Narrative modeling and cultural literacy in the storyworld: a quest for meaning

Abstract Following Per Aage Brandt’s “Towards a cognitive semiotics” (2011), culture as a cognitive-semiotic model allows us to look into the interrelation of cognition and signs through the act of interpretation of culture. Thus, culture characterized as habits of feeling, attention, thought, and action plays a role of modeling in the lifeworld. Regarding cultural evolution, culture also has a feature of practice of habit-taking for transformation through dialogic relations of semiosis from Peirce’s semiotic perspective. This paper argues for narrative modeling which enables habit-taking in feelings by way of analogical reasoning in a form of parable as cognitive process. A story in a form of qualia as a model for thought is embodied in narrative modeling to be enactive by a storytelling agent. Therefore, narrative modeling reveals the process of thought through habit-taking in feelings of empathy and sympathy to a feeling of an idea as a person. This leads to an act of understanding other mind, sharing the meaning and value of a story for enhancing sensibility and cultural literacy for cultural evolution. This journey of story-making and story-telling by way of narrative modeling shows a trajectory for a quest for meaning and value which will be found between “you” and “I”.