Short epistemological remarks on the social production of meaning

Abstract

After having referred the polemics that opposed the defenders of a «communication» semiology, to those of a «meaning» semiology, the author develops a set of remarks not only about the limits and possibilities of a sociological question about the meaning sociologically produced and shared, but also about the question, parallel to the first one, about the relations between sociology and semiology. The production of meaning through the significant material of the
body, a subject not always despised by ethnology and by certain semiology, is the illustrative theme of the enunciated points of view, which, in the last part of the text, tryto show the superiority of the praxiological mode of knowledge (Bourdieu) in restoring the symbolic practices, namely those involved in human gesture (either ritualized or spontaneous).