Full Description
This monograph develops a new socio-cognitive theory of sense-making for analyzing the creative management of situated social meaning. Drawing on cognitive-linguistic and social-interactional heuristics in an innovative way, the book both theorizes and demonstrates how embodied cognizers create complex situated conceptualizations of self and other, which guide and support their interactions. It shows how these sense-making processes are managed through the coordinated social interaction of two (or more) communicative partners.
To illustrate the theory, the book draws on two distinct data sets: front-desk tourist-information transactions and online-workgroup discussions. It scrutinizes how the communicative partners use verbal humour as a powerful strategy to creatively establish a situated social image for themselves.
This book addresses specialists and advanced students in the areas of cognitive linguistics as well as interactional approaches to language. Moreover, it will be of great value to readers interested in verbal humour, business communication, and computer-mediated communication.
Contents
1. Acknowledgments; 2. List of figures and tables; 3. Conventions of data presentation; 4. 0. Introduction; 5. Part I. Social meaning; 6. 1. Charting the Dimensions of Social Meaning; 7. 2. Social meaning and language; 8. 3. How to integrate cognitive and interactional views of social sense-making? - Towards a blueprint for a socio-cognitive model of social orientation; 9. Part II. Towards a socio-cognitive theory of situated social sense- making; 10. 4. Dynamic cognition in social practice; 11. 5. Language: The ultimate socio-cognitive technology - towards a socio-cognitive semiotics; 12. 6. Cueing situated social conceptualizations - The epistemic scaffolding of social orientation through language; 13. Part III. Analysing the creative construction of social meaning; 14. 7. The creation of social meaning through humour; 15. 8. The use of humour for creative social positioning in tourist- information and online workgroup communication; 16. 9. Conclusion; 17. References; 18. Index
