Narrative meaning: Semiosis and identity

The article examines the narrative meaning that allows constructing an understanding of the surrounding world, oneself, and human actions through stories that give events, motives, and goals meaning, forming a single narrative plot. Ontological, epistemological, and hermeneutic prerequisites for meaning-making are analyzed. The narrative meaning is demonstrated, linking personal experience with cultural, ethical, and temporal contexts in which one’s own existence acquires a narrative form through the linking of events into a plot, in which not randomness or absurdity is revealed, but a direction in the context of which teleology manifests itself as one of the possible modalities of meaning. It is proved that the narrative meaning is revealed as a synthetic category representing the ontological rootedness of man in the world, the epistemological activity of consciousness, and hermeneutic experience. The key role of narrative as a means of semiosis is recognized. It is argued that in the context of the formation of personal identity, the narrative meaning of autobiographical narration acts as a key basis for maintaining a sense of one’s own authenticity in the face of the modality of ‘unnatural’ existence.

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