That’s a rich and difficult question. The answer depends on the level of analysis you want—philosophical, sociological, psychological, or semiotic—but let me sketch the main lines.

Objects don’t come preloaded with social meaning. They acquire it through mediating structures that connect things to shared human life. Some of the key encoders are:

1. Language & Discourse – Words and narratives attach categories and stories to objects. A “diamond” isn’t just carbon; it’s called a symbol of love because discourse (advertising, tradition, cultural stories) encodes it as such.

2. Ritual & Practice – The way an object is used in collective activity gives it meaning. A chalice in a religious ritual means something very different from the same cup at a picnic.

3. Institutions & Norms – Law, religion, markets, and etiquette encode objects by regulating how they are valued and treated (e.g. money as a legal tender, the national flag as an object demanding respect).

4. Affect & Memory – Individual and collective emotions inscribe meaning: a locket holding a picture becomes a vessel of grief, love, or nostalgia.

5. Power & Ideology – Objects carry meanings imposed through authority, persuasion, and hegemony. Marx, Bourdieu, and Foucault all stress that “objective” things (commodities, clothing, architecture) get their social charge from systems of class, discipline, or symbolic power.

6. Mediation & Representation – Media, art, advertising, and symbols recode objects by framing them in images, slogans, and spectacles (think of how a sneaker becomes a sign of status after a marketing campaign).

So: social meaning emerges through an interplay of symbolic systems, embodied practices, institutions, affect, and power. The object itself doesn’t contain the meaning, but it becomes a node in a network of signification and use.

If you want it boiled down:

• Semiotics would say sign systems encode objects with meaning.

• Sociology would say collective practices and institutions do the encoding.

• Critical theory would add that power relations and ideology shape which meanings stick and become dominant.

Would you like me to lean this more in a semiotic-linguistic direction (signs, representation), or in a social-theoretical direction (institutions, power, ideology)?

ChatGPT said:

Excellent — bringing in symbolic reference and history sharpens things.

If we think in those terms, objects get socially meaningful not just from use in the present, but from being woven into chains of reference and historical sedimentation.

Symbolic Reference

• Objects point beyond themselves. A crown doesn’t mean “metal + jewels”; it symbolizes sovereignty, and its authority derives from reference to a whole symbolic order (monarchy, divine right, continuity of state).

• Reference is relational: the meaning of an object depends on its position in a symbolic web. For instance, a wedding ring refers both to personal commitment and to a broader institution of marriage; without that reference, it would be “just” a band of gold.

• Crucially, symbols can work by metonymy (association through contact—like relics) or metaphor (analogy—like the scales of justice). Objects encode meaning because they stand for something else in ways that people recognize.

History

• Social meanings accrete over time. An object often carries a palimpsest of layers: a cross means one thing as a Roman execution device, another in early Christianity, another under medieval Christendom, another in contemporary fashion or protest.

• History embeds authority: meanings harden because they have been sanctioned and repeated across generations. This is what Pierre Bourdieu calls doxa—things that no longer need to be explained because their meaning seems “natural.”

• But history also allows for rupture and re-signification: an object can be appropriated, inverted, or hollowed out. Think of the swastika: ancient auspicious symbol, then Nazi insignia, now largely unredeemable in much of the world.

So, if we integrate symbolic reference + history, we can say:

Objects are encoded with social meaning by being situated in symbolic networks of reference that are themselves historically sedimented. They are never only “present objects,” but also carriers of accumulated associations, narratives, and struggles over meaning.