Interpretive Agency: A Theoretical Framework of Sovereign Meaning-Making
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This document presents the Interpretation Rights Framework, a theory-building framework centered on Interpretive Agency: a proposed capacity to recognize, evaluate, and author the meanings through which life events become personally significant while maintaining a distinction between empirical circumstances and the meanings assigned to them. The framework addresses a recurring problem in contemporary social environments: individuals may retain causal agency, behavioral autonomy, coherent narratives, and the ability to revise distorted cognitions while nevertheless allowing external normative standards to determine what their experiences mean and what those experiences imply about their worth. Interpretive Agency therefore focuses on a proposed sovereignty dimension of agency concerned with interpretive authority. The framework is organized through the Sovereign Selfhood Model, a five-layer architecture consisting of Cognitive Awareness, Structural Understanding, Resource Reconsolidation, Narrative Re-authoring, and Sovereign Practice. It differentiates Interpretive Agency from Locus of Control, Self-Determination Theory autonomy, Narrative Identity, and Cognitive Restructuring. Two provisional operationalizations are included: the Interpretive Agency Self-Assessment Scale (IAS), also referred to as the Life Interpretation Rights Scale (LIRS), and the Narrative Re-authoring Protocol (NRP). Neither is presented as a validated psychometric or clinical instrument. Version 1.0 is explicitly a public theory-building artifact and research program, intended to establish a citable baseline for subsequent empirical development. Research status: This version has not been peer reviewed or empirically validated. A related manuscript has been submitted to the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and is currently under peer review. This Zenodo record is a separate public theoretical artifact and should not be interpreted as evidence of journal acceptance or publication.
Author: liu, chongjun
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204088147
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