A denotative dimension of meaning for the mentally ill-healthy role in society.

Abstract

The problem of measuring meaning continues to present conceptual and methodological difficulty in research. In most cases, attitudinal or connotative meanings are elicited from social objects particularly role sets, cultural groups or specialized aggregates. But in some cases, the scaling of a denotative object like a role set would have desirable advantages. For the mentally ill-healthy role set, this could mean avoiding stereotypic responses provided the scales were sufficiently projective. To exploit this possibility, a differential scale representing the ill-healthy roles was tested under various conditions of control. The findings suggest that the ill-healthy items adequately scale and distinguish between the concept criteria. A further theoretical implication was tested, showing that the mentally ill-healthy roles were not significantly different when compared to the evaluational dimension of the semantic differential implying that legitimacy (tendency to sanction) is the central focus of meaning for this dyadic structure.