Context and meaning: how narrative shapes perception

In personal branding, meaning does not live in words or images alone. It lives in their interpretation. Every signal we emit, an idea, a gesture, a photograph, a phrase, reaches our audience through the filter of their context, culture, and expectations. This is why two people can perceive the same message in completely different ways, and why perception depends less on what we say and more on how what we say is read.

The open work

Umberto Eco described communication as an open work, a text or message that does not carry a single fixed meaning but instead leaves space for interpretation. The author proposes, but it is the reader who completes the work. In personal branding, the same logic applies. We design signals, publications, talks, visual identity, tone of voice, but the final meaning only emerges when our audience interprets those signals through their own system of references.

This means that perception is a co-creation. It is born from the meeting point between intention and interpretation. We can decide what we want to express, but it is the audience who decides what it means. The power of a narrative therefore depends not only on the clarity of the message but also on our ability to anticipate the contexts in which it will be received.

The system of meaning

Roland Barthes, in his analysis of semiotics, explained that meaning is built through the relationship between the signifier (the form of the message) and the signified (the idea or concept it evokes). Between them lies a space of interpretation where personal experience, culture, and emotion intervene.

A word can carry very different connotations depending on the cultural or professional context. The same happens with visual cues: a color, a posture, or even silence can evoke different associations depending on the audience’s frame of reference. Barthes called this interaction the mythic layer of meaning, the moment when the sign stops being literal and becomes symbolic.

For a personal brand, this symbolic layer is essential. When your story connects emotionally and conceptually with the audience’s own myths, their desires, struggles, and aspirations, your message ceases to be information and becomes identity.

The power of context

This is why the same story, told in different contexts, can generate opposite perceptions. A narrative that feels inspiring in a conference hall can sound presumptuous in a small mentoring group. A phrase that conveys authority in a corporate keynote can seem distant in a one-to-one conversation.

Understanding the role of context allows you to shape perception without altering your essence. The goal is not to change the message but to adapt the signals—tone, examples, rhythm, and emphasis—to the environment in which they are received. The meaning of what you say is always relative to where, when, and to whom you say it.

Narrative as a system of perception

Seen from this angle, narrative is not only a vehicle of expression but also a system of perception management. It translates identity into culturally readable forms. It aligns your personal truth with the symbolic language of your audience.

To build perception strategically, your stories must work on multiple levels:

• Rationally, they must be clear and structured.

• Emotionally, they must connect with the lived experience of the audience.

• Symbolically, they must resonate within the cultural codes of the context.

The strength of a narrative does not lie in control but in anticipation, in understanding how meaning travels from you to your audience and how context transforms it along the way.