Abstract
Many types of everyday and specialized reasoning depend on diagrams: we use
maps to fnd our way, we draw graphs and sketches to communicate concepts and
prove geometrical theorems, and we manipulate diagrams to explore new creative
solutions to problems. While the linear and symbolic character of verbal language
has long served as the predominant model of human thought, it is remarkable how
— through a range of contexts — thinking and communication critically depend
on manipulations of external, ofen non-linear, and manipulable iconic-diagrammatic
vehicles. In this issue of Pragmatics and Cognition we explore such diagrammatic
reasoning, that is, of individual and intersubjectively distributed cognitive
processes relying on external representations (i.e. diagrams in a broad sense) as
tools for thinking and communicating