Abstract We argue that no attempt of reducing meaning to a systematic set of rules, according to which the role of linguistic expressions is to be normatively defined, can be abstracted from an irreducibly decisional compound. By comparing Lorenzen’s project of building an Ortho-language (Orthosprache) and Brandom’s inferentialist take on meaning, we distinguish two ways of acknowledging this fact, while claiming that Lorenzen’s take is more genuinely constructive, insofar as choices be thought of as genuine features of constructions. It brings into a new perspective the relation between dialogical constructivism and Brouwer’s intuitionism. Finally, we bring up a philosophical argument for the claim that interaction rules should be indexed on players and on their choices, when providing deontic bases to semantics.