Overview of the cognitive linguistics enterprise
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C1P3
2025-11-22
49
Overview of the cognitive linguistics enterprise
Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought that originally emerged in the early 1970s out of dissatisfaction with formal approaches to language. Cognitive linguistics is also firmly rooted in the emergence of modern cognitive science in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in work relating to human categorisation, and in earlier traditions such as Gestalt psychology. Early research was dominated in the 1970s and 1980s by a relatively small number of scholars. By the early 1990s, there was a growing proliferation of research in this area, and of researchers who identified themselves as ‘cognitive linguists. In 1989/90, the International Cognitive Linguistics Society was established, together with the journal Cognitive Linguistics. In the words of the eminent cognitive linguist Ronald Langacker ([1991] 2002: xv), this ‘marked the birth of cognitive linguistics as a broadly grounded, self-conscious intellectual movement’.
Cognitive linguistics is described as a ‘movement’ or an ‘enterprise’ because it is not a specific theory. Instead, it is an approach that has adopted a common set of guiding principles, assumptions and perspectives which have led to a diverse range of complementary, overlapping (and sometimes competing) theories. For this reason, Part I of this book is concerned with providing a ‘char acter sketch’ of the most fundamental assumptions and commitments that characterise the enterprise as we see it.
In order to accomplish this, we map out the cognitive linguistics enterprise from a number of perspectives, beginning with the most general perspective and gradually focusing in on more specific issues and areas. The aim of Part I is to provide a number of distinct but complementary angles from which the nature and character of cognitive linguistics can be understood. We also draw comparisons with Generative Grammar along the way, in order to set the cognitive approach within a broader context and to identify how it departs from this other well-known model of language.
In Chapter 1, we begin by looking at language in general and at linguistics, the scientific study of language. By answering the question ‘What does it mean to know a language?’ from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, we provide an introductory insight into the enterprise. The second chapter is more specific and explicitly examines the two commitments that guide research in cognitive linguistics: the ‘Generalisation Commitment’ and the ‘Cognitive Commitment’. We also consider the notion of embodied cognition, and the philosophical doctrine of experiential realism, both of which are central to the enterprise. We also introduce the two main approaches to the study of language and the mind adopted by cognitive linguists: cognitive semantics and cognitive (approaches to) grammar, which serve as the focus for Part II and Part III of the book, respectively.
Chapter 3 addresses the issue of linguistic universals and cross-linguistic variation. By examining how cognitive linguists approach such issues, we begin to get a feel for how cognitive linguistics works in practice. We explore the idea of linguistic universals from typological, formal and cognitive perspectives, and look in detail at patterns of similarity and variation in human language, illustrating with an investigation of how language and language-users encode and conceptualise the domains of SPACE and TIME. Finally, we address the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the idea that language can influence non-linguistic thought, and examine the status of this idea from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.
In Chapter 4 we focus on the usage-based approach adopted by cognitive linguistic theories. In particular, we examine how representative usage-based theories attempt to explain knowledge of language, language change and child language acquisition. Finally, we explore how the emphasis on situated language use and context gives rise to new theories of human language that, for the first time, provide a significant challenge to formal theories of language.
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