The Discursive Dynamic of Sensemaking

According to the traditional way of thinking of the communication process (more generally: of the discoursive dynamic), actors exchange ready-made meanings. In other words, communication entails pre-defined semiotic devices, resulting from previous stipulation. Therefore, intersubjectivity is based on a repertoire of shared meanings, pre-existent to the social exchange. To underline the quality of product of a meta-stipulation, we refer below to this general model of communication with the label: contractual model. The socio-constructivist model of communication (below we use this label in a broad sense) proposes a different way of looking at intersubjectivity. This way underlines that meaning is a social construction that happens within and by the social exchange. Hence, meaning is not given prior to the discourse; rather, it is the communication dynamic that depicts the situated semantic value of the symbolic devices which the discourse unfolds (Vygotsky, 1934; Bruner 1990; Billig, 1996). The socio-constructivist conception is an alternative way of seeing meaning-making that reaps Wittgenstein’s lesson (Wittgenstein, 1953). This approach underlines that meaning-making is not an autonomous process, but it always unfolds as a function of the social context. According to this point of view, the socio-constructivist model underlines that meaning devices (concepts, categories, codes, signs, scripts...) are not given and fixed entities for this reason universal and independent of time – but open signs, that shape their significance in situation, according to the way the actors use them within the linguistic games they carry out. On the one hand, the dialogic construction of meaning is accomplished at the level of the communication content. At this level, discoursive actors regulate their reciprocal positioning in the shared activity; by so doing they negotiate some kind of agreement on sets of representation, stories and statements referring to the world they share. Thus, these sets of consensual social-made meanings work as instituted mediators of the social exchange (Berger & Luchmann, 1966). To give just one reference, a lot of studies on social representations deal with this level of significance (Farr & Moscovici, 1984; Jodelet, 1989). On the other hand, the discourse process operates in such a way that it entails continuous transformation of the semiotic devices. At this level, the focus is on the structure of the devices. Valsiner (2001) deals with this structural level (as we have labelled it) when he speaks about the semiogenetics of the sign.