How Does Autodialogue Work? Miracles of Meaning Maintenance and Circumvention Strategies

Abstract

In contemporary sociocultural studies, the human mind is often claimed to be dialogic. Precise elaborations of models of dialogicality are rare, however. We present a process model of dialogicality that occurs within a person's self-system (autodialogue) in the context of two kinds of tasks: making sense of ordinary happenings and understanding religious miracles. We start from the assumption that the person is involved in an ongoing self-and world-reflecting meaning-making in which the semiotically mediated reflections on the world and on one's own self are constantly created, negotiated, and transformed. Once a meaning emerges in an ambiguous action setting, it is instantly worked on through a process entailing circumvention strategies, which allow the person to rigidify or qualify it. The work of these strategies is elaborated theoretically with the help of a hypothetical example of reasoning from everyday life, and is demonstrated empirically by evidence from adults'reasoning about biblical miracles. Autodialogue is shown to work through the flexible construction of circumvention strategies in any here-and-now setting.