In "The Literary Mind" (OUP, 1996), Mark Turner offered a bold new theory about the role of story and projection in thought and in the origins of language. In this new book, Turner outlines the consequences of that theory for social scientific inquiries into human meaning. Turner here offers a picture of how humanistic and cognitive scientific study of meaning could combine with social scientific study of meaning to create a new field, "cognitive social science". Each chapter of the book applies the theory elaborated in "The Literary Mind" to a different area or theme in social scientific research. Then, in his Conclusion, Turner charts the agenda for cognitive social science.