This article discusses the meanings that potential readers of newspapers and magazines produce for quantitative relations presented as graphs in texts of the printed media. Our focus is the semiotic process proper to the production of meanings in an out-of-school context, which we illustrate through the analysis of interviews with a 16-year-old girl. Starting with a critical-methodological reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, we suggest the notion of the linguistic transit between a certain "school grammar" and the language games which are experienced by the subject in his or her understanding of graphs, as a central component of such a process. The article aims at contributing to the debate on the use of quantitative information in everyday life out-of-school, as well as for the development of a cognitive view on issues related to the production of meanings.
production of meanings; graphs; language games; forms of life; wittgenstein
