No, it’s not all socially constructed.

Just because something is socially constructed (like words and social norms) does not mean they are arbitrary.

How many times haven’t we seen screeds on social media platforms along the lines of: “It’s all a social construct, it’s all made up!” If there’s anything that has the power to rotate my eyeballs right back into the recesses of my skull, it’s the above nonsensical proclamation.

The thing about social constructs is that, they are in fact, not arbitrary. Language, for example, arose from the need to communicate successfully with others. Words retain meaning(s) via social consensus. Words (here nouns) are linked to objects in the world. They allow us to delineate one phenomena from another, and together with consensus, allows information to travel between people through the pathways of dialogue.

So yes, words and language are social (and evolutionary) constructs, but they seek to describe phenomena that effectively precede — and in many cases predate — language.

The evolution of words and language can and do give rise to new social and material arrangements, via social changes, but they cannot conjure phenomena, ex nihilo, as per the claims of Twitter and TikTok pundits. Words and phenomenal world are not co-emergent.