ABSTRACT
Mental language actually refers to specific states of mind. One studies cognition, emotion, motivation, and the like as if these were actual states or activities, and research can somehow provide an accurate map or picture of the internal world. However, if language is essentially social performance, attention shifts away from the referents of such terms to the way the language of the mind functions within relational action. To speak properly about our minds does not mean getting it right about what's going on inside, but to participate effectively within a cultural tradition. In other words, one could not legitimately have an emotion outside a relational process. In effect, people may view psychological discourse as action performed within a relationship. The dramatizations are used in two major ways, first to undermine the longstanding presumption that psychological language refers to activities in a mental world. Second, to demonstrate the way mental discourse functions in human relationships.
