Meaning-making

In psychology, meaning-making is the process of how people construe, understand, or make sense of life events, relationships, and the self.^[1]

The term is widely used in constructivist approaches to counseling psychology and psychotherapy,^[2] especially during bereavement in which people attribute some sort of meaning to an experienced death or loss.^[3] The term is also used in educational psychology.^[4]

In a broader sense, meaning-making is the main research object of semiotics, biosemiotics, and other fields.^[5] Social meaning-making is the main research object of social semiotics and related disciplines.^[5]

^ Ignelzi 2000, p. 5: "Meaning-making, the process of how individuals make sense of knowledge, experience, relationships, and the self, must be considered in designing college curricular environments supportive of learning and development." Gillies, Neimeyer & Milman 2014, p. 208: Through meaning-making, people are "retaining, reaffirming, revising, or replacing elements of their orienting system to develop more nuanced, complex and useful systems".
^ For example: Kegan 1980; Kegan 1982; Carlsen 1988; Dorpat & Miller 1992; Drath & Palus 1994; Rosen & Kuehlwein 1996; Basseches 1997; Neimeyer & Raskin 2000; Mackay 2003; Neimeyer 2009
^ For example: Epting & Neimeyer 1984; Attig 1996; Doka & Davidson 1998; Neimeyer 2001; Kalayjian & Eugene 2010; Dyregrov et al. 2011; Steffen & Coyle 2011; Neimeyer 2012; Gillies, Neimeyer & Milman 2014
^ For example: Postman & Weingartner 1969; Novak 1993; Merriam & Heuer 1996; Rehm 1999; Ignelzi 2000; Kunnen & Bosma 2000; Mortimer & Scott 2003; Wickman 2006; Scott, Mortimer & Aguiar 2006; Nash & Murray 2010; Baxter Magolda & King 2012; Fantozzi 2012
^ ^a ^b Thibault 2003, p. 41: "... the description of a community's communicative practices cannot adequately be accomplished within the confines of any single discipline in the human and social sciences. Such an enterprise is necessarily a transdisciplinary one, drawing on the insights of sociology, ethnology, linguistics, anthropology, social psychology, and so on, in order to develop a unified conceptual framework for talking about social meaning-making (Gumperz 1992)."

[1] Ignelzi 2000, p. 5: "Meaning-making, the process of how individuals make sense of knowledge, experience, relationships, and the self, must be considered in designing college curricular environments supportive of learning and development." Gillies, Neimeyer & Milman 2014, p. 208: Through meaning-making, people are "retaining, reaffirming, revising, or replacing elements of their orienting system to develop more nuanced, complex and useful systems".

[2] For example: Kegan 1980; Kegan 1982; Carlsen 1988; Dorpat & Miller 1992; Drath & Palus 1994; Rosen & Kuehlwein 1996; Basseches 1997; Neimeyer & Raskin 2000; Mackay 2003; Neimeyer 2009

[3] For example: Epting & Neimeyer 1984; Attig 1996; Doka & Davidson 1998; Neimeyer 2001; Kalayjian & Eugene 2010; Dyregrov et al. 2011; Steffen & Coyle 2011; Neimeyer 2012; Gillies, Neimeyer & Milman 2014

[edu-refs-4] For example: Postman & Weingartner 1969; Novak 1993; Merriam & Heuer 1996; Rehm 1999; Ignelzi 2000; Kunnen & Bosma 2000; Mortimer & Scott 2003; Wickman 2006; Scott, Mortimer & Aguiar 2006; Nash & Murray 2010; Baxter Magolda & King 2012; Fantozzi 2012

[Thibault-5] Thibault 2003, p. 41: "... the description of a community's communicative practices cannot adequately be accomplished within the confines of any single discipline in the human and social sciences. Such an enterprise is necessarily a transdisciplinary one, drawing on the insights of sociology, ethnology, linguistics, anthropology, social psychology, and so on, in order to develop a unified conceptual framework for talking about social meaning-making (Gumperz 1992)."

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