Edited by Marianna Bolognesi and Gerard J. Steen
[Human Cognitive Processing 65] 2019
► pp. 263–286
Science aims to understand the physical and living world around us. To do this, it requires us to develop abstract ways of thinking. The aim of this chapter is to describe and explain how the abstract concepts of heat energy and heat transfer emerge and evolve during two secondary (high) school science lessons, by providing an account of how they are linguistically represented in discourse using a cognitive discursive framework. The analysis of a teacher-led demonstration, a group writing task, and an interview, during which pupils externalize their mental images in speech, writing, and in visual representations, shows how the discourse as well as the social and concrete here-and-now physical contexts, affect the development of these abstract concepts.