ABSTRACT
Meaning, meaning-making and language are some of humanity's earliest acquired traits. Ward Goodenough argued that meaning and language are inextricably interlinked with culture. This chapter focuses on two aspects: first, how meaning is created, developed and changed; and, second, how meaning is used during social transaction and in the development, sustenance and modification of social order. The chapter examines three concepts from Jerome Bruner that have implications concerning how meaning and narrative become part of human culture. They are the notion of shared, public meanings; the concept of folk psychology as cultural canon; and the explanation of divergent experience and phenomena through narrative. These concepts come from psychology and provide a mechanism through which experience, transaction and meaning become part of not only reflective human consciousness, but also the collective consciousness of a group. The chapter examines the work of four philosophers and linguists: Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, Paul Ricoeur and Bruner.
