This interactionist study draws on the semiotics of Peirce and Barthes to theorize object‐mediated communication, a nonverbal interpersonal technique in which individuals signal new information by using and orienting themselves to symbolically endowed material objects. Examining the case of door‐mediated communication, it proposes that objects lie symbolically dormant until their deeper collective significance is activated through their use in interaction. The article expands the scope of interactionist inquiry on human–nonhuman relations by moving beyond the dominant scholarly focus on identity. The semiotic approach foregrounds a distinct human–object phenomenon, a novel category of nonverbal communication, and important meaning‐making dynamics.
This chapter explores sociocultural frames of metaphor in the case of door metaphors to highlight the cognitive sociology of access. Bridging and building on insights in cognitive linguistics and cognitive sociology, it contends that metaphorical projection involves generic sociomental processes. To illustrate this theoretical claim, the chapter analyzes how social structures of relevance and markedness in the built environment pattern the conceptual structures of door metaphors. It also analyzes individuals’ strategic use of door metaphors to shape metaphorical politics of access in the abstract. Attempting to broaden both the cognitive sociology of metaphor and the sociology of access, it concludes with a discussion of the promise of a distinctly cognitive sociology of access.
work that does not itself marginalize, work that privileges those who are marginalized, and work that helps us understand the complexities of lived experiences. Schulze, Koon-Magnin, and Bryan have moved the bar-not far enough in terms of how they navigate their analysis of race, but they have moved the bar nonetheless. Through Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and Sexual Assault, readers can all gain a more in-depth understanding of how gender and sexual identities influence sexual assault and its aftermath. In their aim to provide readers with that deeper understanding, the authors do, indeed, challenge rape mythology.
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