Cognitive materiality & cultural reproduction: Metonymy at the heart of cultural cognition

Abstract Why do some cultures exhibit recognizable modal patterns while others mere fragments? Why do some private schemas become embedded in practices referential across time and space, while others die out? Embodied or ‘4E’ cognition (cognition as embodied, embedded, extended and enacted) presents a compelling paradigm for individual cognition but fails to adequately explain cultural, or shared cognition. Despite advances, most 4E theories explain cultural reproduction in terms of socialization, which does not fully explain cultural patterning. Building on Clark and Chalmers' (1998) extended cognition, Hutchins' (2005; 2012) material anchoring, and Strauss and Quinn's (1997) shared task solutions, this essay argues cultural models spread and become referential, in part, through cognitive‐material metonymies. These mostly preconscious features of cognition (not just language) fuse mental representation with material experience in one simplified, optimized cognitive operation through mechanisms of indexing, multimodality, meaning elaboration, abstraction, and ideation. This reproduces cultural models across domains and reconciles longstanding body/mind‐culture dualism, also offering new approaches for applied cultural models work in fields like social change, among others.