"Meaning" is a valid er, meaning of "sens" and yet has many of the same associations as "moral."

Could you interpret "sens" as direction and stay close to the original text? The directions are undoutebly moral ones, but they are specified within the brakets.

I hope it helps

I had thought of "semantic reference systems", but that would narrow it to being specifically about language, a limitation that is not in the original.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that if the author meant "reference points", he would have used "points de référence" or "repères" rather than "référentiels". I interpret the use of the latter as bringing about a lexical aspect; so the argument would be that the terms "le juste, le vrai, etc." still evoke meaningful value systems.

“. . . The conflict in American public life today, then, is not a conflict between morality and secularism. It is a conflict of moralities in which one moral system calls itself secular and insists that the other do likewise as the price of admission to the public arena. That insistence is in fact a demand that the other side capitulate. By divesting ourselves of authoritative moral referents that are external to ourselves, such as religion proposes, we have acquiesced in the judgment that there is no moral appeal beyond the individualistic pursuit of interests.”
-Richard John Neuhaus. The Naked Public Square. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's, 1984. (125-6)

http://williamwrites.blogspot.com/2008/07/neuhaus-on-plurali...

I do think the author here intends to refer to guiding principles, which means a moral code.


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Note added at 1 day6 hrs (2009-03-19 09:52:55 GMT)
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It seems that one can also use 'guiding referents' where one seeks to find a term that is ethically or morally neutral:

Constructivism, Criticalism & Postmodernism (Journal 5A)
In the paper I argue that science teachers should develop an enhanced sense of moral accountability by embracing an emancipatory ethic and an ethic of care as guiding referents. From a pragmatic perspective, teachers need to achieve a balance between the competing interests of a range of stakeholders. What is your opinion on this issue, particularly in relation to your own moral accountability as a teacher? Is it desirable to embrace these ethical values? Is it feasible? If it is desirable but not readily achievable, what are the first steps that can be taken? Are other ethical referents worth pursuing?

http://pendidikansains.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/constructivi...

Preparing Pre-service Teachers for their Role as Critical Mediators of Knowledge
For McLaren there are transcultural beliefs or values that unconditionally embracing postmodernism would deny. McLaren (1995) advocates an "organic" or "critical resistance" postmodernism that, "addresses the community of diverse Others under the law with respect to the guiding referents of freedom and liberation" (p. 210). The legitimate form of postmodernism is one that incorporates norms of fairness and equality. In summary of the view of both Banks and McLaren, they embrace the role of postmodernism as a critique but believe that the stakes of education are too high to unconditionally embrace the epistemological relativism of the postmodernist project.
http://webs.csu.edu/~amakedon/mpes/ROUNDTABLE/Vol1No2Fall200...

'Referents of meaning' is also an accepted term:

http://books.google.com/books?id=E_oYhjRfHokC&pg=PA135&lpg=P...

Of Barthes, Myths and Coding
In our analysis we examine the words and images (making up ‘signs’) that are used in the 131 collected print ads. New Economy discourse is literally teeming with signs. Veiled by the false obviousness of the ‘natural’, by pseudo economic ‘common sense’, these signs call out to be coded/decoded. Through our coding of the FT ads, we attempt to categorise and expose interlocking narratives and situate the emerging themes within a system of cultural representation. The analysis of ads from a semiotic framework is of course not original (see, for example, Williamson, 1978) (7). Following this approach, advertising functions as a complex hierarchical semiotic register in that signifiers transfer from first order referents of meaning to second and third order ones. Goldman and Papson (1996) theorised that the inevitable consequence of this process is that advertising imagery is eventually able to function and mean without reference, in that any image can (at least hypothetically) serve to signify any other. Sign systems are becoming arbitrary. They are liberated from many of the constraints imposed on other semiotic systems and consequently provide a unique medium suited perfectly to the representation and construction of myth and fantasy. In a recent book, Emisson and Smith (2000) provide a schema for analysing advertising materials. Drawing on Barthes’ work (1957) they propose an examination of the signs in each advertisement on a first-order level (i.e. the denotative, language level) before then looking at the myths that are present in the text at a second-order level (i.e. the connotative level, what is not said explicitly but what is implied).
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/1-3/decocketal/framespage...