Meaning-making Strategies Research Articles

Examining Varying Effects of Companies’ Strategic CSR Communication on Employees’ CSR Participation

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of strategic CSR communication on employees’ CSR participation. Drawing on the sensemaking and sensegiving theoretical frameworks, alongside informative, dialogic, and meaning-making strategies in CSR communication. A survey (N = 406) revealed that all three strategies were positively associated with employees’ CSR participation. Further SEM analysis with CSR awareness as a moderator showed that higher awareness of CSR strengthens the impact of informative communication, while lower awareness enhances the impact of meaning-making CSR communication. Dialogic CSR communication’s effect on employees’ CSR participation was not significantly influenced by varying CSR awareness. Theoretically, this study advances the internal CSR communication literature by contrasting different organizational CSR communication strategies. It also suggests that organizations should incorporate diverse CSR communication strategies in organizational training to enhance employees’ involvement in CSR activities.

Meaning through fantasy? Fantasy proneness positively predicts meaning for people high in depression

ABSTRACT Many factors likely impact how people create meaning out of their lives. Certain psychological disorders may affect these processes, necessitating the reliance on atypical meaning-making strategies. Across two studies, we tested the hypothesis that the tendency to engage in mental fantasies would be associated with higher meaning in life for people with elevated symptoms of depression. In Study 1 (N = 455Mturk workers), fantasy proneness positively predicted meaning at high levels of depression, but was unrelated at low levels of depression. We replicated this pattern in Study 2 (N = 367), which was preregistered, using the baseline survey of a multi-wave design. In addition, across six weekly measurements, we observed that depression moderated the relationship between fantasy and meaning at the between-person, but not within-person, level. These findings have implications for understanding idiosyncrasies in meaning-making, the role of depression in meaning-making processes, and the potential positive functions of fantasy.

The experiences of intensive care nurses coping with ethical conflict: a qualitative descriptive study

BackgroundThe critical conditions and life risk scenarios make intensive care nurses susceptible to ethical conflict. Negative consequences were recognized at both the individual level and the professional level which highly compromised the patient care and nurses’ well-being. Therefore, ethical conflict has become a major concern in nursing practice. However, the experience of coping with ethical conflict among intensive care nurses remains unclear.AimsThis study aims to explore the experience of intensive care nurses coping with ethical conflict in China.MethodsFrom December 2021 to February 2022, in- depth interviews with 15 intensive care nurses from five intensive care units in a tertiary general hospital in China was performed using purposive sampling. An inductive thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the data. We applied the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research for this study.ResultsTwo distinctive themes were found: detachment and engagement, which contained four subthemes: ignoring ethical problems in the workplace, seeking ways to express emotions, perspective-taking, and identifying positive assets. Theses coping strategies demonstrated an ongoing process with different essential features.ConclusionThis study provides a new insight into the experience of intensive care nurses coping with ethical conflict in clinical nursing. Intensive care nurses demonstrated differential experience of coping with ethical conflict including problem-focused, emotion-focused and meaning-making strategies. These findings have implications for policymakers and nursing administrators to develop ethical education and training and supportive environment for intensive care nurses to tackle this issue.

Foreign Movies and TV Dramas as the Source of Political Argot in an Authoritarian Context: Memes and Creative Resistance in Chinese Social Media

ABSTRACT In the Web 2.0 era, memes have emerged as playful and versatile forms of communication in the daily interactions of social media users. In countries that embrace digital authoritarianism, memes have been deployed as a vehicle of political communication under the online surveillance system. Based on long-term observation of Chinese cyberspace, the author adopts a deep China approach and conducts multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of a series of political memes which poach transnational TV series and movie scenarios or characters. The remix of symbols from foreign TV dramas and movies with indigenous Chinese symbols devotes to three fundamental dimensions of meaning-making strategies: direct captures, reproduction of the original scene, and the reworking of specific elements. By producing, deploying, and proliferating ironic political memes, Chinese netizens have the capacity to engage in innovative discursive guerrilla wars under the rapidly evolving landscape of surveillance.

Effects of positive reappraisal and self-distancing on the meaningfulness of everyday negative events.

Current work on meaning-making has primarily focused on major negative life events such as trauma and loss, leaving common daily adversities unexplored. This study aimed to examine how utilizing meaning-making strategies such as positive reappraisal and self-distancing (in isolation or in combination) can facilitate an adaptive processing of these daily negative experiences. Overall meaning and facets of meaning (coherence, purpose, and significance/mattering) were assessed at both global and situational levels. Results suggested that positive reappraisal was generally effective for enhancing situational meaning but not under all conditions. Specifically, when negative experiences were high on emotional intensity, reflecting on the experience from a distanced (third-person) perspective enhanced coherence and existential mattering more than engaging in positive reappraisal. However, when negative experiences were low on intensity, distanced reflection led to less coherence and mattering than positive reappraisal. The findings of this study elucidated the importance of examining the multidimensional construct of meaning at the facet level and highlighted the importance of applying different coping strategies to effectively make meaning out of daily negative experiences.

How to brand a border despite its wall? A social semiotics approach to cross-border place branding

This paper explores the ways in which borders are likely to be used as a semiotic resource in cross-border place branding. We develop a conceptual framework, distinguishing two meaning-making strategies: one that seeks to valorize borders as assets for cross-border place branding and another that relies on their invisibilization in order to promote, implicitly, the legitimacy of a seamless cross-border regional imaginary. For each meaning-making strategy, specific border discourses are identified. Based on a social semiotics approach, we analyze the case of Cali Baja, a place branding initiative that seeks to promote a bi-national mega-region straddling the US-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana. Despite the militarization of the border and the highly visible physical wall that divides Cali Baja, a selective branding discourse framed around favorable border images and representations is brought to the fore. It is therefore at the cost of the partial (in)visibilization of the border that the mega-region can be given value and promoted on the international scene, but it is also the discrepancy with the identity of the bi-national region that precipitated the failure of this place branding initiative.

Developing Students' Emotional Competencies in English Language Classes: Reciprocal Benefits and Practical Implications.

Learning a foreign language involves a wide range of cognitive, social and affective skills. The present article gives ideas to develop socio-emotional competencies in English courses: the capacity to identify the emotion, to understand the causes and consequences, to express their emotions and to do so in a socially acceptable manner, to manage stress and to use their emotions to increase the effectiveness of thinking, decision making and actions. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a dual approach aiming to develop both language and academic subject knowledge. It may be gradually introduced, embedding it at three levels: into the classroom (routines, organization, pupils’ behavior), the school and the curriculum. Successful learning in CLIL remains based on (1) communication, (2) ways of engaging in the learning process and (3) the use of meaning-making strategies. We propose a pedagogical sequence (several courses) to learn a second language based on the social and emotional learning approach, and the English coursebook MORE! 7e for primary school pupils (aged 10–11). We combine the specific language learning of the unit—talking about ourselves, people and their feelings—with the development of pupils’ basic emotional competencies, and discuss advantages and disadvantages to consider in order to successfully implement such lessons.

Perspectives on Coping with Post-traumatic Stress and Substance Use Disorders: A Photovoice Study

Abstract This photovoice study explores the experiences of adaptive coping and safety amongst adults with co-occurring post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder (SUD). Participants (n = 6) were purposively sampled from Seeking Safety groups at a community mental health centre in the United States of America. Participants identified primarily as women (83 per cent), white (50 per cent) and had a mean age of 42 years (standard deviation = 11). Data were gathered through individual photo-elicitation interviews. Through reflexive thematic analysis, the authors generated five themes related to coping safely with distress: (1) similar to other views on mental health recovery, the process of learning to cope with distress was framed as a journey; (2) participants cited several behavioural and meaning-making strategies for coping with distress; (3) feelings of agency were promoted through mastery of wellness skills; (4) healthy personal and professional relationships contributed to positive growth and use of adaptive coping strategies; and (5) participants’ social and physical environments greatly impacted perceptions of safety. Findings provide new evidence on the range of adaptive coping strategies persons with SUD and PTSD employ to realise feelings of safety and the assets relationships and communities can provide to support post-traumatic growth and recovery.

Potentials and Challenges in Students’ Meaning-Making via Sign Systems

The relationship between sign systems and the meaning potentials and affordances of multimodal technologies has received increasing attention in research on digital technology use in education. Students constantly adhere to and engage with semiotic shifts in sign systems when they work with digital technologies for learning purposes. This study explores students’ use of digital technologies in Swedish schools. We trace the way semiotic activity systems and cognitive processes are transformed and realized when students engage with shifts in sign systems into various meaning-making strategies. Methodologically, the study is based on a data set of video recordings, interviews, and observations of classroom practice in three primary schools. An analysis that draws on quantitative ethnography was applied to process and analyse the data. The main findings revealed that sign systems prompted by the technologies and the social space compete to some extent for students’ attention, and that technology design is monotonously rendering lower levels of mediation. These findings show that various sign system prompts need to be balanced and streamlined to support students in their meaning-making. This article conveys the importance of understanding sign systems, as they are the most common resources for technology-assisted learning, and change the prerequisites for meaning-making.

The other-granted self of Korean “comfort women”

Abstract Bringing together “identity as agency” (Schiffrin, 1996; De Fina, 2003), Bamberg’s (1997) three-level positioning, and Tannen’s (2008) narrative types, I analyze three interview narratives of Korean women coerced into the Japanese military’s sexual slavery during World War II, commonly known as “comfort women”. Through an eye toward “others” – e.g., Japanese soldiers, “comfort station” managers, interviewers, and sociocultural and sociopolitical forces – I investigate the manipulation of the women’s agency with their identities positioned as victims, rather than survivors. Meaning-making strategies, such as “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007[1989]), repetition, deixis, and third turns, present the ways in which various others objectify and marginalize the women as well as control their stories. These illuminate how the women’s identities are granted and defined by others. This other-granted identity work reinforces aspects of language ideologies and ideologies of being silenced.

A Functional Analysis of Theme and Thematic Progression of Private Hospital Websites

Medical tourism has been seriously affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that has become a huge threat to global economy. In mitigating this issue, attention needs to be given to the online promotional message strategy to boost medical tourism. However, there is a scarcity of work on medical tourism promotional discourse from the textual function perspective despite the considerable number of studies in other types of discourse. This study, therefore, aims to examine and compare the promotional discourse message strategies in Malaysia and Thailand’s private hospital websites. The analysis was based on Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) perspective, using Halliday & Matthiessen’s model of textual analysis (2004) and Danes’ classification of thematic patterns (1974). A total of six webpages with three webpages of one Malaysian website and one Thai website were analysed in relation to theme type and thematic progression. The findings show that texts derived from the hospital websites in Malaysia and Thailand display similarities and differences pertaining to how the texts are organised in relation to their theme types and thematic patterns. Both websites from Malaysia and Thailand combined objectivity with subjectivity in choosing their themes and thematic progression since they have a preference for unmarked themes in combination with marked theme to inform and persuade readers. However, the Prince Court Medical Centre (PCMC, Malaysia) website was direct and cohesive with its short texts and use of textual themes, while the message in Samitivej Hospital (SH, Thailand) website was more indirect, less compact, and less cohesive as the texts were rather lengthy and interspersed with interpersonal themes. The findings can be a guide for copywriters, website designers or medical tourism stakeholders to be aware of meaning-making strategies in promoting medical websites for medical tourism purpose. Keywords: Textual Analysis; Theme and Thematic Progression; Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL); online promotional discourse; Medical Tourism

Emerging adults’ narratives about the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: An examination of meaning-making strategies and the role of development.

Emerging adults’ narratives about the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: An examination of meaning-making strategies and the role of development.

Processing and Resolving Major Life Stressors: An Examination of Meaning-Making Strategies

Meaning making is thought to be key to adjustment following major life stressors, but there is a dearth of research on the topic. We examined how three types of meaning-making related to distress and violations across time. Further, we examined whether meaning-making’s association with distress was contingent on whether meaning was made. Undergraduates who recently experienced a “very stressful event or situation” were assessed four times over 9 weeks (N = 180; 76% female; Mage = 18.84 years). Positive reinterpretation was cross-sectionally associated with better adjustment, but higher baseline emotional processing predicted faster declines in goal violations across time. Baseline emotional processing predicted improving or worsening intrusive thoughts depending on whether meaning was made Meaning-making strategies may have distinct roles in adjustment, with some conferring immediate benefits, while others confer benefits over time and perhaps only to the extent that it leads to greater meaning made.

A Comparative Survey Study on Meaning-Making Coping among Cancer Patients in Turkey

(1) Background: The role of culture in secular, spiritual, and religious coping methods is important, but needs more attention in research. The aim has been to (1) investigate the meaning-making coping methods among cancer patients in Turkey and (2) whether there were differences in two separate samples (compared to Study 2, Study 1 had a younger age group, was more educated, and grew up in a big city), (3) paying specific attention to gender, age, education, and area of residence. (2) Methods: Quantitative study using a convenience sampling in two time periods, Study 1 (n = 94) and Study 2 (n = 57). (3) Results: In Study 2, there is a significant increase in several religious and spiritual coping strategies. Additionally, there is a positive correlation between being a woman and using more religious or spiritual coping strategies. Secular meaning-making coping strategies also increase significantly in Study 2. The results confirmed the hypotheses for gender, educational, and age differences in seeking support from religious leaders. The results also confirmed the hypotheses for gender and educational level in a punishing God reappraisal and demonic reappraisal. (4) Conclusions: As Turkey is a country at the junction of strong religiosity and deep-rooted secularism, dividing up the meaning-making coping methods into the religious and spiritual, on one hand, and the secular, on the other, reveals interesting results.

Interpretation of trialectic meaning-making strategies

Insights into meaning regulation expand, thus making possible to forecast human behavior with greater accuracy. This is of special importance in overcoming crisis situations in a fast-changing society. A meaning-making strategy defines the direction and content of generated meanings, which control human behavior and attitude to what is happening. To develop a meaning psychology, one should improve the well-known simple schemata of dual interpretation of meaning-making strategies. The next, more complex, yet more adequate level of meaning-making interpretation, is the trialectic approach. The authors of this article propose a theoretical justification to the trialectic model of meaning-making strategies. This theoretical model grounds the following triad of meaning-making strategies: hypoadaptivity strategy, hyperadaptivity strategy and preadaptivity strategy. It permits to better detect the actual human meanings and simulate development of man in today’s world. Determination of such peculiarities enables to carry out multi-variant empirical diagnostic of deeds, attitudes, and behavioral responses.

Creativity and television drama: a corpus-based multimodal analysis of pattern-reforming creativity in House M.D.

Carter's (2004) theory of creativity in everyday common talk is by far the most influential in the field. He hypothesises that linguistic creativity can be categorised into pattern-forming and pattern-reforming creativity. Television drama, despite its global popularity, receives little attention from the field of linguistics. This paper aims to explore the ‘common ground’ in television drama dialogue and linguistic creativity through deciphering how pattern-reforming creativity is realised through screenplay, telecinemato-graphy and acting as meaning-making strategies. Using dialogues from the TV medical dramedy House M.D., a corpus was created to facilitate the extraction of pattern-reforming creativity such as neologisms, portmanteaus and slang words. The extracted data was then analysed using a corpus linguistic approach to multimodal discourse analysis. The analysis reveals a strong association of pattern-reforming creativity production with actor's facial performance realised interpersonally by certain types of telecinematic resources, such as visual framing, camera angle, camera movement and proxemics. This research is a pioneering effort in linking up linguistic creativity with multimodality and is a positive driving force towards research in teledramatic discourse.

On [dis]play: Outlier resistance and the matter of racebending superhero cosplay

A consideration of minoritarian fan responses to minoritarian representation within the Western mainstream superhero genre reveals that minoritarian representation within the genre—on and off page and screen—is notoriously problematic. Yet despite the absences, exclusions, and periodic hostility, the genre remains popular with minoritarian fans and audiences. But how do fans of color keep a beloved, yet often toxic, genre alive and meaningful? This essay considers this question by reviewing resistive and transgressive meaning-making strategies adopted by excluded and maligned superhero fans. Through the lenses of ethno- and Afrofuturism, it unpacks racebending cosplay: an embodied costuming practice—anchored in broader activist traditions of racebending—that reworks the source character's established race and ethnicity. Spotlighting lived experience as a distinguishing and critical aspect of resistance this essay witnesses how, by calling out and disrupting the whiteness of mainstream Western superhero culture, racebending cosplayers perform a powerful form of resistance.

Religious/Spiritual Coping Methods Among Cancer Patients in Portugal

This article is part of an international study on meaning-making coping aimed at understanding the role of culture in coping in different cultural settings. The international study was conducted among cancer patients in 10 countries. This article contains the results obtained in the study in Portugal. The main aim is to investigate the impact of culture on the meaning-making coping methods used by cancer patients. In this article, only religious/spiritual coping methods are in focus. Thirty-one participants with various kinds of cancer (e.g., breast, testicular, lymphoma) were interviewed. Nine different kinds of coping methods related to religion and spirituality emerged from analysis of the interviews. These methods, which are categorized on the basis of religious coping’s five basic religious functions, are as follows: seeking spiritual support, spiritual connection, spiritual discontent, benevolent religious reappraisal, punishing god reappraisal, God’s trust in personal strength, support from clergy or members, self-directing religious coping, and active religious surrender. The study confirms the notion that the strategies people employ when they are stricken by disease, accidents, misfortune, and so on are cultural and temporal constructions. As such, they are valid in concrete contexts and time periods. It is, thus, important that cultural context be taken into consideration when exploring the use of meaning-making coping strategies in different countries.

Legitimisation strategies and managerial capture: a critical discourse analysis of employment relations in Nigeria

Irrespective of the fundamental role of legitimacy in industrial relations as well as social and organisational life, little is known of the subtle meaning-making strategies through which organisational concepts, such as employment relations and engagement, are legitimised in modern world of work, particularly in developing countries such as Nigeria, which results in managerial capture. As a result, this paper explores the discursive legitimisation strategies used when making sense of employment relations in Nigeria’s conflictual, non-participatory employment relations terrain. Relying on Leeuwen’s legitimisation strategies, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and call by Bailey, Luck & Townsend and Legge to widen employment relations discourse, we explore interview, focus group and shadow report data, and distinguish and analyse five legitimisation strategies. The strategies include authorisation, moralisation, mythopoesis, rationalisation, and management. Therefore, we contend that while these specific legitimisation strategies appear in separate data source, their recurrent manifestation and application underscores legitimising discourse of managerial capture in Nigeria’s employment relations.

B(l)ending time, (de)compressing identity: Creative thought and meaning construction inCopy Shop(2001)

According to the critics of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), most of its creativity-related applications tend to conflate the role of producer and consumer, implicitly proposing the deduction of the former’s creative perspective from the finished product through a process of reverse-engineering the latter’s meaning-making strategies. However, given the non-linearity and multi-directionality of the actual creative praxis, the relation between these two roles as heuristic categories need not be considered so much oppositional, as dialectical. Investigating the cognitive mechanisms involved in the ongoing creative process within the context of this dialectical relationship can help us gain some insight into both perspectives, while eschewing the elusiveness of their precise demarcation. The case study presented in this article constitutes such an attempt. By adopting a CBT approach, it offers an interpretation of the creative thinking behind the 2001 short film Copy Shop, informed by the documented insights of its creators. The article proposes a shift in primary focus from the mechanics of conceptual blending to its consequences in reference to the compression and decompression of vital relations and, more particularly, Time and Identity. On the one hand, it aims at examining how the particular ways of populating and interrelating the mental spaces that input to the blend at selected time points in the film occasion Time compressions and shape temporal experience. On the other hand, it concentrates on demonstrating how Copy Shop narrativizes the same processes of (de)compressing Identity that inform the conceptual blends it proposes.