Reviewed by Lucas Bietti, Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen
Peter Harder’s new book is the forty-first volume of the Cognitive linguistics research series edited by Dirk Geeraerts and John R. Taylor for De Gruyter Mouton. This wonderful book is a success on all levels. H covers an extensive range of topics in cognitive linguistics (CL), discursive psychology, conversation analysis, systemic-functional linguistics, and critical discourse studies. The book is divided into nine chapters coherently explaining H’s social and cognitive linguistics approach to the cognitive and social complexities of language use in post-modern societies.
In Ch. 1, H discusses key concepts in CL, such as idealized cognitive models, frames, domains, schemas, and mental spaces, that he claims play a central role in understanding the construction of meaning in language, but acknowledges that they have some overlap and lack clear boundaries. The next chapter complements this review of traditional approaches in CL through an examination of embodied, grounded, and intersubjective features of meaning construction. In Ch. 3, the author explains the important role of critical discourse analysis, as well as its conceptual and methodological limitations, arguing that it takes meaning-making to be the result of social, cultural, and political processes and ignores its cognitive dimension. In Ch. 4, H points out that social practices of meaning-making in the world must be grounded in individual and shared mental representations and cognitive processes in order to exist. He then presents his theory of meaning in mind and society, integrating the social, functional, and cognitive dimensions of meaning-making.
Ch. 5 looks at the relationship between flow and competency. H asserts that competency in language users is first developed by the flow and then, as an ‘input to meaning construction’, generates contextualized output meanings in communicative situations. The next chapter explores the relationship between competency and flow by examining the interaction of linguistic structure, function, and variation in the construction of a multilayered linguistic system.
Ch. 7, which explores how practices of meaning-making are created in society, expands on arguments from Ch. 4 and integrates them with the elements that form a linguistic system presented in Chs. 5 and 6 to provide the theoretical basis for H’s social and cognitive approach to meaning construction. In Ch. 8, H shows the benefits of his integrated approach to meaning-making by analyzing practices of discrimination and racism in Western Europe, and Denmark in particular. Finally, the last chapter gives an extensive summary of the main arguments of the book.
Meaning in mind and society enlists the reader in a cutting-edge attempt to unite the cognitive and social sciences in discourse studies. I recommend this book to everyone interested in cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse studies, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies.