Academic Meaning Systems: A Critical Look at Cultural and Institutional Influences

Although cultural meaning systems often appear from the inside to be the only fully logical and rational way of representing the world, they are the product of institutional forces and experiences not shared by all cultures. Accordingly, they are hardly logical and rational in every setting, because they represent sectional interests. Similarly, academic meaning systems and the knowledge categories of education are conventional creations, open to change, challenge, renewal, reform, or decay. So moving freely within those meaning systems is much easier for people reared within and around the institutional forces and experiences that produced them. And those admitted to these meaning systems by their sociocultural position have a more ready access to the rules of use for the signs and symbols that carry meaning within the systems.