to have its own distinctive name. We can usually see an effort to draw upon what exists: a business is named after the town, or the suburb, or the founder, or its main category of product. Parents-to-be buy books of existing children's names, or name children after an older relative or current celebrity, or a desired virtue or favourite flower.

L3: Significance—Informed or Subjective

Situations benefit from a calm dispassionate view. However, our subjective interpretations of events may push to extremes, diminishing or intensifying, beyond what is reasonable. I may view a bodily symptom either too nonchalantly or far more anxiously than is warranted. A doctor's informed view of the significance can and should temper my personal view.

Nevertheless the subjective significance that I attribute affects the doctor's view and what he says to me. While not altering the view, it is likely to colour it.

The orthodox view of someone who is abrupt, impolite and glares may be that these are signs of anger. However, a subjective assessment might suggests they are signs of embarrassment over an error. The subjective significance colours the conventional interpretation.

Link between Centres in Level-3: orthodox significance v subjective significance.

  • The following steps that are about maintaining the flow and sense of a communication by linking Centres that cross levels have only been provisionally developed.

    The current tentative account is provided in the Taxonomy Notes. Revision and posting in this Satellite will be arranged in due course.

Originally posted: 8-Nov-2013. Last updated: 16-Oct-2026.