N. J. Enfield was trained in Asian Studies and Linguistics at the Australian National University (ANU) and Melbourne University, before joining the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 2000. His research on language, culture, cognition, and social interaction has been based on regular fieldwork in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. He has coordinated numerous large-scale comparative research projects testing human diversity in a range of domains. His books include Ethnosyntax (OUP 2002), Linguistic Epidemiology (Routledge 2003), Roots of Human Sociality (with SC Levinson, Berg 2006), A Grammar of Lao (Mouton 2007), The Anatomy of Meaning (CUP 2009), and Dynamics of Human Diversity (Pacific Linguistics, 2011).

• Introduction ; 1 Relationships ; 1.1 The data of relationships ; 1.2 Context ; 1.3 Relationship thinking ; 1.4 Enacting relationships and relationship types ; 1.5 Relationship-grounded society ; 2 Sociality ; 2.1 Human social intelligence ; 2.2 Social motivations ; 2.3 Tools for assessment and management ; 2.4 Semiotic process ; 2.5 Norms and heuristics ; 2.6 Communication as tool use ; 2.7 Two primitive imperatives for communication ; 3 Enchrony ; 3.1 Enchrony and its scope ; 3.2 Causal frames for understanding meaning ; 3.3 Normative organization ; 4 Semiosis ; 4.1 Anatomy of the semiotic process ; 4.2 Flexibility in semiotic processes ; 4.3 Inference as a semiotic process ; 4.4 Cultural epidemiology as a semiotic process ; 4.5 Elements of the semiotic process and their possibilities ; 4.6 Payoffs of this framework ; 4.7 The Saussurean sign: a convenient untruth ; 4.8 A frame-content dynamic ; 4.9 Meaning as a public process ; 5 Status ; 5.1 Status predicts and explains behavior ; 5.2 Entitlements, commitments, enablements ; 5.3 Relationships as statuses ; 6 Moves ; 6.1 Moves are composite signs ; 6.2 Composite utterances are interpreted as wholes ; 6.3 Turn-taking: moves in linguistic clothing ; 6.4 The move as a privileged level of semiosis ; 7 Cognition ; 7.1 Behavior-reading ; 7.2 Cognition and language ; 7.3 Psychology as interpretative heuristic ; 7.4 Fear of cognition? ; 8 Action ; 8.1 Natural action versus social action ; 8.2 Courses of action ; 8.3 Speech acts and actions-en ; 8.4 Categories of action-en? ; 8.5 A composite notion of actions-en ; 8.6 Ontology of actions-en ; 8.7 A generative account of action-en ; 9 Agency ; 9.1 Flexibility and accountability ; 9.2 Agent unity heuristic ; 9.3 Joint agency ; 9.4 Distributed agency ; 10 Asymmetry ; 10.1 Propositions and the relativity of knowledge ; 10.2 Epistemic Authority ; 10.3 Distribution of agency in practice ; 10.4 Sources of Asymmetry ; 10.5 Our imperfect communication system ; 11 Culture ; 11.1 Cultural systems ; 11.2 The Kri house as a system context for social relations ; 11.3 Ritual in communication ; 11.4 Kri residence ; 11.5 Practical interpretation of the Kri residence: to follow a norm ; 11.6 Spatial distribution and diagrammatic iconicity ; 11.7 Sanction of norms: making the tacit explicit ; 11.8 Everyday ritual and social relations ; 12 Grammar ; 12.1 Language as a system ; 12.2 Syntagmatic relations: grammar for turns ; 12.3 Paradigmatic relations in linguistic grammars ; 12.4 Markedness: special effects of choice within a system ; 12.5 The Lao system of person reference ; 12.6 Default reference to persons in Lao ; 12.7 Pragmatically marked initial references ; 12.8 Grammar expresses social relations under the radar ; 13 Knowledge ; 13.1 Common ground ; 13.2 Sources of common ground ; 13.3 Fuel for Gricean amplicative inference ; 13.4 Grounding for inferring ; 13.5 Audience design ; 13.6 Affiliation and information ; 13.7 From information to social relations ; Conclusion ; References ; Index

For all readers with an interest in the nature of human sociality and communicative behavior in general, and the link between relationship thinking and agency in particular, this volume certainly provides rich and stimulating food for thought.