Any approach to interaction is confronted with the dilemma of reconciling the empirical fact that meaning is locally and interactionally managed, as shown by conversation analysis, with the fact that conversations are subject to genres that impose conventionalized expectations for allowable contributions and inferences, as advocated by the ethnography of communication. This theoretical paper attempts to overcome this challenge by integrating Langacker’s current-discourse-space model with Barsalou’s dynamic model of situated conceptualization. With reference to these frameworks, the paper sketches a grounded socio-cognitive model of meaning construction in context that combines the situated interactional negotiation of meaning with the discursive knowledge that underlies speech genres in the form of genre-simulators. To substantiate and illustrate the theoretical considerations, the paper draws on two extracts from spoken tourist-information transactions.

This article analyzes the connections between the oral genres displayed by Gitano (Spanish Gypsy) children and adults during religious instruction classes at an Evangelist church and the writings produced by Gitano children in an after-school computer program in the same community. Results are discussed in relation to two strands of received assumptions regarding Gypsy culture and recent theoretical insights in the study of literacy and discourse. On one hand, previous portraits of Gitano culture as exclusively oral need to be revised, in line with a more social and situated perspective on literacy. On the other, the results are a basis for critical examination of dominant explanations regarding the educational failure of Gitano children, an argument that highlights the importance of engaging intratextual linguistic analysis with discussions of the social and institutional orders.We first thank the research participants for their warm welcome to the different sites that are part of this study. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments. This study began when David Poveda worked in the School of Education and Humanities of the University of Castilla-La Mancha, where Ana Cano and Manuel Palomares-Valera completed their training. The research project was funded by the University of Castilla-La Mancha through an internal research grant (Principal Investigator: Beatriz Martín).