The process by which distinct discourses—sets of concepts, vocabularies, metaphors or rhetorical forms—align, blend or mutually reframe so that actors across different domains share overlapping meanings, categories or priorities.

Principle

Convergence produces interoperability of meanings: when discourses align, communication and coordination across domains become possible, but disciplinary assumptions and differences may be masked rather than resolved.

Demonstration

Illustrative scenario → Situation: Administrators and local healers interact in record creation. Recognition: Terms from both repertoires appear in administrative forms. Action: A hybrid register emerges used by both parties for reporting and decision‑making. Consequence: Shared categories enable coordination (e.g., resource allocation) while obscuring contested epistemic distinctions.

Misapplication

Assuming discursive convergence equals conceptual agreement or equal epistemic status, instead of recognising that convergence can be superficial, strategic, or asymmetrical.

Consequence

Identifying convergence explains how policies, classifications and practices become transferable across contexts but also warns that apparent consensus may conceal power imbalances and the erasure of minority perspectives.

Reversal

Convergence can be unstable: renewed emphasis on disciplinary boundaries, counter‑discourses, or power shifts can fracture alignment and restore difference.

Boundary

Clearly within: emergence of shared technical vocabulary and classification used across domains. Boundary case: lexical borrowing that does not change underlying concepts. Clearly outside: parallel but unaligned discourses that coexist without mutual intelligibility.

Semantic Tension

Tension between interoperability (the pragmatic value of shared language) and fidelity to particular epistemic regimes (the value of preserving conceptual distinctions), which shapes whether convergence is desirable or problematic.

Synthesis

Discursive convergence is both an enabling mechanism for cross‑domain coordination and a potential source of epistemic compression: studying it reveals how shared meanings are constructed and where they obscure as much as they connect.