Drawing upon ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, linguistic philosophy and social studies of science, Derek Edwards makes a compelling case for language to be best understood as a kind of activity, as discourse. These influences underpin a fascinating intellectual survey ranging across cognitivism, discursive psychology, shared knowledge, categories and metaphor, emotion and narrative. The emphasis throughout is on the value of close empirical study of text and talk, through which the topics of mind, world and `who we are' are seen as `ways of talking'.

Derek Edwards is Reader in Discursive Psychology in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. He is co-author (with Neil Mercer) of Common Knowledge, (with Jonathan Potter) of Discursive Psychology and (with others) of Ideological Dilemmas.

An Informal Introduction
Cognitivism and Cognition
Discourse and Reality
Talk as Action
Shared Knowledge
Scripts and Dispositions
Emotion
Categories I
Language and Perception
Categories II
Bodily Experience and Folk Psychology
Narrative
Stories and Rememberings
Membership
Children, Animals and Machines