Conceptual blending of meanings in business marketing relationships Sid Lowe National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok, Thailand Astrid Kainzbauer Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand, and Piya Ngamcharoenmongkol National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok, Thailand Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to explore the topic of embodiment as a gap in meaning-making within the literature on business relationships in IMP and business marketing academic discourse. Referring to the theories of embodiment, the authors question the dominant worldview of Cartesian dualism which marginalizes the influence of the body in meaning-making and explore relevant implications of an embodiment agenda for research and practice. The aim is to demonstrate that embodiment has a vitally important influence in the construction of meanings. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a review of theoretical and empirical literature on embodied cognition and theories of embodiment to construct a cooking metaphor as an analogical vehicle for exploring meanings within business relationships. Findings – The authors use a cooking metaphor to explore how meaning is created in human interaction. Body and mind blended together produce meaning through the catalyst of discourse and semiotics. Cognition is described as a mixture of rational and non-rational processes involving blended elements of embodied perceptions and psychological ideas stirred and heated in a semiotic “sauce” of discourse (language, communication, information, power/knowledge). Originality/value – The contribution of the paper is in proposing that both body and mind influence the creation of meanings in business relationships blended through the mediation of language and discourse. The authors aim to advance a “practice” and “linguistic” turn in the business marketing discourse by proposing that embodied, discursive and cognitive processes are more effectively conceived as blended influences. Keywords Multi-method research, Embodied cognition, Meaning-making, American pragmatism, Business marketing relationships Paper type Conceptual paper Introduction Some ideas gain universal acceptance by gradually becoming taken-for-granted, unquestioned underlying assumptions. When an idea is widely accepted as to “go without saying”, it becomes a tacit truth, a sense-making foundation upon which other ideas are built upon. In this paper, Descartes’ cogito is regarded as such a tacitly accepted and privileged truth (we explain this in more detail in a later section of this paper). Tacit acceptance of Cartesian dualism that privileges cognition over embodiment has, we suggest, produced a gap in existing literature. This gap either ignores or marginalizes the influence of the body in meaning-making. To begin to challenge such an unquestioned assumption, we use a metaphor which suggests that the body (embodiment) is not secondary to the mind (cognition) in the creation of meaning. Our metaphor of cooking describes and illustrates processes of meaning, and thereby, figuratively assigns embodied influence as the vital “raw ingredient” of meaning-making. As in cooking, meaning- making lacking this “raw ingredient” would be without texture and flavor. Thus, we regard embodiment as the unprocessed source of meaning upon which subsequent refinements of meaning through language and cognition are based. Our emphasis is upon overcoming the Cartesian binary distinction of mind and body, which has privileged the former and marginalized the latter in Western thought. We explore what abandonment of this dualism might promise in terms of better descriptions focusing on embodied action and practice. Our essential proposition is that both body and mind are influences upon the creation of meanings in business relationships blended through the mediation of language and discourse. In the following sections, we explain the “embodied” approach in the context of emergent theories of embodiment. We explore the implications of a reversal of Cartesian diminishment of embodied influences with the help of embodied cognition and American pragmatism. We do so by endorsing the logic of pragmatic investigation to “treat theory as an aid to practice, rather than seeing practice as a degradation of theory” (Rorty, 1999, p. 30). We then use a The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0885-8624.htm Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing 34/7 (2019) 1547–1554 © Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 0885-8624] [DOI 10.1108/JBIM-10-2017-0247] Received 25 October 2017 Revised 16 August 2018 10 February 2019 19 April 2019 26 April 2019 Accepted 27 April 2019 1547