Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
American Behavioral Scientist
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Cavalli, N.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

The Symbolic Dimension of Innovation Processes

Nicola Cavalli

University of Milan–Bicocca, Italy

The sociology of technology and the sociology of science still make little use of findings in rhetorical and linguistic fields. This article analyzes the conditions under which an invention might become an innovation, paying particular attention to the symbolic level. The article, thus, analyzes the role of communication in the social process of innovation and proposes to use the concepts of discourse community and communicative genre to tackle the symbolic dimension of innovation processes, applying them to the case of e-books, taken as an invention that has not yet become a true social innovation. A textual analysis, together with the discussion of the results of two empirical studies, is proposed to analyze the social, linguistic, and communicative aspects of the innovation process.

Key Words: sociology of technology • sociology of science • innovation • discourse community • genre theory

American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 50, No. 7, 958-969 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764206298321
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 American Behavioral ScientistHome page
T. Venturini
Verba Volant, Scripta Manent: The Discontinuity Effect of Explicit Media
American Behavioral Scientist, March 1, 2007; 50(7): 879 - 896.
[Abstract] [PDF]