A Communicational Approach to Collective Knowledge Generation: episteme and praxis

摘要

This paper presents a communicational model of collective knowledge generation. It is based upon a social constructivist approach and a comprehensive methodology; the data collected come from the study of real collective design activities. The proposed model focuses on the social settings of meaning systems and the semio-pragmatic factors of knowledge generation. It is shown that the essential resource of collective activities is routine knowledge which consists of a complex articulation of typical conducts of action and lays a foundation for the transformation and generation of both basic and specific elements of knowledge. This type of knowledge is objectivated in an arranged set of indications, products and signs: a symbolic device bound to the pragmatic motives of the ongoing socially organized activity and conditioned by a typified sociocognitive relevance system. The generation of routine knowledge stems from changes in the socialized relevance system by ⅰ) the dynamic precipitation of new coextensive labels attached to accountable knowledge and ⅱ), a recursive and asystematic exemplification process whose aim is to construct concomitantly an intersubjective type of theme and a correlated typified sociocognitive routine. This new theme constitutes a resource for restructuring pre-existing problems and for structuring new problems according to projected actions.