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Embodied Meaning-Making

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lightbulbAbout this topic
Embodied meaning-making refers to the process through which individuals construct understanding and significance through their bodily experiences and interactions with the environment. This concept emphasizes the role of the body in cognition, suggesting that meaning is not solely a mental construct but is also shaped by physical sensations and movements.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Embodied meaning-making refers to the process through which individuals construct understanding and significance through their bodily experiences and interactions with the environment. This concept emphasizes the role of the body in cognition, suggesting that meaning is not solely a mental construct but is also shaped by physical sensations and movements.

Key research themes

1. How does embodied cognition inform meaning-making through bodily experience and interaction?

This theme explores the role of the body as intrinsic to cognition and meaning-making, emphasizing how bodily experience, sensorimotor engagement, and the environment shape thought, learning, self, and social interaction. It highlights the inseparability of body and mind in cognitive processes, addressing the theoretical and empirical significance of embodiment for understanding language, communication, and identity construction.

Key finding: Nowakowski proposes an integrated view of internal cognitive processing that emphasizes the body’s indispensable role, distinguishing body-related codes (B-codes) and efficient, body-specific codes (E-codes) in cognition. He... Read more
Key finding: Bucholtz and Hall argue for an embodied sociocultural linguistics framework that situates the body at the heart of language production and perception, expanding key sociolinguistic concepts such as indexicality, discourse,... Read more
Key finding: This work situates artificial intelligence within an embodied and enactivist framework, positing intelligence as arising from continuous sensorimotor interactions between brain, body, and environment. It challenges classical... Read more
Key finding: Zlatev delineates four ascending levels of embodiment—biological, phenomenological, significational, and extended/normative—articulating how meaning and communication are deeply structured by bodily involvement. His mimesis... Read more

2. What methodological frameworks and design principles operationalize embodied meaning-making in qualitative research and technological interfaces?

This theme investigates how embodied theory informs methodological practices in qualitative research and design, focusing on how to capture, analyze, and design for embodied experience and meaning-making. It covers embodied qualitative methodologies that grapple with representing sensorial and affective bodily experience, and design principles that support embodied sensemaking in technology-mediated interactions, highlighting the challenges and strategies for integrating embodiment into research and design processes.

Key finding: This paper critically examines the challenges of incorporating embodiment into qualitative research methodology and proposes analytic strategies such as theorizing the embodied subject, problematizing transcription, and using... Read more
Key finding: Hummels and Hummels introduce seven design principles derived from phenomenology-inspired embodied theory to guide the creation of technologies that support embodied sensemaking via sensorimotor couplings. Their design of a... Read more
Key finding: Dourish and Weig foreground embodied theories to propose a design framework that transcends Cartesian dualisms in physical-digital hybrid technologies. They argue for designing artifacts not merely as interfaces but as... Read more
Key finding: This paper presents Thinking at the Edge (TAE), a practice-based methodological approach grounded in phenomenology and 4EA cognition that supports researchers in articulating tacit, pre-reflective bodily knowing to enrich... Read more
Key finding: This article advances the ethnographic model of objectivity by articulating the existential body, bridging Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body-proper and Heidegger’s being-in-the-world ontology. It stresses the importance of... Read more

3. How does embodiment shape self-constitution, imagination, and the experience of temporality in meaning-making processes?

This theme investigates the interrelations between embodiment and subjectivity in constituting selfhood, imagination, and temporal experience. It focuses on phenomenological accounts of how bodily experience underpins narrative self-construction, the limits of embodied imagination in adopting other perspectives, and the twofold temporality inherent in embodied intentionality—distinguishing between the lived body and the body as object—thereby elucidating embodiment’s role in shaping meaning across self and time.

Key finding: Breyer elucidates how the double aspect of embodiment (being a lived body and having a body as object) corresponds to two genetic intentionalities with distinct temporal structures. This twofold temporality enables humans to... Read more
Key finding: Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of bodily habituality, the authors propose that narrative self-constitution is deeply informed by embodied habitual engagement with the world. They distinguish between the narrated and... Read more
Key finding: Wilson critically differentiates between symbolic linguistic meaning and embodied signaling behaviors, highlighting the interpretive role essential to meaning-making. He cautions against conflating linguistic communication... Read more
Key finding: This article illustrates the therapeutic potential of embodied narrative practices by showing how storytelling facilitates trauma release and identity reconstruction among veterans. It contextualizes embodied selfhood within... Read more

All papers in Embodied Meaning-Making

This inrroducrion firsr jusrifies [he uriliry of rhis special issue for English srudies and offers a brief overview of rhe srare of [he a n in cognirive linguisrics. Ir rhen commenrs briefív on each of [he arricles in rhis collecrion,... more
This article offers a contribution to the use of storytelling in pastoral conversations as a trauma release for untold stories. This insight links to the focus and scope of the journal as a pastoral narrative approach has been used under... more
This study expands on sociocultural approaches to meaning making in art museums by exploring the physical aspects of interaction with art in traditional gallery spaces, and in the context of technology use. The notion of 'embodied... more
The master narrative of Apartheid South Africa created a specific identity for white boys and men and, together with this identity, a very particular role and place within the South African context. This identity was exemplified in the... more
A vital component to any architect’s education is learning how to effectively utilize building materials as carriers of architectural meaning; the development of a coherent tectonic language is fundamental to teaching architecture. This... more
A vital component to any architect’s education is learning how to effectively utilize building materials as carriers of architectural meaning; the development of a coherent tectonic language is fundamental to teaching architecture. This... more
This issue of FORMakademisk features selected articles developed from papers presented at the symposium Embodied Making and Design Learning at the DRS/CUMULUS-conference LearnXDesign in Chicago, Illinois, June 28–30, 2015. This special... more
RESUMO: Este artigo pretende analisar o papel dos gestos na construção de metáforas multimodais no gênero "debate político-eleitoral". Do ponto de vista teórico, levamos em consideração que os gestos metafóricos podem ser analisados como... more
RESUMO: Este artigo pretende analisar o papel dos gestos na construção de metáforas multimodais no gênero "debate político-eleitoral". Do ponto de vista teórico, levamos em consideração que os gestos metafóricos podem ser analisados como... more
HCI projects bringing digital and interactive technologies into art museums are afected by a conception of the relation between art and design that narrows the available design space. This is often done by positioning such technologies... more
This essay provides an outline of biological approaches to the phenomenon of meaning. It includes descriptions of meaning-construction based on function, purpose, survival, reproductive success, evolutionary history, code, signalling,... more
Kull, Kalevi 2023. Necessary conditions for semiosis: A study of vegetative subjectivity, or phytosemiotics. In: Coca, Juan R.; Rodríguez, Claudio J. (eds.), Approaches to Biosemiotics. Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad Valladolid,... more
The following study is a practice-based research project that incorporates theoretical and practical components in order to identify more sustainable systems in the Ceramics Studio of the CVA and to understand the relationship between,... more
Museums are interested in designing emotional visitor experiences to complement traditional interpretations. HCI is interested in the relationship between Afective Computing and Afective Interaction. We describe Sensitive Pictures, an... more
Museums are interested in designing emotional visitor experiences to complement traditional interpretations. HCI is interested in the relationship between Afective Computing and Afective Interaction. We describe Sensitive Pictures, an... more
The following study is a practice-based research project that incorporates theoretical and practical components in order to identify more sustainable systems in the Ceramics Studio of the CVA and to understand the relationship between,... more
Collaboration between partners in universities and museums is increasingly viewed as important for demonstrating how research can make real contributions to innovation in the public sector. Frequently, as in the case presented in this... more
This symposium aims to expand the use of and perspectives on Interaction Analysis (IA) and related methods in CSCL, and to explore new ways of collecting, editing, visualizing and sharing research data, including video and location-based... more
This symposium aims to expand the use of and perspectives on Interaction Analysis (IA) and related methods in CSCL, and to explore new ways of collecting, editing, visualizing and sharing research data, including video and location-based... more
The relationship between artwork and mental health has been the subject of various research endeavours. Whilst artwork has been long used as a means of emotional expression, it is also a method of raising mental health awareness. In this... more
This paper intends to analyze the role of gestures in the construction of multimodal metaphors in the "political-electoral debate" genre. Theoretically, we considered that metaphoric gestures can be analyzed as expressions of... more
Taking the wall text in art museums as point of departure, this article investigates developments in museum media and communication practices in the exhibition room. We first present findings from a recent study of types and functions of... more
This paper analyzes the interrelation between gestures and speech in the construction of multimodal metaphors in the "legislative session" genre. Based on Multimodal Semiotic Blending (MSB), an adaptation of Brandt and Brandt's (2005)... more
Full article: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/14/4/000496/000496.html This article presents a framework that reconciles the requirements of computational methods with a qualitative, phenomenological approach to the analysis of... more
In this chapter, there is a focus on how opportunities for visitor learning and engagement are constructed in museum mediascapes, and how these may be studied from a “meaning making” framework. The term “meaning making” (Wertsch, 1991) is... more
Practitioners in counselling psychology and related services will constantly research more on their own professional practice and the implications of therapy in the treatment of clients. Various labelling and categorizations in... more
Gus Van Sant’s non-narrative and minimalist film Gerry (2002) is often dismissed as pointless for its radical cinematic approach. The aim of this paper is to explore another pathway to making sense of the film through the perspective of... more
To cite this article: Mona Lilja & Stellan Vinthagen (2018): Dispersed resistance: unpacking the spectrum and properties of glaring and everyday resistance, Journal of Political Power To link to this article: https://doi.
This study expands on sociocultural approaches to meaning making in art museums by exploring the physical aspects of interaction with art in traditional gallery spaces, and in the context of technology use. The notion of 'embodied... more
This study expands on sociocultural approaches to meaning making in art museums by exploring the physical aspects of interaction with art in traditional gallery spaces, and in the context of technology use. The notion of 'embodied... more
This paper advocates a perspective on metaphors in audio-visual media that conceives of these as processes of meaning making, i.e., as dynamic embodied conceptualizations, constitutively bound to the flow of experience. This involves... more
Metaphors in TV news might at first seem a rare phenomenon, especially regarding the journalistic claim of sober and objective news coverage. When it comes to generalizations and abstract explanations of economic and political issues,... more
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