ABSTRACT
What we say, what we do, and the sense we and others make of our words and deeds mark us as members of a community. Our viewpoints and our habits of action define the historical period in which we live, the cultural traditions that have shaped us, and the typical life experiences within the community of people of our age, gender and social position. Our discourse, what we mean by saying and doing, deploys the meaningmaking resources of our communities: the grammar and lexicon of a language, the conventions of gesture and depiction, the symbolic and functional values of actions, the typical patterns of action that other members of our community will recognize and respond to. In different historical periods, in different cultural traditions, for people of different ages, genders and social positions, both these resources and the typical, recognizable patterns in which people use them are different.
