CHAPTER 8The Elusive Art of Meaning Making

The New Yorker magazine has entertained readers for decades with its smart and funny cartoons. A back-of-the-magazine feature called “Cartoon Caption Contest” offers a new cartoon in every issue, sans caption, that invites readers to submit their own ideas for one. Thousands of submissions pour in each week. Three finalists are announced in a subsequent issue, and a winner, as well as second and third place contestants, is eventually named.

Of interest for us to the process of creating meaning—as well as salience and agenda, incidentally—is that those who submit their 250-character caption in the hopes of seeing their name immortalized in the New Yorker have nothing to go on but a few observable concepts ...

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