Across a wide variety of topics and methodological approaches, researchers find that meaning is segregated along sociodemographic lines. Using real-world data, this article evaluates and helps reconcile the often-theorized but rarely tested mechanisms that segregate meaning. Shared meaning is defined as both greater agreement on a cultural object’s interpretive dimensions and a similar schema organizing how these interpretive dimensions interrelate. The setting is 21 book groups across the United States, all discussing the same previously unknown novel. The authors find that, through their interactions with similar others, the meanings individuals make out of cultural objects rapidly become demographically situated as individuals resonate with one another and the work itself. Results indicate that sociodemographically segregated meanings for even nonideological cultural objects may be the routine outcome of social structure and interaction. Researchers, by focusing largely on snapshots of segregated meanings on specific issues rather than on meaning-making processes, may contribute to an overly ingrained view of a divided culture.

中文翻译：

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突现意义：调和文化对象意义创造的倾向性和情境性解释

在各种各样的主题和方法论方法中，研究人员发现，意义是按照社会人口学的界限划分的。本文使用真实世界的数据，评估并帮助协调那些经常被理论化但很少经过测试的分离意义的机制。共享意义被定义为对文化对象的解释维度的更大一致，以及组织这些解释维度如何相互关联的类似模式。背景是美国的 21 个书组，都在讨论同一本以前不为人知的小说。作者发现，通过与相似他人的互动，当个人与他人和作品本身产生共鸣时，个人对文化物品的理解迅速成为人口统计学定位。结果表明，即使是非意识形态文化对象的社会人口隔离意义也可能是社会结构和互动的常规结果。研究人员主要关注特定问题的分离意义的快照，而不是意义的形成过程，可能会导致对分裂文化的看法过于根深蒂固。