ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book notes following Saussure, that language is a socially held (collective) system, one which includes not just phonology, syntax, and a lexicon, but also meaning. It considers the relationship of language to thought and thus to culture. Does language constrain or otherwise shape thought? Are different linguistic systems commensurable? The book follows the insight that shared pragmatic knowledge relating to language is part of culture. It addresses the use of cultural systems by individuals. Individuals have in their minds their individual representations of the collective representations of the various cultural units to which they relate. The book offer some methodological approaches that can help one to empirically characterize at least some salient attributes of some sorts of collective cognitive structures. It is concern with the referents of words (and other concepts).
