Several of these concepts, e.g., "narrative" or "blended space," can be applied at various levels of granularity or specificity. Italics indicate that the word is defined in this glossary.

Ad hoc Category - a category reflecting a similarity not conventionalized in shared speech and cognition, but created for the moment or for a particular purpose, such as "things that are good to take on picnics" or "things that you can sit on." Since they are not conventionalized and therefore have no commonly shared name, ad hoc categories will be named by phrases, not by nouns.

Archetypal Narrative - a highly skeletal narrative that emphasizes the relationship between the archetypal character roles rather than the specific filler characters. While archetypal narratives can be told as self-standing stories, particular real world situations are often understood in light of their perceived correspondences to archetypal narratives. They are often found cross-culturally, and include familiar stories such as "Cinderella" or "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

Archetype - an originally Jungian term referring to the primordial and universal images that he believed underlie and are manifested in myth, symbol, religion, art, and personal understandings of the world, and "evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses" (http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/litgloss/). He and others have identified archetypal figures (the mother, the child, the wise old man, the trickster, the fool, the hero, the scapegoat, the devil, the temptress, the healer, the hermaphrodite; the self, the persona, the anima/animus, the shadow, etc.), archetypal situations and human experiences (the quest; the task; the initiation; the journey; the fall; death and rebirth, including descents to the underworld and ascents to heaven; the sacred marriage; etc.), and archetypal symbols (the mandala, light and darkness, caves, water and desert, heaven and hell, animals, etc.).

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Backgrounding - cognitive de-emphasis, corresponding to the cognitive emphasis of foregrounding/profiling.

Blending- a mixing of two domains ("input" spaces) which are seen as having a third, underlying, abstract, and general schematic or topological structure in common (the "generic" space, which allows a compatible mixing), and a fourth or "blended" space. In the "blended" space, the roles, fillers, and inferences/entailments applied to the new understanding of the situation derive either from a combination of some elements from each input space or from the blended space itself ("emergent properties"); they cannot be attributed to either of the domains alone.

A simple blend is the following: Imagine a sprinter who just bested her record and an announcer commenting that, "She just beat herself by 1.5 seconds." Upon closer examination, this completely understandable sentence is actually strange because, for example, it requires the same person to be both the winner and loser. We can conceive of its meaning by mentally blending the old trial with the new one, imagining her running beside her former self. The input spaces are this race and her earlier race. The generic space is "races." The blended space is the one in which she is racing against herself, finally filling in the "competition" frame.

For a more complicated example, consider the idea of "trash can basketball" (analyzed by Seana Coulson) which is clearly a combination of certain aspects of throwing away trash (Input space 1) and basketball (input space 2), which share a basic schema of throwing things into containers (generic space). In the blended space, one finds the role of the "ball" filled by a wad of trash and the role of "basket" filled by a trash can. The blend explains the otherwise strange proposition that the physical activity of throwing away trash can combine with the competitive goals of basketball. However, constructing the blend is not simply a matter of filling the roles for basketball with the elements of throwing away trash. The novel structure and emergent properties (including entailments) of the blend are evident in the fact that the blended space is necessary to explain why throwing away trash is accomplished via jump-shot (as it is in the "basketball" input space) and why the "ball" cannot be bounced (from our knowledge of the "trash" input space).

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Categories:

• Basic-level Categories - part of a three-level structure of categories investigated empirically by Eleanor Rosch. Basic-level categories involve the most familiar of the three levels, and are distinguished by several characteristics, such as having a clear mental image and a "motor schema" (a learned repetitive pattern of bodily actions used when interacting with that object or situation); being the earliest name for that concept in a language and the earliest learned by children; and being the shortest word for that concept (among other characteristics). "Dog" and "cat," and "chair" and "table," are basic-level categories.
• Members of superordinate-level categories are basic level categories. Unlike basic-level categories, superordinate categories are abstract; that is, they do not have a single mental image or single motor schema that represents the entire category. For example, it is not possible to visualize a member of the category "furniture" that is not specifically a chair, table, desk, etc., and the same is true for how we bodily interact with them. "Dog" and "cat" are two of the basic-level members of the superordinate category "animal"; "chair" and "table" are basic-level members of the category "furniture." There can be more than one superordinate-level category in a given taxonomy.
• Subordinate-level categories are subdivisions of basic-level categories. "Poodles" and "German shepherds" are subordinate-level categories of the basic-level category "dog"; "rocking chairs" and "dining (room) chairs" are subordinate-level categories of "chair." There can be more than one subordinate-level category in a given taxonomy. Sometimes, but not always, some of the subordinate-level categories are categories more used by experts than by lay people. For example, "dining (room) chair" is a subordinate-level category of "chair"; "ladderback dining chair" and "splat back dining chair" are sub-subordinate-level categories of "dining (room) chair" used by furniture experts. When this level is used, the entire taxonomy is in effect 'reset' for the basic level; that is, experts treat the first-level subordinate category ("dining chair") as basic for them.
  
  In addition, a given concept may be part of more than one taxonomy of categories; "dog" is a basic-level category within the taxonomy for which the superordinate category is "animal," and also taxonomies for which the superordinate categories are "pet" and "mammal." To complicate things even more, sometimes a concept is basic-level in some contrast sets (e.g., "puppy" in contrast to "kitten" and "baby bunny") and subordinate in others (e.g.. "puppy" as a kind of "dog" when the basic-level contrast set is "dog," "cat," "rabbit," and so on).

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Construal - when there are options concerning which frame to use, or to which role to assign a real-world element, the choice is called a "construal." One may construe Katrina as an environmental disaster or a social justice disaster (choice of frame for Katrina), or construe the federal government as doing all it could or as incompetent (choice of frame for government). or construe the federal government as a decision-maker or a decision executor (choice of role for the filler "federal government"). Other kinds of construals, which may or may not involve different frames, involve perspective or viewpoint: the same situation can be described from different points of view, which are reflected in the language and in the inferences, often in subtle ways. For example, "The utility bought the energy from the supplier for a good price" implies that the price was low and is being represented from the buyer's viewpoint, while "The supplier sold the energy to the utility for a good price" implies that the price was high and is being represented from the seller's viewpoint.

Entailments - broadly speaking, entailments are the set of automatic "logical" results of particular presuppositions and role-filler mappings. Entailments can be understood as the "Then" part of "If/Then" statements of the form: "If X then Y." Sometimes the "Y" follows from the "X" within a particular frame; sometimes it results from the application of a given frame, category or other kind of conceptualization. American Environics focuses on propositional entailments (beliefs, statements, etc.) and especially policy entailments (prescriptions for action).

Essentially Contested Concept (Essentially Contested Category) - a concept whose "proper" meaning is explicitly disputed and, given its nature , will always be disputed. Versions of essentially contested concepts are related to each other, but different groups hold different versions as the only "original" or "right" version of the concept. For example, "art" and "democracy" are essentially contested concepts: in neither case is there a set list of core qualities or properties that everyone in the discourse accepts as characteristic of the central member of the category; the dispute is always about what "art really is."

Filler-see frame.

Fillmorean Frame - a conceptual structure that describes the relationships among the elements of a set of interrelated and interdependent abstract roles in a given type of situation or event; examined by linguist Charles Fillmore as the basis of "frame semantics." For example, the Commercial Transaction frame has Buyer, Seller, Goods, and "Money" (roles), with a three-stage basic and abstract script that delineates the exchange of Goods and Money (first the Seller has the Goods and the Buyer the Money; then they exchange; then at the end the Seller has the Money and the Buyer has the Goods). One of Fillmore's important insights was to recognize that we cannot understand the meaning of one of the roles without understanding the entire gestalt.

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Foregrounding/Profiling - when applying a frame to a particular state of affairs, one or more aspects of the situation will receive greater attention or emphasis than others due to the choice of frame.

Frame - a perspective on understanding something. In a more technical usage, a frame is a "structure of expectations" (a term used by Deborah Tannen, following Robert N. Ross). Frames provide an array of roles that need to be filled. When a frame is applied to a real-world situation, people look for fillers to force-fit to all the roles, and they will even supply fillers if these are not immediately obvious. In our terminology, this is frame completion. (Note: This term is used differently in blending theory.) There are many kinds of frames including folk tales, archetypal tales, morality tales; metaphors, Fillmorean frames, and worldviews (including philosophical, political, religious and other ideological worldviews). (The role-filler structure of a frame was proposed in artificial intelligence by Marvin Minsky.)

Genre - a type of literature that has a set of conventions in relation to which potential examples are judged; examples include poetry, fiction, essays, and subtypes such as comedy, tragedy, epic poetry, or mystery. Types of narratives can be related to specific genres.

Image Schema - a skeletal, abstract spatial relation considered to be basic to cognition. Dozens of image schemas have been identified, such as ABOVE, SUPPORT, THROUGH, IN and OUT (CONTAINER), SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, CYCLE, etc. They are usually found directly encoded in prepositions (e.g., "through," "in," "out"), but may structure other parts of discourse as well. Force dynamics image schemas represent aspects of the world in terms of simple schemas involving motion and resistance to motion. For example, the physical sense of "freedom," meaning the ability to move around unencumbered, is captured by a force-dynamic scenario where a force-exerter is able to move thanks to the absence of a force-resister. This basic force-dynamic scene is often metaphorically mapped to other domains, creating the non-physical and political senses of "freedom."

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Landmark/Trajector - a landmark (LM) is whatever is chosen (construed) as the reference point in conceptualizing a scene; the trajector (TR) is whatever is being located in reference to it. Sometimes the LM is literally a fixed object and the TR is in motion with respect to it, e.g., "We (TR) walked through the woods (LM)." Sometimes both the LM and TR are fixed in location, but the viewpoint can be different: "She (TR) lives close to her sister (LM)" vs. "Her sister (TR) lives close to her (LM)." Sometimes physical location is metaphorical, e.g., "Her position (TR) on health care is very close to his position (LM)."

Mapping - the setting up of a correspondence between two cognitive structures, such as between roles and their fillers in a frame, or between elements in two different frames (see metaphor). Mappings can be one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many.

Meta-narrative - as used by American Environics, a "meta-narrative" is made up of propositional presuppositions, a Fillmorean frame (with roles and fillers), a "basic narrative," propositional entailments, and policy entailments.

Metaphor - as introduced into cognitive science by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, a "metaphor" is a matter of thought, not merely a decoration of words. It is a correspondence or mapping between two domains of experience such that one (the target domain) is understood in terms of the other (the source domain) and therefore talked about in terms of it. There is usually a clear transfer of inferences/entailments, especially when the domain to be understood is abstract and lacking in much inherent structure.

For example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY is a familiar and conventional metaphor, usually unrecognized at a conscious level, in which elements of a journey are applied to the experience of being in love by a metaphorical "mapping" or one-to-one correlation, and inferences are also carried over. For example, "spinning my wheels," "going nowhere," and "bumpy ride" all rely on conceptualizing ("mapping") the people in the love relationship as travelers in a vehicle, which usually represents the relationship itself, and on mapping the events and outcome of the relationship as a journey, which can go well or badly in many familiar ways. Similarly, we know that if we go into a dead-end street in a car, we have to make changes and go in another direction; we cannot proceed in the way we were going and continue to progress; this inference is carried over to our understanding of what happens in a love relationship: the people in a "dead-end" relationship have to make changes; they cannot continue doing the same things and have the relationship go well.

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Metonymy - occurs when one element of a frame is used to represent and evoke another element of the frame. For example, a common conventional metonymy is to speak about the executive branch of government by the name of the building where the leader of that branch is located: "Today the White House announced its new energy proposals." Often metonymy explains what is referred to as "symbolic." An example is the flag of a nation standing for ("symbolizing") the nation.

Morality Tale - an archetypal narrative that is fundamentally didactic or prescriptive and relies heavily on both a morality (a conception of what is good or right), which is usually implicit, and a didactic moral, which is usually explicit. "Aesop's Fables" (e.g., "The Fox and the Grapes") are morality tales; morality tales are found cross-culturally.

Narrative - a framework of events arranged in some kind of order (e.g., temporal, causal), involving a set of "characters" and relationships between those characters. Narratives can be descriptive and/or explanatory.

Perspective - see Construal.

Presuppositions - backgrounded knowledge or states of affairs that a particular conceptual structure relies upon in order to be understandable or applicable, but does not explicitly specify.

Profiling - see Foregrounding/Profiling.

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Prototype - certain members of a category are judged to best represent or exemplify the category as a whole. These different judgments are effects of radial category structure. In certain categories, the central case is a particular example with a high level of detail. For example, let's say that the prototype of the category "bird"-the "best example" of a bird-is "robin." In others, it is preferable to talk about "prototypicality" rather than "the prototype" because the "center" of the category is a list of attributes, where prototypicality is judged in relation to how many of these attributes a particular member embodies. That is, rather than a particular kind of bird being the central case, the central-member list of attributes would specify a certain size, the ability to fly and sing, and so on.

Radial Category - radial categories have a "hub and wheel" structure. The hub is either a list of attributes that different members share in part, or a member that is considered the "best example" of that category and against which all other members are measured for "goodness of fit" (giving rise to judgments of the degree to which other, radial, non-central members belong to the category). There are reasoning effects of radial categories; for example, one extends belief about a property from a central member to non-central members much more readily than from non-central members to central members.

For example: If asked, most people think they could list the conditions that make someone a "mother" or not. However, when reminded of birth mothers, foster mothers, genetic mothers, single mothers, surrogate mothers, stepmothers, working mothers, and donor mothers, the matter appears much more complicated. All of these "non-central" cases extend from and are named in relation to a prototypical mother who conceived, birthed, and nurtured the child rather than working outside the home, and was married to the child's father. Each of the non-central cases embody some but not all of these conditions. One might think that there is at least one necessary condition for being called a "mother": being a woman. However, it is not unheard of for a man to be called a "mother," even if it is jokingly, if he is the one staying at home and nurturing the child. Such examples reveal our implicit understanding of the category's open-ended quality, even if they are currently "not really" examples of "true" mothers.

Role - see Fillmorean frame; frame.

Salient (noun: salience) - loosely speaking, "important" or "relevant" or "receiving the focus of attention." There are different degrees of salience attached to each topic, element, role-filler pairing (mapping), and so on in a given context. Salience may provide motivation for choosing a particular frame, including a particular metaphor or metonymy.

For example, if I am an engineer, the condition of the levees after Hurricane Katrina is likely to be most salient to me; if I am a social worker, it will be the condition of the affected people. In the first days after Katrina, the mapping of the federal government to the role of direct provider of emergency services was most salient; as time went on the mapping of the federal government to the role of provider of funds for restoration has become more salient.

Script and/or Scenario - these terms come from the work of Roger Schank and Robert Abelson ("scripts") and Marvin Minsky ("scenario"). These terms refer to a standard sequence of events and/or actions that are expected to occur in a given situation. For example when we go to a "restaurant" we know what will happen: We will be greeted at the door by a hostess or host, who will pick up menus and take us to an empty table; we will read the menus and decide on our order; the server will return and take the order; and so on.

Viewpoint-see Construal.

Glossary originally prepared by Dr. Pamela Morgan and Kenton de Kirby.

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