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that functions too much like a proper name the word applies just here, I don’t really know why. We argued above that cultural models don’t just exist in people’s heads, but are often shared across people, books,
other media, and various social practices more on this later. So, too, situated meanings don’t just reside in individual minds; very often they are negotiated between people in and through communicative social interaction,
as our example about uttering “sweet nothings” was meant to suggest. To take another example, consider that if a partner in a relationship says something like “I think good relationships shouldn’t take work,” a good part of the
ensuing conversation might very well involve mutually negotiating directly or indirectly through inferencing what “work” is going to mean for the people concerned, in this specific context, as well as in the larger context of their
ongoing relationship. Furthermore, as conversations, and, indeed, relationships, develop, participants often continually revise their situated meanings.
3.8 The social mind
As we have just discussed above, I have taken the view, which is becoming progressively more common in work in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, that the human mind is, at root, a pattern recognizer and builder see
references at opening of Section 3.6, p. 46. However, since the world is infinitely full of potentially meaningful patterns and sub-patterns in any domain, something must guide the learner in selecting which patterns and sub-
patterns to focus on. And this something resides in the cultural models of the learner’s sociocultural groups and the social practices and settings in which they are rooted.
Because the mind is a pattern recognizer, and there are infinite ways to pattern features of the world, of necessity, though perhaps ironically, the mind is social really cultural. It is social cultural in the sense that sociocultural
practices and settings guide and norm the patterns in terms of which the learner thinks, acts, talks, values, and interacts Gee 1992.
This need not, however, mitigate each learner’s own agency. Since each individual belongs to multiple sociocultural groups, the cultural models and patterns associated with each group can influence the others in unique ways,
depending on the different ‘‘mix” for different individuals Kress 1985. And, of course, each individual is biologically and, in particular, neurally quite different from every other Crick 1994.
Thus, we see that, from this perspective, talk about the mind does not lock us into a “private” world, but rather, returns us to the social and cultural world. If the patterns a mind recognizes or assembles stray too far from those
used by others in a given Discourse whether this be the Discourse of physics, bird watching, or a lifeworld Discourse, the social practices of the Discourse will seek to “discipline” and “renorm” that mind. Thus, in reality,
situated meanings and cultural models exist out in
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the social practices of Discourses as much as, or more than they do inside heads.
3.9 “Situated meanings” as a tool of inquiry
