Meaning-Building Strategies: Transition From Duality to Trialectics

Abstract

Introduction. The authors suggest that instead of bipolar semantic scales of personal traits the focus of research on meaning-building should be shifted towards a trialectical framework of meaning-building strategies. This approach provides a multi-factor diagnosis of the value-meaning sphere of personality for better modeling of human behavior in various interaction situations.

Theoretical Basis. According to Leontiev’s three-level internal integral model of personality, there are certain mutual correspondences between personal meanings and personal traits that manifest themselves in various interactions. In considering corporality, sensuality, mentality, causality, and paradoxicality as the areas for individuals’ collaboration and development, meanings appear to be causal polymodal images of actions and relations.

Results and Discussion. Meaning-building strategy determines the orientation and content of the generated image-meaning. A trialectical framework for the consideration of the meaning system may help to provide more adequate modeling tools of possible strategies, which correspond to basic personal traits. The authors suggest an original approach which is based on the corresponding triad, namely hypoadaptave, hyperadaptive, and preadaptive meaning-building strategies. Thus, it is possible to establish correlations among these meaning-building strategies as poles of the multifaceted development of personality. Certain mutual correspondences between the value-meaning sphere and personal traits, which manifest themselves in various interaction situations, can help determine these correlations. The approach proposed by the authors is instrumental in revealing a personal profile as a multifactor model of possible states of the value-meaning sphere of the experiencing subject. In terms of behavior modeling, the revealed personal profile may not only determine the orientation of meaning regulation but also disclose the qualitative content of the genesis of personal meanings and demonstrates an actual strategy of building meanings as polymodal causal images of relations and actions.