Meaning Making: It's What We Do; It's Who We Are

Meaning Making: It s What We Do; It s Who We Are is a book about fundamental questions of contemporary semiotics, however written in the style accessible to a wide range of readers. Meaning Making sheds light on the following assumptions, largely following C. S. Peirce: (1) pre-linguistic sign modes of feeling, sensing and experiencing entail consciousness-becoming; (2) consciousness-becoming, culminating in linguistic signs, is always in the process of becoming something other than what it was becoming; and (3) linguistic signs are never complete and consistent, for they continuously draw from pre-linguistic semiotic processes. These processes involve signs incessantly becoming other signs in interdependent, interactive interrelatedness. The three terms carry the implication that all signs are complementarily coalescent; they are always in the process of merging with one another. Illustration of the complementary coalescent processual flow of signs involves split-second decision-making examples are chiefly from baseball and soccer when one has no time consciously to think and then act on one s thinking. Decisions must be made in the blink of an eye, and they must be spontaneously acted on. This rapid-fire semiotic transition from pre-linguistic feeling-becoming to interpreting-becoming emphasizes ongoing process, rather than relatively fixed product. Process is the principle key qualifying Peirce s concept of semiosis.