Abstract

In this thesis, Lived meaning is defined as meaning that is actually felt in our experiences. Through a research approach called dialogical semiogenetics, the study explored how this lived meaning emerges. ;In part I, the following three methodological orientations of semiogenetics are explicated through an examination of the notions of lived experience and lifeworld: to regard the constitution of meaning from an intersubjective perspective; to acknowledge the multiplicity and the historicity of lifeworlds of different individuals and societies; to recognize meaning and experience as equiprimordial, as articulations of the world--each unable to be derived from the other. ;Next, related notions such as meaning systems, apthegms, and social and personal lifeworlds are introduced and reformulated; and three levels of semiogenetic analyses are explored. From the intersubjective-evolutionary perspective, all meaning systems and apothegms have origins in concrete and contextual lived meanings at some points in human history. ;Part 2 of this dissertation starts the semiogenetic analysis at the macroscopic level to identify and illustrate such apothegms, or higher-order meaning systems, of how we feel, think, or act. The meaning systems of body, language, domestication, writing, and religion are analyzed as apothegms of premodern origins in human history. Next, the Enlightenment-Scientific, the Romantic-Historical, and the Critical-Emancipatory apothegms are explicated. ;Part 3 of the study provides examples of semiogenetic analysis at the microscopic level, recapturing the genesis and development of lived meaning. The first example concerns the lived meaning of the mountain hike. It illustrates the various dimensions of the contextuality of the lived meaning. The second example, of a girl's experience of reading a book, highlights the genesis of lived meaning. The third example, of mountain climbing of a child with her parents, emphasize the pedagogical aspect in the intersubjective constitution of lived meaning. ;As a summary, a conceptual framework of semiogenetics is added. Semiogenetics is an attempt to see each concrete lived meaning in its particular contextuality and, at the same time, to relate it to the diverse lived meanings and meaning systems that have emerged in the entire human history