Meaning potential thus involves a web of different networks of metafunctional consistencies: different construals, different values, different foci of attention. Meaning-makers variously align (consistently or inconsistently[1]) with different networks of consistency within the overall web of variant consistencies. Those who share a specific network of consistency potentially form a community of ‘like-minded’ individuals with a ‘common interest’: a community formed around a way of construing experience, a community formed around a way of valuing a construal, a community formed around a way of grading the relative importance of construals and values.[2] Since each individual can align (consistently or inconsistently) with multiple networks, each can belong to multiple communities, “us”, and disassociate from multiple communities, “you” or “them”.
Footnotes:
[1] There is, of course, the question of consistency between what is said (semiotic behaviour) and what is done (non-semiotic behaviour).
[2] If each variant consistency is located along three dimensions: the ideational, interpersonal and textual, individuals that align with specific consistencies can be located at different points in the metafunctional space defined by those dimensions; communities correspond to clusters in that space.