Psychological functions of semiotic borders in sense-making: Liminality of narrative processes

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the semiotic functions of the psychological borders that structure the flow of narrative processes. Each narration is always a contextual, situated and contingent process of sensemaking, made possible by the creation of borders, such as dynamic semiotic devices that are capable of connecting the past and the future, the inside and the outside, and the me with the non-me. Borders enable us to narratively construct one’s own experiences using three inherent processes: contextualization, intersubjective positioning and setting of pertinence. The narrative process – as a subjective articulation of signs in a contingent social context – involves several functions of semiotic borders: separation, differentiation, distinction-making, connection, articulation and relation-enabling. The relevant psychological aspect highlighted here is that a border is a semiotic device which is required for both maintaining stability and inducing transformation at the same time. The peculiar dynamics and the semiotic structure of borders generate a liminal space, which is characterized by instability, by a blurred space-time distinction and by ambiguities in the semantic and syntactic processes of sensemaking. The psychological processes that occur in liminal space are strongly affectively loaded, yet it is exactly the setting and activation of liminality processes that lead to novelty and creativity and enable the creation of new narrative forms.

Caregivers’ Sensemaking of Children’s Hereditary Angioedema: A Semiotic Narrative Analysis of the Sense of Grip on the Disease

“…With reference to our research topic, narration is a widely acknowledged device of elaborating one’s own illness experience, to reflect on it and to share subjective aspects (Bruner, 1990; Good, 1994; Pennebaker and Seagal, 1999; Charon, 2008; Park, 2010; Fioretti and Smorti, 2016; Freda et al, 2016b; De Luca Picione and Valsiner, 2017). Facing the experience of illness and its diagnosis, the narration responds to the need to reorganize, to restore a form, and to reposition one’s own identity (Martino et al, 2019a,b).…”

Cross-Sector Collaboration in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): A Critical Analysis of an Urban Sustainability Development Program

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Imagination and mobility in the city: Porosity of borders and human development in divided urban environments

“…The ghettos, bubbles and crossings of urban culture challenge us to rethink mobility/ immobility and the imagination of borders in the city, developing categories that can handle more nuanced intersects that include both strangeness and familiarity, inclusion and exclusion (Hall & Savage, 2016). Borders are thus best characterised as peripheral spaces in contact with otherness and strangeness and thus areas of potentiality where transformation can be catalysed (De Luca Picione & Valsiner, 2017). They create distinction between different spaces, but also the potential for transformation.…”