Blurb:

This chapter considers what we are negotiating when we speak and write. In particular, it considers how we can understand the vast background of shared values that underpin our talk, help us build communities and hold them together. It will explore this by introducing the resources of ORIENTING – how we connect and arrange meanings into intricate and coherent constellations of feelings and values. It will describe five main resources in this regard: sourcing (where meanings are positioned as being from a particular perspective); convoking (where meanings are directed toward someone in ways that bring them into the text); opposing (where meanings are oriented as being against each other); likening (where meanings are positioned as in some way similar to each other); and encapsulating (where sets of meanings are synthesised as being within other meanings). This chapter will show how these resources work together to build interconnected constellations of meaning that underpin the texts we produce and the feelings that we negotiate, and that this helps us achieve our social goals and establish the communities that we affiliate with.