Chapter 3 first elaborates on the view of context-sensitivity as a nontrivial context-shift-dependence. Drawing on Chapter 2, it makes explicit the fibration of semantic contents over contexts of utterance. The latter makes it natural to introduce a generic context and to identify linguistic meanings with the semantic contents attached to that context. The correspondence established between linguistic items and mathematical ones leads to the hypothesis that the fibration of contents over contexts constitutes a “stack” (with respect to a natural Grothendieck topology). This correspondence is the final reconsideration, proposed in the book, of Russell’s logical analysis. The rest of Chapter 3 distinguishes two different concepts of meaning (as obtained by collation or as transposable to more specific contexts) and thereby supports a constructive conciliation of minimalism, indexicalism, and contextualism. It also puts forward a new picture of the demarcation between semantic and pragmatic components, as well as a more flexible notion of compositionality. It finally develops various applications to philosophy of language and to cognitive linguistics.

This chapter concludes the volume by reflecting on the ongoing value of concept analysis in the social sciences. It revisits the tension between hyperfactualism – obsessive attention to granular detail – and the necessary abstraction that enables generalization. Conceptualization, the authors argue, helps scholars not only communicate more clearly but also observe and describe phenomena more effectively. Far from being a distraction, conceptual work sharpens empirical inquiry. The chapter highlights the interplay between conceptualization and measurement, especially in validity assessment, and underscores how concepts represent and structure knowledge. Attention to concepts also facilitates integration and translation across time, space, and disciplines, as seen in such examples as the V-Dem project. Issues of conceptual boundedness, typologies, and traveling are revisited, drawing on contributions from cognitive linguistics and classic debates between lumpers and splitters. The authors also reflect on how digital tools and formal modeling offer new avenues for concept innovation. Finally, they affirm the importance of teaching concept analysis as a way to clarify students’ thinking, research design, and disciplinary communication. In sum, the chapter defends the overconscious scholar: one who sees in concepts not distraction, but a path toward cumulative, communicable, and intellectually satisfying scholarship.

This autobiographical essay by David Collier traces the evolution of his interest in concept analysis within political science. Sparked by a challenging dissertation defense on the distinction between squatter settlements and slums, Collier was motivated to better understand and refine social science concepts. He reflects on foundational influences, including Sartori’s notion of concepts as “data containers,” and explores how defining and variable properties can structure meaningful comparisons. Collier highlights the role of vivid, resonant terminology in shaping scholarly communication, drawing on examples from Hirschman, Krasner, and Murra. He credits influential mentors such as Philippe Schmitter and colleagues such as Henry Brady, as well as inspiration from the Ostroms and cognitive linguists such as Lakoff and Rosch. The essay underscores the importance of typologies, disaggregation, and sensitivity to conceptual stretching in empirical research, using the concept of corporatism and the idea of “critical junctures” as case illustrations. Collier also recounts his teaching experiences and collaborations, which reinforced his belief in the methodological and substantive value of rigorous concept work. The piece serves as both a personal narrative and a theoretical introduction to the study of concepts, setting the stage for the volume’s broader exploration of conceptual innovation in the social sciences.

Focusing on the third-person formulation of many of the texts on the question tablets, and drawing on psychological and narratological research, this essay explores the mind-set of those who came to consult Zeus, asking if these texts reveal a sense of the self as fragmented in the face of crisis – which may also suggest how processes of consultation at an oracle could have provided psychological relief to pilgrims. Using analytical approaches from cognitive linguistics, this essay examines these texts for what they may reveal in terms of a cognitive blending of Viewpoints – both mortal and divine – aiding self-integration and, thus, decision making. Finally, this essay argues that awe in the face of the divine may have been a key component of the experience of consultation, with significant impacts on our brain and body.

In this chapter, multiple anti-oppressive and liberative lenses are reviewed and discussed as application to anti-oppressive decolonial clinical social work supervision and leadership practice. This chapter both review of the theory or practice lens and an emphasis on application to practice. By design subsequent chapters will overlap, deep dive, and offer multiple practice views of several concepts offered in this chapter.

This chapter explores the role of central aspects of cognition in historical linguistics. After describing and discussing the cognitive commitment and its theoretical background, this chapter highlights the relation to cognitive archaeology as well as historical psychology and explores the methodological prerequisites for cognitive approaches to the history of English, particularly the quantitative turn in cognitive linguistics. Case studies from different periods of English illustrate how cognitive factors can shed light on synchronic historical language stages and diachronic developments, and how these in turn can help us to further explore the cognitive commitment. Finally, we argue for a feedback loop, where modern cognitive linguistic theories feed into and guide historical enquiries, but are also checked and modified, if necessary, on the basis of historical findings.

This chapter returns to the theoretical concerns of the study, and to the principles at the heart of a cognitive-functional approach to modeling the cognitive processes in language use. Central are the basic principles of depth and dynamism, and the three issues emerging from them when comparing cognitive and traditional functionalist approaches in current linguistics: the (non)concern with conceptualization in linguistic analysis, the processual vs. representationalist concept of grammar, and the complex meaning-form relationship. The chapter rounds up and reflects on what the analyses of the attitudinal and other semantic and functional dimensions in the preceding chapters have shown with relevance to these principles and issues. Moreover, it uses these insights to dwell on wider implications, beyond the analysis of the qualificational dimensions, for our understanding of the cognitive systems involved in language use.

Interaction in Poetic Imagery was my first book. It was based on my doctoral researches at Cambridge in the mid-1960s. I set out to formulate a theory of a significant, but previously untheorised, aspect or potentiality of poetic imagery – indeed an aspect or potentiality not previously demarcated, either under the name I gave it, ‘interaction’, or any other name. With ‘imagery’ understood as ‘metaphor, simile and the various forms of comparatio’, I identified interaction as ‘any local cross-terminological relation between the tenor and vehicle of an image’, explicitly adapting ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ from I. A. Richards’ The Philosophy of Rhetoric. I then categorised the modes of interaction into four groups (with subsequent subdivisions). The cross-terminological relation might be effected aurally or extra-grammatically or by intrusion or (most commonly) by neutral terminology. All this was established on the basis of a corpus of Greek poetry – early lyric and dramatic poetry, from Archilochus to Aeschylus – with additional examples from English poetry, from Shakespeare to the twentieth century.

Word Grammar is a linguistic theory which best known as a variant of Dependency Grammar. However, it has a number of other properties, and its architectural assumptions are consistent with its theory of how human cognition works and its theory of how representations work. In this chapter we relate Word Grammar (WG) to a number of different trends in linguistic theorising and explain the various traditions that the theory belongs to. Word Grammar belongs in three main theoretical traditions: Dependency Grammars, Constraint-based Grammars and Cognitive Linguistics. We show how WG relates to these approaches and explore how the network model of linguistic representation adopted by WG relates to each tradition. The key claim of WG is that language is represented in a symbolic network, which is part of a more general human cognitive network and which is in a relationship with a discreet neural network.