At the LANCE – Laboratory for the Analysis of Communication in Education, researchers have the goal of developing communication analysis tools in contexts of educational practices. LANCE’S project is based on a theoretical and methodological approach that integrates natural logic with argumentation theory, having processes of social representations at its core. We are concerned with meaning production processes regarding the analysis of world interpretation systems and the re-signification of meanings in educational practices.
Our interest in the integration of natural logic and argumentation theory is the realization that there is a lack of conceptual tools to understand processes of meaning production, which leads us to taking communication into account. In order to understand the meanings of what is communicated, we cannot let aside neither the conditions according to which speech is produced as a result of motivations that entail it, nor the social and cultural tools that enable this production. These processes are dynamic: they develop in the context of interactions among individuals. The explanatory model of meaning production that we want to describe takes into consideration the historical difficulty of focusing on the process instead of on the product. We found in the integration of argumentation theory and natural logic elements regarding the dynamic character of the genesis of meanings in social practices. Natural logic enables us also to face another difficulty concerning the analysis of the production of meanings, one of understanding the interconnection between form and content in communication processes.