Mind and society: A response to Derek Edwards' 'Emotion Discourse'

This paper extends Derek Edwards' (1999) assertion that accounts of emotions are constructed using a repertoire of linguistic forms in specific contexts for specific goals and interests. The notion of situated meanings offers a fruitful way of conceptualizing linkages between mind and meaning construction, on the one hand, and social practices that organize them, on the other. Situated meanings are context-responsive assemblies constructed on-line from meanings based in prior experience. These mid-level constructions are linked with cultural models, which provide simplified narratives or theories of the world. Social practices provide apprenticeship in the 'right' sorts of experiences so that persons form the 'right' sorts of cultural models and make sense of experience in keeping with the ideologies embedded in these cultural models. Patterns of socioculturally specific and ideologically laden practices, activities and institutions reflect and are reflected by our mental representations.