Chapter 11: How to Model Sense Making: A Contribution for the Development of a Methodological Framework for the Analysis of Meaning

The purpose of this work is to contribute to the development of the methodology for analysing meaning and sense making. To this end, the authors present preliminarily a dynamic, contextual and dialogical model of meaning, entailing an ostensible as well as a latent dimension—the significance in praesentia and the significance in absentia. Some basic methodological tenets are drawn from the model, related to what analysing sense making means and how such a task could be performed.

Accordingly, two complementary methodological lines of inquiry are discussed: structural and dynamic analysis. For each of them an example is provided, in order to show how each of them works and what it performs.

In the last 30 years there have been an increasing interest in meaning within the psychological domain (Bruner, 1990; Cole, 1996; Harre & Gilet 1994; Valsiner, 2009a). Discursive psychology, social constructionism, cultural psychology, interpersonal psychoanalysis—just to refer to some of the prominent lines of thought–have allowed the (re)discovery of the semiotic grounds of psychological phenomena and their roots in the intersubjective dynamics of sense making.

This semiotic turn has led to a dramatic development in research strategies, motivated by the inadequacy of mainstream empirical psychology to grasp the dimension of meaning. Thus, a huge number of methods and procedures of analysis—often clustered within the family of qualitative methodology—have been elaborated for a vast plurality of theoretical aims and/or goals of inquiry (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Valsiner, 2009b). This scenario highlights both the vivacity of the semiotic standpoint and the fragmentation characterizing the current status of the field. It is sufficient to take even a rapid look at the studies concerning meaning to get an idea of the heterogeneity of approaches, purposes and procedures revolving around this kind of theoretical interest.

What is needed it is not the reduction of such pluralism, but the development of a conceptual framework that can let the various approaches—and their findings—interact with each other. In our opinion, methodology is the theoretical domain devoted to the elaboration of this framework. This means that we see methodology as something different from the collection of procedures and tools of analysis, as mainstream psychology conceives of it. Take any article reporting an empirical psychological study and, to be sure, you will find a section entitled “Method.” This section usually follows the introduction, where the theoretical arguments are provided and the aim of the study is framed, and contains the description of the coded actions performed to produce and analyze the data—sometimes the rationale of such actions is provided, but usually it is quite a circumscribed theoretical elaboration. This is very consistent with, and clearly highlights the basic idea that “method” does not concern theory, but only procedures of empirical inquiry (Slifes, 2004). The term “Methodology” introduces a difference: it literally means discourse on method. In this sense, we use it to indicate the theoretical—rather than the merely technical-operative—domain designed to define the linkage between general theory (which defines the phenomenon and the model of knowledge of the phenomenon itself) and procedures of investigation, in terms of which the construction of knowledge can develop through interaction with experience.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of the methodology of meaning and sense making analysis. To this end, in the following pages we present a basic, general model of meaning and sense making, stating some basic methodological tenets concerning what analysing sense making means and how such a task could be performed. Needless to say, such tenets are far from being exhaustive. Our aim is not to provide a repertoire of technical devices and procedures; rather, our contribution must be seen as a way of emphasizing the need to ground the methodological discourse on a firm theoretical basis.