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In addressing the topics raised by the commentators, we proceed to examine the ecolinguistic value and meaning of cancel culture on different levels of communication and organization of life. In particular, we focus on how social-media communication distorts the perception of, and discourse on, cultural cancelation and what we can do to bring it back to the embodied and dialogic realm from which it originated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context • Cancel culture (CC) is currently a widely discussed social phenomenon marked by ethical, psychological and even political controversies. Furthermore, evoking a possibility of canceling a person on a cultural level, the term "CC" itself is still perceived by some as an unusual linguistic practice. > Problem • There has been little insight into the meaning and value of CC for human ecology, i.e., life-sustaining relations constructed in the course of, and as a result of, linguistic coordinations of actions. We aim to show that CC is as much a linguistic novelty as an ecological tool that humans have constructed to sustain their embodied interactions with the technologically changing and expanding social realities. > Method • Using a constructivist-ecolinguistic approach and methods of cognitive semantics, we analyze patterns of experience that structure one's understanding of, and reasoning about, the human realities constrained by the repeatable coordination evoked as "CC." > Results • A conclusion is made that the meaning of CC is constituted from three complex coordinations of intercorporeal experience: the first configures physical manipulation of container-like objects as well as perception of merging substances, which gives rise to an understanding of social identity as a circular and ecological relation; the second arranges path-goal and part-whole patterns of action and underlies a strive for mattering as self-fulfillment; the third metaphorically maps the experience of motion to enable thinking about CC in terms of temporal progression and delays of people "as mattering projects" that can be guided ahead or left behind. > Implications • The research findings reveal why and how CC is rooted in human nature that tends both to "converse" and to "conserve." Such an experiential view of the controversial trend could contribute to lessening tensions in the society between those canceling and those canceled. > Constructivist content • In our semantic analysis, we use enactivist and embodiment approaches to mind, language and social interaction. > Key words • Embodied mind, image schemas, conceptual metaphor, mattering, intercorporeal experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We elaborate on the opposing tendencies of language in the praxis of human living -- the tendency to help us conserve the results of our interactions with the environment in a meaningful way and the tendency to converse with, and transform, these surroundings in search of a new and better understanding of our experienced world. We focus on the nature/nurture aspect of language, and the problems of abstraction and human violence, as well as outlining possible routes to a healthier semantic living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

> Context • Mark Johnson and George Lakoff in their theory of metaphor hypothesized that our experience provides certain linguistically traceable patterns that we "live by." Back in the 1930s, the founder of general semantics, Alfred Korzybski, expressed the opposite idea: With language we develop harmful semantic patterns that we can die of. > Problem • The assumption that language kills and that humans tend to construct their realities in a destructive way by force of linguistic habits may sound radical. We aim to elaborate on ways in which our individual capacity for abstract thought gives rise to harmful semantic patterns of experience. > Method • Using the method of conceptual analysis, we compare five contemporary constructivist approaches to language and cognition with Korzybski's theory of general semantics. > Results • Our analysis reveals that embodiment, radical constructivism, biocognitivism, enactivism and bounded rationality implicitly approach the problem of semantic disorders that result from our species-specific cognitive mechanisms of interaction with our experiential world. Drawing on different terminology and using different conceptual angles, followers of these schools of thought emphasize that our semantic adaptation to the surrounding world can be destructive under certain circumstances and lead us to a delusional identification of some source with some target, which can dangerously affect the way we behave towards others and ourselves. > Implications • Our analysis of semantic patterns of (self-)destruction across different constructivist approaches elucidates the nature of knowledge and meaning and allows for a better understanding of major social and even political problems, such as the inability to reach compromises and tendency to use violence instead of peaceful dialogue. > Constructivist content • We build on such constructivist notions as image schemas, embodied reason, morphism, experiential coherences, experiential domains, coordinations of behavior, enaction and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bin Liu's model of the world, where screen creatures construct their experience and 3D environment but are not related to the world perceptually, makes a good case against objective realism assumptions and the passive world-view approach. However, from our point of view, it fails to account for the biological substrate of such worldmaking. We outline an alternative model of the world inhabited by embodied dialogic creatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the example of X-phemisms, I focus on the major epistemological difference radical constructivism makes to the theory of language and communication. Along these lines, I reflect on the relationship between values, affect and words as well as on the meta-communicative aspect of experience construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

> Context • Assuming upon the suggestion of dictionary makers and language theorists that some words are more pleasant than others and that it affects the way we should communicate, we put the cart before the horse and make a big categorial mistake. > Problem • Negative and positive emotional reactions to words are not something that can be deduced from words themselves and predicted before the communicative interaction. Instead, it is when, where and who utters these words that makes them sound good or bad for us, as observers. > Method • Based on the methods of experiential linguistic analysis of observational data I investigate philosophical roots and empirical manifestations of good and bad language in communicative interactions. > Results • I formulate and prove the hypothesis that euphemisms and dysphemisms are experiential factors of our dynamic situational construction of others. Our construal of some words as good or bad depends upon the experience we have of another person with whom we interact in situ. > Implications • Findings of my research illuminate the inherently experiential nature of language, which might lead sociologists and linguists to reconsider the way they approach the power of good and bad words. Moreover, it is argued to be neither possible nor necessary for scholars to make lists of euphemisms or dysphemisms, at least for non-written communication. > Constructivist content • I rely upon the concepts of radical constructivism such as experience construction, experiential field, construction of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I reformulate and elaborate on important claims relevantly put for debate by the commentators, i.e., (a) counterfactuals are a form of observable experience rather than a plurality of inaccessible worlds; (b) experience cannot be observed in descriptions, but can be observed in films; (c) counterfactuals are a syntactic unity, or a synthesis, of relationally changing attentional objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context * Linguists and philosophers, as well as psychologists, have not yet offered a coherent explanation of the logic behind the intricate grammar of counterfactuals, the meaning of irreality and the role of this concept in human life. Problem * I investigate the role and mechanisms of irreality as a special form of experience. Method * Based upon the results of the philosophical analysis, I introduce the principles of experiential methodology grounded on the open-ended reflective approach to human experience proposed by Varela, Thompson and Rosch. Results * I show that counterfactuals are the experiencer's non-linear counterbalancing of the intentional and attentional directions of her perceptual activity. Counterfactuals occur in and through the reflected abstractions from the bodily movement in which one attentional object follows another. Reflecting upon the sequence of attentional objects, the experiencer reorganizes the sequence and experiences the difference as a relational change. As a result, new experience is constructed out of the changed value of the lived past. Implications * The epistemological insight into counterfactual ways of acting helps reconsider many semantic, particularly grammatical, problems of counterfactuals in terms of the subjunctive and the so-called "irrealis." Besides, the findings of the research have implications for psychological studies of communicative behavior. Constructivist content * To explore the problem of irreality, I offer a detailed philosophical analysis of key constructivist and enactive concepts such as reality, experience, languaging, scientific method and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]