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• https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110626438

15 Cognitive Linguistics

Vyvyan Evans, Bangor University

• Published: 05 May 2015
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Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought and practice concerned with investigating the relationships among human language, the mind, and sociophysical (embodied) experience. This chapter presents and evaluates its two primary, theoretical commitments—the generalization commitment and the cognitive commitment —as well as the five theses arising from these that guide cognitive linguistics research: the thesis of embodied cognition; the thesis of encyclopaedic semantics; the symbolic thesis; the thesis that meaning is conceptualization; and the usage-based thesis. The chapter then surveys some of the most influential theoretical approaches within cognitive linguistics, showing how they exemplify and realize the central theses of the cognitive linguistics enterprise.

Introduction

Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought and practice concerned with investigating the relationships among human language, the mind, and sociophysical (embodied) experience. It originated in scholarship that emerged in the 1970s, conducted by a small number of researchers. These include Charles Fillmore (e.g., 1975 , 1978 ), George Lakoff (e.g., 1977 ; Lakoff & Thompson, 1975 ), Ronald Langacker (e.g., 1978) and Leonard Talmy (e.g., 1975 , 1978 ). This research effort was characterized by a rejection of the rationalist zeitgeist in linguistics that held that language is innate ( Chomsky, 1965 ) and represents an encapsulated module of mind ( Chomsky, 1981 ; Fodor, 1983 ).

The early pioneers looked to new findings in cognitive psychology that were then emerging in order to develop an empiricist approach to linguistics. In so doing, they were attempting to reconnect the study of language with the nature of the human mind. As they then saw it, contemporary approaches to the study of language in the Anglo-American tradition, most notably the generative approach to grammar and the Montague approach to semantics had left the discipline of linguistics bankrupt. The study of natural language semantics had been lost amid a highly formal and arcane procedure for identifying truth conditions, and the study of grammar had been reduced to an increasingly abstract architecture that assumed underlying transformations for converting kernel sentences into various surface realizations. By the mid-1970s, theoretical linguistics, especially for Lakoff and Langacker, had lost its way, and a reboot was required.

The strategy adopted was to step back from the complexity of language and look at how the mind works. Findings from psychology had, by the 1970s, provided a reasonably thorough understanding of some of the key elements involved in how the mind perceives the world. Figure-ground segregation, attentional mechanisms, and processes of schema formation and framing were all by now reasonably well understood. And new work on how humans categorize conducted by psychologist Eleanor Rosch (e.g., 1975) , who, like Fillmore, Langacker, Lakoff, and Talmy, was also based on the West Coast of the United States, was in the process of leading to a paradigm shift in the study of categorization and knowledge representation.

What then made this approach a “cognitive” linguistics was that it sought to view language as an outcome of the mind. Hence, understanding new findings relating to the mind could and would inform the study of language.

Today, cognitive linguists have highly detailed models for the nature and structure of language, informed by psychological mechanisms and processes. But, by viewing language as an integral part of mind, cognitive linguists have been able to do more than just study language. In addition, cognitive linguistics has developed detailed models of conceptual structure. If language is informed by cognition, then language can be deployed as a window on the mind—so cognitive linguistics contends. Cognitive linguists deploy language as a key methodology for studying knowledge representation. And this has led to cognitive linguists being in the vanguard of the development of an embodied perspective on language and thought— embodiment is today a core perspective shared, in one form or other, by large number of cognitive scientists (see Barsalou, 2009 , for a recent review). Indeed, in recent years, cognitive linguistic theories have become sufficiently sophisticated and detailed to begin making predictions that are testable using a broad range of converging methods from the cognitive and brain sciences.

Perhaps what is most distinctive about cognitive linguistics is that it is not a single articulated theoretical perspective, nor a methodological toolkit. Rather, cognitive linguistics constitutes an enterprise characterized by a number of core commitments and guiding assumptions. It constitutes a loose confederation of theoretical perspectives united by these shared commitments and guiding assumptions.

This chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, I provide an overview of the two primary commitments of cognitive linguistics, its axiomatic base. In the subsequent section I consider the five theses of cognitive linguistics: its postulates. It is subscription to these that give a particular theoretical architecture or approach its distinctive cognitive linguistic character. I then consider the phenomena that cognitive linguists have investigated before addressing some of the most important theoretical and methodological approaches to these phenomena. The chapter then concludes by considering some of the outstanding issues, areas, and questions in cognitive linguistics.

Primary Commitments

Cognitive linguistics is distinct from other movements in linguistics, both formalist and functionalist, in two respects. First, it takes seriously the cognitive underpinnings of language, the so-called cognitive commitment ( Lakoff, 1990 ). Cognitive linguists attempt to describe and model language in the light of convergent evidence from other cognitive and brain sciences. Second, cognitive linguists subscribe to a generalization commitment: a commitment to describing the nature and principles that constitute linguistic knowledge as an outcome of general cognitive abilities (see Lakoff, 1990 )—rather than viewing language as constituting, for instance, a wholly distinct encapsulated module of mind. In this section, I briefly elaborate on these two commitments that lie at the heart of the cognitive linguistics enterprise.

The Cognitive Commitment

The hallmark of cognitive linguistics is the cognitive commitment ( Lakoff, 1990 ). This represents a commitment to providing a characterization of language that accords with what is known about the mind and brain from other disciplines. It is this commitment that makes cognitive linguistics cognitive, and thus it forms an approach that is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature.

The cognitive commitment holds that principles of linguistic structure should reflect what is known about human cognition from the other cognitive and brain sciences, particularly psychology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy. Accordingly, proposed models of language and linguistic organization should reflect what is known about the human mind, rather than represent purely aesthetic dictates such as the use of particular kinds of formalisms or economy of representation ( Croft, 1998 ).

The cognitive commitment has a number of concrete ramifications. First, linguistic theories cannot include structures or processes that violate what is known about human cognition. For example, if sequential derivation of syntactic structures violates time constraints provided by actual human language processing, then it must be jettisoned. Second, models that employ established cognitive properties to explain language phenomena are more parsimonious than those that are built from a priori simplicity metrics. For instance, given the amount of progress cognitive scientists have made in the study of categorization, a theory that employs the same mechanisms that are implicated in categorization in other cognitive domains in order to model linguistic structure is simpler than one that hypothesizes a separate system. Finally, the cognitive linguistic researcher is charged with establishing convergent evidence for the cognitive reality of components of any model proposed—whether or not this research is conducted by the cognitive linguist ( Gibbs, 2006 ).

The Generalization Commitment

The Generalization Commitment ( Lakoff, 1990 ) ensures that cognitive linguists attempt to identify general principles that apply to all aspects of human language. This goal reflects the standard commitment in science to seek the broadest generalizations possible. In contrast, some approaches to the study of language often separate what is sometimes termed the “language faculty” into distinct areas such as phonology (sound), semantics (word and sentence meaning), pragmatics (meaning in discourse context), morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), and so on. As a consequence, there is often little basis for generalization across these aspects of language or even for study of their interrelations.

Although cognitive linguists acknowledge that it may often be useful to treat areas such as syntax, semantics, and phonology as being notionally distinct, cognitive linguists do not start with the assumption that the “subsystems” of language are organized in significantly divergent ways. Hence, the generalization commitment represents a commitment to openly investigate how the various aspects of linguistic knowledge emerge from a common set of human cognitive abilities upon which they draw, rather than assuming that they are produced in an encapsulated module of the mind consisting of distinct knowledge types or subsystems.

The generalization commitment has concrete consequences for studies of language. First, cognitive linguistic studies focus on what is common among aspects of language, seeking to reuse successful methods and explanations across these aspects. For instance, just as word meaning displays prototype effects—there are better and worse examples of referents of given words, related in particular ways (see Lakoff, 1987 )—so various studies have applied the same principles to the organization of morphology (e.g., Taylor, 2003 ), syntax (e.g., Goldberg, 1995 , 2006 ), and phonology (e.g., Nathan, 2008 ).

Theses of Cognitive Linguistics

In addition to the two primary commitments of cognitive linguistics, the enterprise also features a number of postulates or theses. These can be captured as follows:

The thesis of embodied cognition

The thesis of encyclopaedic semantics

The symbolic thesis

The thesis that meaning is conceptualization

The usage-based thesis

The Thesis of Embodied Cognition

The thesis of embodied cognition is made of two related parts. The first part holds that the nature of reality is not objectively given but is instead a function of our species-specific and individual embodiment—this is the subthesis of embodied experience (see Lakoff, 1987 ; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 , 1999 ; Tyler & Evans, 2003 ). Second, our mental representation of reality is grounded in our embodied mental states: mental states captured from our embodied experience—this is the subthesis of grounded cognition (see Barsalou, 2009 ; Evans, 2009 ; Gallese & Lakoff, 2005 ).

The subthesis of embodied experience maintains that, due to the nature of our bodies, including our neuroanatomical architecture, we have a species-specific view of the world. In other words, our construal of “reality” is mediated, in large measure, by the nature of our embodiment. One example of the way in which embodiment affects the nature of experience is in the realm of color. Whereas the human visual system has three kinds of photoreceptors (i.e., color channels), other organisms often have a different number ( Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991 ). For instance, the visual systems of squirrels, rabbits, and possibly cats make use of two color channels, whereas other organisms, including goldfish and pigeons, have four color channels. Having a different range of color channels affects our experience of color in terms of the range of colors accessible to us along the color spectrum. Some organisms can see in the infrared range, such as rattlesnakes, which hunt prey at night and can visually detect the heat given off by other organisms. Humans are unable to see in this range. The nature of our visual apparatus—one aspect of our embodiment—determines the nature and range of our visual experience.

A further consequence of this subthesis is that as individual embodiment within a species varies, so, too, will embodied experience across individual members of the same species. There is now empirical support for the position that humans have distinctive embodied experience due to individual variables such as handedness. That is, whether one is left- or right-handed influences the way in which we experience reality ( Casasanto, 2009 ). In one experiment, for instance, left-handers were more likely to diagram a preferred entity on their left and a dispreferred entity on their right, whereas right-handers placed preferred entities to their right and dispreferred entities to their left. This suggests that part of our conceptual representations for Good and Bad may be influenced by aspects of our individual embodiment.

The fact that our experience is embodied—that is, structured in part by the nature of the bodies we have and by our neurological organization—has consequences for cognition—the subthesis of grounded cognition. In other words, the concepts we have access to, and the nature of the “reality” we think and talk about, are grounded in the multimodal representations that emerge from our embodied experience. More precisely, concepts constitute reactivations of brain states that are recorded during embodied experience. Such reactivations are technically referred to as simulations . (I give an example later relating to the word red that illustrates this notion). These simulations are grounded in multimodal brain states that arise from our action and interaction with our sociophysical environment. Such experiences include sensory-motor and proprioceptive experience, as well as states that arise from our subjective experience of our internal (bodily) environment, including our visceral sense, as well as experiences relating to mental evaluations and states and other subjective experiences, including emotions and affect more generally and experiences relating to temporal experience. From the grounded cognition perspective, the human mind bears the imprint of embodied experience. The embodied experience and grounded cognition perspectives together make up the thesis of embodied cognition as current in cognitive linguistics.

The Thesis of Encyclopaedic Semantics

The thesis of encyclopaedic semantics is also made up of two parts. First, it holds that semantic representations in the linguistic system, what is often referred to as semantic structure , relate to—or interface with—representations in the conceptual system. The precise details as to the nature of the relationship can, and indeed do vary, however, across specific cognitive linguistic theories. For instance, Langacker (e.g., 1987) equates semantic structure with conceptual structure, whereas Evans (2009) , maintains that semantic structure and conceptual structure constitute two distinct representational formats, with semantic structure facilitating access to (some aspects of) conceptual structure.

The second part of the thesis posits the following. The conceptual structure to which semantic structure relates constitutes a vast network of structured knowledge, a semantic potential ( Evans, 2009 ) that is hence encyclopedia-like in nature and scope.

By way of illustration, consider the lexical item red . The precise meaning arising from any given instance of use of the lexical item red is a function of the range of perceptual hues associated with our encyclopedic set of mental representations for red, as constrained by the utterance context in which red is embedded. For instance, consider the following examples:

The school teacher scrawled in red ink all over the pupil’s exercise book.

The red squirrel is almost extinct in the British Isles.

In each of these examples, a distinct reactivation of perceptual experience—a simulation—is prompted for. In the example in (1) the perceptual simulation relates to a vivid red, whereas in (2) the utterance prompts for a brown/dun hue of red. In other words, the meaning of the lexical item red arises from an interaction between linguistic and conceptual representations, such that the most relevant conceptual knowledge is activated upon each instance of use. Examples such as those in (1) and (2) suggest that word meaning does not arise by unpacking a purely linguistic representation. Rather, it involves access to and activation of multimodal brain states. A simulation, then, is a reactivation of part of this nonlinguistic semantic potential.

A consequence of this is that each individual instance of word use potentially leads to a distinct interpretation. For instance, fast means something quite different in fast car, fast driver, fast girl, fast food , and fast lane of the motorway . This follows because any instance of use constitutes a distinct usage-event that may activate a different part of the encyclopedic knowledge potential to which a lexical item facilitates access.

The Symbolic Thesis

The symbolic thesis holds that the fundamental unit of grammar is a form-meaning pairing or symbolic unit . The symbolic unit is variously termed a “symbolic assembly” in Langacker’s cognitive grammar or a “construction” in construction grammar approaches (e.g., Goldberg’s cognitive construction grammar; 1995 , 2006 ). Symbolic units run the full gamut from the fully lexical to the wholly schematic. For instance, examples of symbolic units include morphemes (for example, dis- as in distaste ), whole words (for example, cat, run, tomorrow ), idiomatic expressions such as He kicked the bucket , and sentence-level constructions such as the ditransitive (or double-object) construction, as exemplified by the expression: John baked Sally a cake (see Goldberg, 1995 ).

A symbolic unit.

More precisely, the symbolic thesis holds that the mental grammar consists of a form, a semantic unit, and symbolic correspondence that relates the two. This is captured in Figure 15.1 . Hence, the symbolic thesis holds that our mental grammar comprises units that consist of pairings of form and meaning.

One consequence of the symbolic thesis is that the abstract rules posited in the generative grammar tradition, for instance, are excluded from a language user’s mental grammar. Langacker (1987) for instance, posits a content requirement , a principle that asserts that units of grammar must involve actual content: units of semantic structure and phonological form (even if phonologically schematic) that are linked by a symbolic correspondence.

The adoption of the symbolic thesis has a number of important consequences for a model of grammar. Because the basic unit is the symbolic unit, meaning achieves central status in cognitive linguistic approaches to grammar. This follows because the basic grammatical unit is a symbolic unit: form cannot be studied independently of meaning.

The second consequence is that because there is not a principled distinction between the study of semantics and syntax—the study of grammar is the study of the full range of units that make up a language, from the lexical to the grammatical. Cognitive linguists posit a lexicon-grammar continuum ( Croft, 2002 ; Langacker, 1987 ) to capture this perspective. Whereas the grammar of a language is made of symbolic units, symbolic units exhibit qualitative differences in terms of their schematicity. At one extreme are symbolic units that are highly specified in terms of their lexical form and in terms of the richness of their semantic content. Such symbolic units, such as words, lie at the “lexical” end of the lexicon-grammar continuum. At the other end lie highly schematic symbolic units, schematic both in terms of phonological and semantic content. An example of a symbolic unit of this kind is the sentence-level ditransitive construction studied by Goldberg (e.g., 1995) and discussed in more detail later. Lexically unfilled sentence-level syntactic templates such as the ditransitive construction are held to have a schematic form and schematic meaning conventionally associated with them as exemplified in:

Form:   SUBJ VERB NP1 NP2

Meaning: X CAUSES Y TO RECEIVE Z

Symbolic units of this sort lie at the “grammatical” endpoint of the lexicon-grammar continuum. Whereas fully “lexical” and “grammatical” symbolic units differ in qualitative terms, they are the same in principle, being symbolic in nature, in the sense described. Moreover, examples such as these are extreme exemplars. A range of symbolic units exist in all languages, and these units occupy various and less extreme points along the continuum.

A third consequence is that symbolic units can be related to one another, both in terms of similarity of form and semantic relatedness. One manifestation of such relationships is in terms of relative schematicity or specificity, such that one symbolic unit can be a more (or less) specific instantiation of another. Cognitive linguists model the relationships between symbolic units in terms of a network, arranged hierarchically and relating to levels of schematicity. This is an issue I return to later when I discuss the usage-based thesis.

Finally, constituency structure—and hence the combinatorial nature of language—is a function of symbolic units becoming integrated or fused in order to create larger grammatical units, with different theorists proposing slightly different mechanisms for how this arises. For instance, Langacker (e.g., 1987) holds that constituency structure emerges from what he terms conceptually dependent (or relational) predications , such as verbs, encoding a schematic slot, termed an elaboration site. The elaboration site is filled by conceptually autonomous (or nominal) predications , such as nouns. In contrast, Goldberg (e.g., 1995) , in her theory of cognitive construction grammar, argues that integration is due to a fusion process that takes place between verb-level slots—that she terms participant roles— and sentence-level argument roles , discussed further later (see Evans, 2009 , for further discussion of these issues).

The Thesis That Meaning Is Conceptualization

Language understanding involves the interaction between semantic structure and conceptual structure as mediated by various linguistic and conceptual mechanisms and processes. In other words, linguistically mediated meaning construction doesn’t simply involve compositionality, in the Fregean sense, whereby words encode meanings that are integrated in monotonic fashion such that the meaning of the whole arises from the sum of the parts (see Evans, 2006 , 2009 , for discussion). Cognitive linguists subscribe to the position that linguistically mediated meaning involves conceptualization (i.e., higher order cognitive processing), some or much of which is nonlinguistic in nature. Hence, the thesis that meaning is conceptualization holds that the way in which symbolic units are combined during language understanding gives rise to a unit of meaning that is nonlinguistic in nature—the notion of a simulation introduced earlier—and relies, in part, on nonlinguistic processes of integration.

There are two notable approaches to meaning construction that have been developed within cognitive linguistics. The first is concerned with the sorts of nonlinguistic mechanisms central to meaning construction that are fundamentally nonlinguistic in nature. Meaning construction processes of this kind have been referred to as backstage cognition (Fauconnier [1985]/1994 , 1997 ). There are two distinct, but closely related theories of backstage cognition: mental spaces theory , developed in two monographs by Gilles Fauconnier ( [1985]/1994 , 1997 ), and conceptual blending theory , developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2002) . Mental spaces theory is concerned with the nature and creation of mental spaces , small packets of conceptual structure built as we think and talk. Conceptual blending theory is concerned with the integrative mechanisms and networks that operate over collections of mental spaces in order to produce emergent aspects of meaning—meaning that is in some sense novel.

A more recent approach is LCCM theory (Evans, 2006 , 2009 , 2010 , 2013 ), named after the two central constructs in the theory: the lexical concept and the cognitive model . LCCM theory is concerned with the role of linguistic cues and linguistic processes in meaning construction (lexical concepts) and the way in which these lexical concepts facilitate access to nonlinguistic knowledge (cognitive models) in the process of language understanding. Accordingly, because the emphasis is on the nature and the role of linguistic prompts in meaning construction, LCCM theory represents an attempt to provide a front-stage approach to the cognitive mechanisms, and specifically the role of language, in meaning construction.

The Usage-Based Thesis

The usage-based thesis holds that the mental grammar of the language user is formed by the abstraction of symbolic units from situated instances of language use: utterances—specific usage-events involving symbolic units for purposes of signaling local and contextually relevant communicative intentions. An important consequence of adopting the usage-based thesis is that there is no principled distinction between knowledge of language and use of language ( competence and performance , in generative grammar terms) because knowledge emerges from use. From this perspective, knowledge of language is knowledge of how language is used.

Schema-instance relationships.

The symbolic units that come to be stored in the mind of the language user emerge through processes of abstraction and schematization ( Langacker, 2000 ), based on pattern recognition and intention reading abilities (Tomasello, 1999 , 2003 ). Symbolic units thus constitute what might be thought of as mental routines ( Langacker, 1987 ) consisting, as we have seen, of conventional pairings of form and meaning.

One of the consequences of the usage-based thesis is that symbolic units exhibit degrees of entrenchment —the degree to which a symbolic unit is established as a cognitive routine in the mind of the language user. If the language system is a function of language use, then it follows that the relative frequency with which particular words or other kinds of symbolic units are encountered by the speaker will affect the nature of the grammar. That is, symbolic units that are more frequently encountered become more entrenched. Accordingly, the most entrenched symbolic units tend to shape the language system in terms of patterns of use, at the expense of less frequent and thus less well entrenched words or constructions. Hence, the mental grammar, although deriving from language use, also influences language use.

A further consequence of the usage-based thesis is that by virtue of the mental grammar reflecting symbolic units that exist in language use, and employing cognitive abilities such as abstraction in order to extract them from usage, the language system exhibits redundancy. That is, redundancy is to be expected in the mental grammar. As noted earlier, symbolic units are modeled in terms of a network. Redundancy between symbolic units is captured in terms of a hierarchical arrangement of schema-instance relations holding between more schematic and more specific symbolic units. By way of illustration, Figure 15.2 captures the schema-instance relationships that hold between the more abstract [P [NP]] symbolic unit and the more specific instances of this abstract schema, such as [ to me ]. The usage-based thesis predicts that because [P [NP]] is a feature of many (more specific) instances of use, it becomes entrenched in long-term memory along with its more specific instantiations. Moreover, the schema ([P [NP]]) and its instances (e.g., [ to me ]), are stored in related fashion, as illustrated in the figure.

Concerns of Cognitive Linguistics

The received view in language science has been to separate the study of language into distinct subdisciplines, for instance, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and so on. In part, this has reflected the assumption, promulgated by Chomsky (e.g., 1957) , that these types of linguistic knowledge can not only be studied, in practice, as distinct knowledge types, but also are governed by wholly distinct and incommensurable principles.

For reasons discussed in the foregoing sections, cognitive linguists tend not to separate the study of language in such a compartmentalized way. In the most general terms, theoretical approaches that have emerged thus far in the cognitive linguistics enterprise can be said to broadly focus, more or less, on three general areas of enquiry: (1) conceptual structure, (2) linguistic semantics, and (3) grammar. I structure the discussion in this section around these areas.

Conceptual Structure

The human conceptual system is not open to direct investigation. Nevertheless, cognitive linguists maintain that the properties of language allow us to reconstruct the properties of the conceptual system and to build a model of that system. The logic of this claim is as follows. Because language structure and organization reflect various known aspects of cognitive structure, by studying language—which is observable—we thereby gain insight into the nature of the conceptual system. The subbranch of cognitive linguistics that deploys language in order to investigate conceptual structure is often referred to as cognitive semantics .

The Embodied Nature of Conceptual Structure

Given the thesis of embodied cognition discussed earlier, a key area of investigation within cognitive semantics has been directed at investigating conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 , 1999 ). According to this approach, conceptual metaphors give rise to systems of conventional conceptual mappings held in long-term memory. Consider the following example:

The number of shares has gone up.

According to Lakoff and Johnson, examples like this are motivated by a highly productive conceptual metaphor that is also evident in (5):

John got the highest score on the test.

Mortgage rates have fallen.

Inflation is on the way up.

This metaphor appears to relate the domains of quantity and vertical elevation . In other words, we understand greater quantity in terms of increased height and decreased quantity in terms of lesser height. Conceptual metaphor scholars like Lakoff and Johnson argue that this conventional pattern of conceptual mapping is directly grounded in ubiquitous everyday experiences. For example, when we pour a liquid into a glass, there is a simultaneous increase in the height and quantity of the fluid. This is a typical example of the correlation between height and quantity. Similarly, if we put items onto a pile, an increase in height correlates with an increase in quantity. This experiential correlation between height and quantity, which we experience from an early age, has been claimed to motivate the conceptual metaphor more is up , also known as quantity is vertical elevation .

Grammatical Systems

One way of uncovering conceptual structure in language is by investigating the way in which it is encoded in the fabric of language: in grammar. In his research, Talmy (2000) primarily focuses on the nature of the conceptual content that gets encoded by the grammatical system.

Talmy proposes that the grammatical structure is arranged in terms of a limited number of large-scale schematic systems ( Talmy, 2000 ). These allow the grammar of a language to provide a foundational level of schematic meaning, which is essential for conveying richer meaning. For instance, take the following:

Those boy s are paint ing my railing s .

Here, the specifically grammatical elements—the so-called function words—are highlighted in bold. These are elements that convey structural information about a particular scene, rather than detailed content, and which contrast with “content” words. Now, if we remove the content words from the sentence, namely, boy, paint , and railing , we end up with something like the following sentence:

Those somethings are somethinging my somethings.

This represents, as close as we can approximate, what a sentence might look like without content words. But although the meaning provided by this sentence is rather schematic—we don’t know what the “somethings” are, neither subject nor object, nor what the subject is doing to the object, the sentence does convey quite a lot. It tells us the following:

“More than one entity close to the speaker is presently in the process of doing something to more than one entity belonging to the speaker.”

If we exchange the content words for different ones, we can end up with a description of an entirely different situation, but the schematic meaning provided by the function morphemes remains the same:

Those worker s are mend ing the road s .

Talmy’s point is that grammar allows relatively stable information to be conveyed in an economical way. Richer content words are draped across the grammatical structure, thus facilitating communication. Grammar, then, provides the basis for linguistic meaning.

In his work, Talmy has primarily elucidated four schematic systems, although he acknowledges there are likely to be others. These are given in Figure 15.3 .

Schematic systems can be further divided into schematic categories . By way of illustration, I elucidate one schematic category from one schematic system: the configurational system. This schematic system structures the temporal and spatial properties, as conveyed by language, associated with an experiential complex, such as the division of a given scene into parts and participants. Consider the schematic category that Talmy identifies as degree of extension . “Degree of extension” relates to the degree to which matter (space) or action (time) are extended. The schematic category “degree of extension” has three values: a point, a bounded extent, or an unbounded extent.

The schematic systems identified by Talmy.

To make this clear, consider the examples in (10)–(12). These employ grammatical elements in order to specify the degree of extension involved:

Point  at + NP point-of-time

The train passed through at [noon].

Bounded extent in + NP extent -of-time

She went through the training circuit in [five minutes flat].

Unbounded extent “ keep—ing ” + “– er and – er ”

The plane kept going higher and higher.

As these examples illustrate, some grammatical elements encode a particular degree of extension. For instance, in (10) the preposition at , together with an NP that encodes a temporal point, encodes a point-like degree of extension. The NP does not achieve this meaning by itself: if we substitute a different preposition for instance, a construction containing the same NP noon can encode a bounded extent (e.g., The train arrives between noon and 1 p.m. ). The punctual nature of the temporal experience in example (10) forms part of the grammatical system and is conveyed in this example by closed-class forms. The nature of the punctual event, that is, the passage of a train through a station rather than, say, the flight of a flock of birds overhead, relates to content drawn from the lexical system (e.g., the selection of the form train versus birds ).

In the example in (11), the preposition in , together with an NP that encodes a bounded extent, encodes a bounded degree of extension. In (12), the grammatical elements keep – ing + – er and – er encode an unbounded degree of extension. This closed-class construction provides a grammatical “skeleton” specialized for encoding a particular value within the schematic category “degree of extension.” The lexical system can add dramatically different content meaning to this frame (e.g., keep singing louder and louder; keep swimming faster and faster; keep getting weaker and weaker ), but the schematic meaning contributed by the structuring system remains constant—in all these examples, time has an unbounded degree of extension.

Conceptual Integration

The conceptual integration perspective is concerned with the study of the “backstage” mechanisms that facilitate meaning construction. Although the processes involved are largely nonlinguistic in nature and serve to integrate units of conceptual structure in producing meaning, language reveals these otherwise unseen operations that facilitate meaning production behind the scenes (Fauconnier, [1985]/1994 , 1997 ; Fauconnier & Turner, 2002 ).

The conceptual integration perspective holds that when we think and talk, humans assemble what are referred to as mental spaces . These are “packets” of conceptual material, assembled “on the fly” for local purposes of language understanding and conceptual processing. Moreover, material from these mental spaces qua conceptual packets can be selectively projected to form a hybrid mental space drawn from a number of so-called input mental spaces. This hybrid mental space is referred to as a blended space , also known as a blend .

To briefly illustrate the process of mental space formation and blending, consider the following joke:

Q. What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with an elephant?

Holes all over Australia!

The conceptual integration perspective holds that, in order to understand and hence “get” the joke, we have to perform conceptual integration across mental spaces and thus construct a blend. Although we have complex bodies of knowledge available to us concerning elephants and kangaroos, including their size, means of locomotion, and their geographical region of abode, all of which gets diffusely activated by the question, the punch-line prompts us to selectively project only specific aspects of our knowledge relating to elephants and kangaroos in order to build a blended space. In the blend, we integrate information relating to the abode and manner of locomotion associated with kangaroos with the size of elephants. The hybrid organism we come up with, which exists only in the blend, which is to say “in” our heads, has the size of an elephant, lives in Australia, and gets about by hopping. Such an organism would surely leave holes all over Australia. The joke is possible only because the operation of blending is a fundamental aspect of how we think. Moreover, blending is revealed by language use; linguistically mediated meaning construction relies on it.

Categorization

Another way in which cognitive linguists have investigated conceptual structure has been to investigate categorization in language. In the 1970s, pioneering research by cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch and colleagues revealed that categorization is not an all-or-nothing affair but that many categorization judgments seemed to exhibit typicality effects . For example, when we categorize birds, certain types of bird (like robins or sparrows) are judged as “better” examples of the category than others (like penguins).

George Lakoff (1987) explored some of the consequences of the observations made by Rosch and her colleagues for a theory of conceptual structure as manifested in language. Lakoff observed that linguistic categories appear to exhibit typicality effects in the same way as natural object categories. For instance, when we describe an eligible unmarried man as a bachelor , such an example is a much better exemplar of the category than, say, the Pope or Tarzan.

Lakoff argued that what this reveals is that conceptual structure consists of what he termed idealized cognitive models (ICMs). An ICM is a highly abstract frame that accounts for certain kinds of typicality effects in categorization. For instance, the linguistic category of “bachelor,” as reflected in language use, is understood, Lakoff argued, with respect to a relatively schematic ICM of marriage. The marriage ICM includes the knowledge that bachelors are unmarried adult males and therefore can marry. However, our ICM relating to Catholicism stipulates that the Pope cannot marry. It is because of this mismatch between the marriage ICM—with respect to which bachelor is understood—and the Catholicism ICM—with respect to which the Pope is understood—that this particular typicality effect arises.

Linguistic Semantics

Cognitive linguistic approaches to linguistic semantics have focused on the nature of lexical representation and, more recently, compositional semantics—the linguistic mechanisms whereby semantic structure interfaces with conceptual structure in the construction of meaning. I address representative topics of enquiry here.

The Encyclopedic Nature of Word Meaning

Research into the encyclopedic nature of meaning has mainly focused on the way semantic structure is organized relative to conceptual knowledge structures. One proposal concerning the organization of word meaning is based on the notion of a frame against which word meanings are understood. This idea has been developed in linguistics by Charles Fillmore ( 1975 , 1978 , 1982 , 1985 ). Frames are detailed knowledge structures or schemas emerging from everyday experiences. According to this perspective, knowledge of word meaning is, in part, knowledge of the individual frames with which a word is associated. A theory of frame semantics therefore reveals the rich network of meaning that makes up our knowledge of words.

By way of illustration, consider the verbs rob and steal . On first inspection, it might appear that these verbs both relate to a theft frame, which includes the following roles: thief , target (the person or a place that is robbed), and goods (to be) stolen . However, there is an important difference between the two verbs: whereas rob profiles thief and target , steal profiles thief and goods . The examples in (14) are from Goldberg (1995 , p. 45):

[Jesse] robbed [the rich] (of their money) < thief target goods >

[Jesse] stole [money] (from the rich) < thief target goods >

In other words, whereas both verbs can occur in sentences with all three participants, each verb has different requirements concerning which two participants it requires. This is illustrated by the following examples (although it’s worth observing that (15a) is acceptable in some British English dialects); note that an asterisk preceding a sentence is the convention used in linguistics to denote a sentence as being ungrammatical:

*Jesse robbed the money

*Jesse stole the rich

A related approach is the notion of profile-base organization , developed by Langacker (e.g., 1987) . Langacker argues that a linguistic unit’s profile is the part of its semantic structure upon which that word focuses attention: this part is explicitly mentioned. The aspect of semantic structure that is not in focus but is necessary in order to understand the profile is called the base . For instance, the lexical item hunter profiles a particular participant in an activity in which an animal is pursued with a view to its being killed. The meaning of hunter is only understood in the context of this activity. The hunting process is therefore the base against which the participant hunter is profiled.

It is widely acknowledged in linguistics that words typically have more than one meaning conventionally associated with them (see Evans, 2009 ; Tyler & Evans, 2003 , for discussion). When the meanings are related, this is termed polysemy . By way of illustration, consider these examples for over , adapted from Tyler and Evans (2003) :

The bee is over the flower.

The cat jumped over the wall.

The ball landed over the wall.

I prefer tea over coffee.

The movie is over.

The government handed over power.

Moreover, polysemy appears to be the norm rather than the exception in language. Lakoff (1987) proposed that lexical units like words should be treated as conceptual categories, organized with respect to an ICM. According to this point of view, polysemy arises because distinct senses of a word such as over are linked to a central sense, with each sense being related to one another in a network structured with respect to and radiating out from the central sense or ICM. In this, word senses form a semantic network that can be conceptualized as a radial category . For instance, for many native speakers, the use of over in (16a) is most typical, whereas other senses become increasingly more abstract, as in later examples, such as (16f). This finding has been verified empirically ( Tyler, 2012 ).

Compositional Semantics

A recent approach to linguistic semantics (Evans, 2006 , 2009 , 2010 , 2013 ) attempts to account for variation in word meanings across contexts of use, such as polysemy, but also a wider range of linguistic semantic phenomena including metaphor and metonymy. This approach posits a distinction in the nature of the semantic representations that populate the linguistic and conceptual systems. The semantic representational format of the linguistic system is modeled in terms of the theoretical construct of the lexical concept , whereas the semantic representational format of the conceptual system is modeled in terms of the construct of the cognitive model —notions that give the theory its name: the theory of lexical concepts and cognitive models (or LCCM theory for short).

In LCCM theory, a cognitive model is a composite multimodal knowledge structure grounded in the range of experience types processed by the brain, including sensory-motor experience, proprioception, and subjective experience. In contrast, a lexical concept—the semantic pole of a symbolic unit—consists of a bundle of different types of schematic knowledge encoded in a format that can be directly represented in the time-pressured auditory-manual medium that is manifested by the world’s spoken and signed natural languages.

A key aim of LCCM theory is to provide a programmatic account of the compositional mechanisms that allow language to activate nonlinguistic (conceptual) knowledge in the construction of linguistically mediated meaning. In essence, LCCM theory treats semantic variation in word meaning as a function of interaction between linguistic and conceptual content. The distinctive semantic contribution of a particular word in any given context of use results from the differential activation of the encyclopedic multimodal knowledge structures to which words facilitate access.

In this section, I examine the way language has been modeled by cognitive linguists. In particular, I show that, in slightly different ways, cognitive approaches to grammar reveal how linguistic structure and organization reflects and interacts with aspects of cognition.

The distinction between tr-lm alignment across agent-patient reversal.

Cognitive Grammar

In this section, I briefly consider the way in which cognitive linguistics views language structure and organization as an outcome of generalized conceptual mechanisms. In so doing, I draw on the seminal work of Langacker ( 1987 , 1991 a , 1991 b , 1999 , 2008 ), as exemplified in his theory of cognitive grammar.

In his work, Langacker has developed a model of language that treats linguistic structure and organization as reflecting general cognitive organizational principles. In particular, mechanisms relating to cognitive aspects of attention are claimed to underpin the organization of linguistic structure. Langacker defines attention as being “intrinsically associated with the intensity or energy level of cognitive processes, which translates experientially into greater prominence or salience” ( Langacker, 1987 , p. 115). I briefly consider a theoretical construct, posited in cognitive grammar, which is held to be central to attention in general and that also shows up in linguistic organization. This is the notion of trajector-landmark organization .

This theoretical construct is motivated by an attentional phenomenon concerning the relative prominence assigned to entities involved in a relationship of some sort. For instance, in events involving energy transfer, what Langacker refers to as an action chain (e.g., John started the ball rolling ), one participant typically transfers energy to another entity, thereby affecting it. As such, the affecting participant is more salient.

Langacker maintains that the assignment of relative prominence to entities at the perceptual and cognitive levels is also a fundamental design feature of language. Indeed, he claims that it shows up at the level of the word, phrase, and clause and is therefore fundamental for constituency and hence the ability of symbolic units to be combined with one another in order to form larger units. To illustrate this idea, consider the distinction between the following two utterances:

John ate all the pizza.

All the pizza was eaten by John.

These utterances relate to an action chain in which some activity, namely eating, is performed by John on the pizza so that there is no pizza left. Yet each utterance assigns differential relative prominence to the participants in this action chain, namely John and pizza . In English, and in language in general, the first participant slot in an utterance, commonly referred to as the subject position , is reserved for participants that are most prominent. The participant in a profiled relationship that receives greatest prominence, what Langacker terms focal prominence , is referred to as the trajector (tr). The participant that receives lesser prominence, referred to as secondary prominence, is termed the landmark (lm). The distinction, then, in the utterances above is that in (17) John corresponds to the tr and pizza to the lm, whereas in (18) pizza corresponds to the tr and John to the lm. This distinction is captured by Figure 15.4 . The distinction between tr and lm approximates the more traditional distinction between subject and object. The advantage is that it provides a conceptual basis for the distinction.

The diagrams in Figure 15.4 reveal the following. Although the transfer of energy is still the same across the two utterances, as indicated by the direction of the arrows, the participants are assigned differential prominence across the two utterances. Put another way, the active and passive constructions, as exemplified by the two utterances, in fact encode a distinction in terms of the focal prominence associated with the two participants involved in the relationship being conveyed. This distinction, which is central to the way language encodes the relationship between agents and patients, in fact reflects a more general cognitive mechanism: in distinguishing between the relative prominence paid and assigned to participants in an action chain.

Construction Grammar

I now turn to the way in which cognitive linguistics views language organization as reflecting embodied experience. I do so by considering the theory of cognitive construction grammar developed in the work of Adele Goldberg (e.g., 1995 , 2006 ). In her work, Goldberg has studied sentence-level symbolic units, what she refers to as constructions . In keeping with the symbolic thesis, Goldberg claims that sentences are themselves motivated by sentence-level symbolic units consisting of a schematic meaning and a schematic form. For instance, consider the following example:

John gave Mary the flowers.

Goldberg argues that a sentence such as (19) is motivated by the ditransitive construction. This is essentially a symbolic unit that has the schematic meaning: x causes y to receive z and the form: Subj Verb NP1 NP2. As with many other symbolic units associated with the grammatical system (in the sense of Talmy), the distransitive construction is phonetically implicit. That is, its form consists of a syntactic template that is not lexically filled, but which stipulates the nature and range of the lexical constituents that can be fused with it (see Goldberg, 1995 , for discussion and evidence for positing sentence-level constructions; see also Goldberg, 2006 ; Evans, 2009 ).

A crucial question for Goldberg concerns what motivates the semantics and the form of such sentence-level constructions. That is, what motivates such constructions to emerge in the first place? In keeping with the thesis of embodied cognition, she posits what she terms the scene encoding hypothesis . According to this hypothesis, sentence-level constructions emerge from humanly relevant scenes that are highly recurrent and salient in nature. For instance, on many occasions each day, we experience acts of transfer. Such acts involve three participants: the agent who effects the transfer, the recipient of the act of the transfer, and the entity transferred. In addition, such acts involve a means of transfer. Goldberg holds that the sentence-level construction is motivated by the human need to communicate about this highly salient scene. Indeed, the semantics and the form associated with this construction are uniquely tailored to encoding such humanly relevant scenes. In this way, grammatical organization, Goldberg suggests, reflects fundamental aspects of human embodied experience.

The construction grammar perspective has also been applied cross-linguistically in the work of William Croft (e.g., 2002) . Indeed, based on a wide range of typologically diverse languages, Croft argues that construction grammar provides the most appropriate means of modeling languages from a typological perspective.

Language Learning

In addition to focusing on the nature and structure of language and the way in which it reflects embodied cognition cognitive linguists have also explored how language is learned and acquired. Langacker ( 2000 , 2008 ) proposes that the units that make up an individual’s mental grammar are derived from language use. This takes place by schematization . Schematization is the process whereby structure emerges as the result of the generalization of patterns across instances of language use. For example, a speaker acquiring English will, as the result of frequent exposure, discover recurring words, phrases, and sentences in the utterances he hears, together with the range of meanings associated with those units. Schematization, then, results in representations that are much less detailed than the actual utterances that give rise to them, giving rise to schemas . These are achieved by setting aside points of difference between actual structures, leaving just the points they have in common.

For instance, consider three sentences involving the preposition in :

The puppy is in the box.

The flower is in the vase.

There is a crack in the vase.

In each sentence the “in” relationship is slightly different: whereas a puppy is fully enclosed by the box, the flower is only partially enclosed—in fact, only part of the flower’s stem is in fact “in” the vase. And, in the final example, the crack is not “in” the vase, but “on” the exterior of the vase—albeit enclosed by the vase’s exterior. These distinct meanings arise from context. Yet, common to each is the rather abstract notion of enclosure; it is this commonality that establishes the schema for in. Moreover, the schema for in specifies very little about the nature of the entity that is enclosed, nor much about the entity that does the enclosing. Langacker argues that the units of our mental grammar are nothing more than schemas.

In sum, schematization, a fundamental cognitive process, produces schemas based on utterances that children are exposed to during interaction with adults, older siblings, and so on. These schemas consist of words, idioms, morphemes, or even types of sentence-level constructions that exhibit their own patterns of syntax. In this way, Langacker makes two claims: general cognitive processes are fundamental to grammar, and the emergence of grammar as a system of linguistic knowledge is grounded in language use.

Token frequency effects.

A consequence of Langacker’s usage-based account is that the frequency with which a particular expression is heard has consequences for the resulting mental grammar that the child constructs. And this fits with the recent findings in developmental psycholinguistics (see Tomasello, 2003 , for a review). Indeed, Langacker argues that how frequently an expression occurs in a child’s input determines how well entrenched the expression comes to be in the child’s developing mental grammar.

Bybee (2006) has conducted a significant amount of research on the nature of frequency and repetition in language use. She identifies two main types of frequency effect that are relevant for language learning. The first of these concerns the frequency with which specific instances of language are employed: token frequency . For instance, the semantically related nouns falsehood and lie are differentially frequent. Whereas lie is much more commonly used, falsehood is much more restricted in use. This gives rise to differential entrenchment of the mental representations of these forms. This is illustrated in the diagrams in Figure 15.5 . Because greater frequency has been found to lead to earlier and more robust acquisition, this suggests that more frequent instances of given expressions result in their being more strongly entrenched in the mental grammar. This difference between the two expressions is captured by the bolding in the diagrams. The expression lie appears in bold, signaling greater entrenchment; falsehood doesn’t.

The second type of frequency relates not to specific items of language, but to schemas that are formed via the process of schematization described earlier: type frequency . That is, language users form schemas for types of patterns, rather than schemas for tokens of language use. And the degree to which the two sorts of schemas are entrenched in the mind is a function of how frequently they crop up in language use. For instance, the words lapped, stored, wiped, signed , and typed are all instances of the past tense schema [ verb ed ]. The past tense forms flew and blew are instances of the past tense schema [XX ew ]. Because there tend to be fewer utterances involving the distinct lexical items blew and flew (because there are fewer distinct lexical items of this type relative to past tense forms of the –ed type), then it is predicted that the [XX ew ] type schema will be less entrenched in the grammar than the [ verb ed] type schema. This is diagrammed in Figure 15.6 .

Cognitive linguists contend that not only are abstract schemas stored as part of the mental grammar; so too are individual instances of use. And this is a consequence of frequency effects. So, whereas a specific expression such as girls is predictable from the word girl plus the plural schema [ noun- s], because of the high frequency of the plural form girls , this word is likely to be highly entrenched. Hence, girls is stored in our mental grammar along with the singular form girl , as well as the plural schema [ noun- s]. This, however, contrasts with a plural noun like portcullises , which is unlikely to be stored because this expression has low frequency. Instead, this form would be constructed by combination of the plural schema and the singular form portcullis .

According to Bybee (2010) , a further consequence of frequency and repetition in language input is that language is learned as chunks . Bybee explains this as follows:

Type frequency effects.

Chunking is the process behind the formation and use of formulaic or prefabricated sequences of words such as take a break, break a habit, pick and choose and it is also the primary mechanism leading to the formation of constructions and constituent structure. ( Bybee, 2010 , p. 34)

Longitudinal studies by developmental psycholinguists suggests that language is constructed bottom-up, rather than being guided by, for instance, a top-down universal grammar. Tomasello (2003) has persuasively argued that language is learned in an item-based, rather than a rule-based way, with generalizations in terms of syntax being extracted from item-based constructions. The processes proposed by Langacker, Bybee, and others would provide the mechanisms by which this process occurs. In short, an important factor in language acquisition is the frequency with which expressions or “chunks” occur in a child’s input. These chunks are learned, initially, as entire units due to their repetition in language use. And later, schemas are abstracted, which are also, ultimately, an artifact of frequency and repetition.

Finally, cognitive linguists (e.g., Evans, 2009 ; Goldberg, 1995 ; Langacker, 2000 ; Lakoff, 1987 ; Tyler & Evans, 2003 ) argue that linguistic units—constructions—are organized in an individual’s mind as a network, with more abstract schemas being related to more specific instances of language. As a result of the process of entrenchment, schemas result that have different levels of schematicity. This means that some schemas are instances of other, more abstract, schemas. In this way, each of us carries around with us in our head a grammar that has considerable internal hierarchical organization.

Cognitive linguistics is a contemporary approach to meaning, linguistic organization, language learning and change, and conceptual structure. It s also one of the fastest growing and influential perspectives on the nature of language, the mind, and their relationship with sociophysical (embodied) experience in the interdisciplinary project of cognitive science. What provides the enterprise with coherence is its set of primary commitments and central theses. Influential theories within the enterprise have afforded practicing cognitive linguists the analytical and methodological tools with which to investigate the phenomena they address. What makes cognitive linguistics distinctive in the contemporary study of language and mind is its overarching concern with investigating the relationships among human language, the mind, and sociophysical experience. In so doing, cognitive linguistics takes a clearly defined and determinedly embodied perspective on human cognition. And, in this, cognitive linguists have developed a number of influential theories within the interdisciplinary project of cognitive science that self-consciously strive for (and measure themselves against) the requirement to be psychologically plausible.

In terms of methods, cognitive linguistics has now well-established criteria and analytic frameworks for the analysis of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena. There is an excellent collection detailing empirical methods in cognitive linguistics ( Gonzalez-Marquez, Mittelberg, Coulson, & Spivey, 2006 ), as well as informed views on methods in general in the literature, for example, with respect to lexical semantics (e.g., Sandra, 1998 ; Sandra & Rice, 1995 ). Since its inception in the mid to late 1970s, cognitive linguistics has matured in terms of theories, methods, and scope. It is now firmly established as a fundamental and impressively broad field of enquiry within linguistics and cognitive science.

Future Directions

As it has developed, cognitive linguistics has inevitably had to grapple with theoretical and methodological problems. Some of the most notable of these remain unresolved. One, for instance, relates to the nature of concepts. For instance, what is the difference, if any, between linguistic versus conceptual meaning? Some cognitive linguists have, at times, appeared to suggest that linguistic meaning is to be equated with conceptual meaning (e.g., Langacker, 1987 , 2008 ). Yet, findings in cognitive linguistics—for instance, the distinction between the closed-class and open-class systems in cognitive representation, as persuasively argued for by Talmy (2000) —would seem to suggest a more clear-cut distinction. Evans ( 2009 , 2013 ) has argued, more recently, for a principled separation between linguistic versus nonlinguistic concepts. Such a separation would seem to be supported by linguistic, behavioral, and neuroscientific findings. Yet some prominent psychologists (e.g., Barsalou et al., 2008 ) appear to have underestimated the complexity of linguistic concepts, denying that language has conceptual import independent of the conceptual system. Others have gone the other way, arguing, along the lines of Evans, for a principled separation between the two knowledge types (see also Taylor & Zwaan, 2009 ; Zwaan, 2004 ). The issue of the relative semantic contribution of linguistic knowledge versus conceptual knowledge to meaning construction is a complex one and at present remains unresolved. Clearly, communicative meaning relies on language as well as nonlinguistic knowledge. As of yet, however, the relative contribution, and the way the two systems interface, is still not fully resolved.

Another outstanding issue relates to the domain of time. A common assumption within cognitive linguistics holds that abstract patterns in thought and language derive from the projection of structure across domains—the notion of conceptual metaphor (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 , 1999 ). However, it is not clear, in the domain of time, for instance, that time is created by virtue of the projection of spatial content, as is claimed by Lakoff and Johnson (1999) . Some researchers (Evans, 2004 , 2009 , 2013 ; Langacker, 1987 ; Moore, 2006 ) have argued that time is as basic a domain as space. Moreover, recent interest in reference strategies in the domain of time cast doubt on a straightforward projection of space to time (e.g., Galton, 2011 ; Moore, 2011 ).

In addition, two issues have come to the fore in recent work in cognitive linguistics. These are areas that have not been prominent in earlier research, and both bear special mention. The first is language evolution ( Croft, 2000 ; Sinha, 2009 ; Tomasello, 1999 ). Recent cognitively oriented accounts have applied core insights from cognitive linguistics to the nature of language change and its evolution. The second is the so-called social turn, whereby a cognitive sociolinguistics has begun to be developed ( Harder, 2009 ).

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Topics in Cognitive Linguistics

• Preface |  p. ix
• I. Toward a coherent and comprehensive linguistic theory
• An overview of cognitive grammar Ronald W. Langacker |  p. 3
• A view of linguistic semantics Ronald W. Langacker |  p. 49
• The nature of grammatical valence Ronald W. Langacker |  p. 91
• A usage-based model Ronald W. Langacker |  p. 127
• II. Aspects of a multifaceted research program
• The relation of grammar to cognition Leonard Talmy |  p. 165
• Where does prototypicality come from? Dirk Geeraerts |  p. 207
• The natural category MEDIUM : An alternative to selection restrictions and similar constructs Bruce Hawkins |  p. 231
• Spatial expressions and the plasticity of meaning Annette Herskovits |  p. 271
• Contrasting prepositional categories : English and Italian John R. Taylor |  p. 299
• The mapping of elements of cognitive space onto grammatical relations : An example from Russian verbal prefixation Laura A. Janda |  p. 327
• Conventionalization of cora locationals Eugene H. Casad |  p. 345
• The conceptualisation of vertical space in English : The case of tall René Dirven and  John R. Taylor |  p. 379
• Length, width, and potential passing Claude Vandeloise |  p. 403
• On bounding in Lk Fritz Serzisko |  p. 429
• A discourse perspective on tense and aspect in standard modern Greek and English Wolf Paprotté |  p. 447
• Semantic extensions into the domain of verbal communication Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn |  p. 507
• Spatial metaphor in German causative constructions Robert Thomas King |  p. 555
• Náhuatl causative/applicatives in cognitive grammar David Tuggy |  p. 587
• III. A historical perspective
• Grammatical categories and human conceptualization : Aristotle and the modistae Pierre Swiggers |  p. 621
• Cognitive grammar and the history of lexical semantics Dirk Geeraerts |  p. 647
• Subject index |  p. 695

Cited by 32 other publications

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 may 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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Cognitive Linguistics and Psycholinguistics

We carry out research into the cognitive processes involved in language production and comprehension across modalities. We explore how language is acquired and represented in the mind, using a range of experimental approaches in our Linguistics Research Laboratory .

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Professor Dagmar Divjak

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Dr Bodo Winter

Associate Professor in Cognitive Linguistics

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Cognitive Linguistics: Analysis of Mapping Knowledge Domains

Ahmed alduais.

1 Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, 37129 Verona, Italy

Ammar Al-Khawlani

2 Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland

Shrouq Almaghlouth

3 Department of English, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia

Hind Alfadda

4 Department of Curriculum and Instruction, King Saud University, Riyadh 11362, Saudi Arabia

Associated Data

The data presented in this study are available on request from the first author.

Language acquisition, processing, comprehension, and production encompass a complex mechanism. Particularly, the mechanisms by which we make sense of language, including perception, conceptualization, and processing, have been controversial topics among cognitive linguists and researchers in cognitive sciences. Cognitive processes such as attention, thought, perception, and memory play a significant role in meaningful human communication. This study aimed to apply the science mapping method to detect and visualize emerging trends and patterns in literature pertaining to cognitive linguistics. In order to accomplish this, eight bibliometric and eight scientometric indicators were used in conjunction with CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 for scientometric analysis and data visualisation. The data were collected and triangulated from three databases, including 2380 from Scopus, 1732 from WOS, and 9911 from Lens from 1969 to 2022. Among the findings were the visualization of eight bibliometric indicators regarding the knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics based on year, country, university, journal, publisher, research area, authors, and cited documents. Second, we presented scientometric indicators with regard to cognitive linguistics development, including the most important authors in the field, co-citation networks, citation networks, sigma metrics to detect works with potential citation growth, and clusters to group related topics to cognitive linguistics. We conclude the study by emphasizing that cognitive linguistics has evolved from the micro level where it focused on studying cognitive aspects of language in relation to time, language, and modality dimensions, to the macro level, which examines cognitive processes and their relationship to the construction of meaningful communication using both sensation and perception.

1. Introduction

1.1. the rise of cognitive linguistics.

Language is inherently dynamic and structured ( Hartmann 2021 ; Langacker 2016, p. 143 ); and linguistic theories throughout history have been occupied with decoding it as such. While these linguistic theories varied deeply, categorizing their differences can be approached from different perspectives. Perhaps one of the simplest of these is by examining their epistemological and theoretical take of grammatical structure as well as how much they envision meaning within such conception ( Winters and Nathan 2020 ). With this in mind, two opposing theories appear instantly, Generative Grammar and its exclusive fixation of formal structure and Cognitive Linguistics which was envisioned initially within works on Generative Grammar but developed further to become a rather rival opponent. The latter, Cognitive Linguistics, is the focal point of this detailed review as an ever-expanding enterprise.

Cognitive Linguistics is a flexible framework with no single or uniform doctrine ( Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007 ); no ‘central gurus’ or ‘crystalized formalism’ ( Janda 2006, p. 5 ). Instead, it is a multidisciplinary enterprise ( Grygiel and Kieltyka 2019 ) seeking to highlight the assumption that linguistic abilities are deeply rooted within human cognition. Within such conception, meaning is central and grammar is usage-shaped ( Dąbrowska and Divjak 2015 ). This strong affiliation between language and cognition, defining the essence of Cognitive Linguistics, perceives cognition as the way in which humans are able to organize and interact with different objects and events in the world, including how we shape ourselves across different dimensions ( Grygiel and Kieltyka 2019 ). This results in the instrumental construction of language as a tool utilizing the categorization and processing of overlapping linguistic units within human experience ( Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007 ).

As an acknowledged field of study, Cognitive Linguistics emerged in the middle of the second half of the twentieth century; however, it has roots that can be traced back much further. Nerlich and Clarke ( 2001 ) contend to the long past that Cognitive Linguistics has as opposed to its relatively short history. Since its infancy, it has been always possible to see the strong links between this new linguistic field and works of Gestalt psychology ( Evans and Green 2006 )—according to which, the whole is more than the sum of its parts ( Winters and Nathan 2020 )—as well as other cognitive sciences. Cognitive Linguistics also reveals historical connections to pre-structuralist nineteenth century literature as exhibited in the work of philologists, Michel Bréal (1832–1915), on meaning as a psychological and mental process ( Grygiel and Kieltyka 2019 ) as well as to modern cognitive psychology through the work of psychologist Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory in the mid-1970s ( Winters and Nathan 2020 ). It also exhibits some similarities with functional linguistics which flourished around the same time ( Nuyts 2007 ).

It was the dominance of the behaviorist and strictly structuralist perceptions along with their emphasis on extreme empiricism in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the birth of Cognitive Linguistics ( Divjak et al. 2016 ). To illustrate, generative grammar, in particular, along with its focus on nativism, led to some dissatisfaction within linguists ( Dąbrowska and Divjak 2015 ) that consequently fueled an opposing stance of language in which the complete separation between language and cognition proposed within the Chomskyan approach was rejected. On the contrary, language is perceived as an integral component of human cognition ( Grygiel and Kieltyka 2019 ; Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007 ) in which usage is centralized with an increasing interest in introspection as a primary source of evidence ( Divjak et al. 2016 ). This was evident in what was later coined as the linguistics wars by Harris (1993), in which Lakoff, who was initially supportive of generative grammar, transformed Chomsky’s standard theory into generative semantics ( Tay 2014 ). However, later on, Lakoff decided to abandon generative semantics and adopt the term Cognitive Linguistics instead ( Nerlich and Clarke 2007 ); the earliest reference of which was in a paper by Lakoff and Thompson ( Lakoff and Thompson 1975 ). By the same token, Langacker ( Langacker 1978 ) was working on his theory of space grammar, but also decided to abandon this term in favor of Cognitive Linguistics. This was followed by Lakoff’s “Metaphors we live by” (George Lakoff and Johnson 1980a ), promoting the essentiality of metaphors in processing and categorizing experiences ( Li 2012 ). In 1987, Lakoff’s “Women, fire, and dangerous things” ( Lakoff 1987 ) and Langacker’s ”Foundation of Cognitive Linguistics” ( Langacker 1987 ) were published and became the ‘bibles’ of cognitive linguistics ( Taylor and Wen 2021, p. 1 ). During that decade, Cognitive Linguistics began to officially transform into a ‘coherent’ and ‘self-conscious’ approach ( Dąbrowska and Divjak 2015, p. 2 ).

As a flexible framework, Cognitive Linguistics detaches itself from the ‘reductionist’ perception of language ( Langacker 2009, p. 167 ). Instead of viewing language as composed from minimal units, constructions are understood to be the basic units of language ( Janda and Dickey 2017 ). In doing so, it is evident that such flexibility can be translated into Cognitive Linguistics’ focus on continuity rather than on crisp and sharp distinctions ( Janda and Dickey 2017 ). Along with such consistency, it is possible to see two commitments highlighted in most of its literature, in which a common thread needs to run through relevant works to be acknowledged within cognitive linguistics. Lakoff ( Lakoff 1990 ) identifies these as the cognitive commitment and the generalization commitment. According to the first, research adhering to the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise should consider collectively and interdisciplinarily what is available about general cognitive principles and not limit its agendas to linguistic ones only. The second entails concentrating on general principles of language that can be generalized over all aspects of human language.

With this in mind, it is of key significance to highlight a terminological distinction often made in relevant literature between Cognitive Linguistics (with a capitalized C) and cognitive linguistics (uncapitalized c) ( Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007 ). The first is only one of the various approaches to carry out a generalized sense of cognitive linguistics, which entails that the second is more of an encompassing umbrella term. From this perspective, research working on natural languages with a mental perception of language such as generative grammar or artificial-intelligence-based linguistic investigation are all part of the cognitive linguistics enterprise. Taylor and Wen ( Taylor and Wen 2021 ) acknowledge the same distinction but classify the capitalized term as a micro approach while the uncapitalized is a macro one.

Yet, even within the micro approach to Cognitive Linguistics, different orientations can be identified. For instance, Winters and Nathan ( Winters and Nathan 2020 ) contend to the presence of two geographical versions of Cognitive Linguistics, a North American version and a European one. The former bears strong affiliations with Rosch’s categorization and prototype theories ( Rosch 1975 ; Rosch et al. 1976 ), which heavily impacted Lakoff’s aforementioned pioneering works. The latter, on the other hand, can be linked to what Geeraerts ( Geeraerts 1997 ) classifies as pre-structuralist notions such as polysemy, and onomasiological and semasiological research. These two versions should not be perceived as dichotomies but rather should confirm the flexible continuity-based theorization underlying Cognitive Linguistics discussed earlier. All in all, then, it is possible to conclude this section by highlighting what Croft and Cruse ( Croft and Cruse 2004 ) identify as the three fundamental hypotheses upon which Cognitive Linguistics is based:

• Language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty;
• Grammar is conceptualization; and
• Knowledge of language emerges from language use ( Croft and Cruse 2004, p. 1 ).

1.2. The Scope of Cognitive Linguistics

Based on the previous discussion, Wen and Taylor ( Taylor and Wen 2021, pp. 2–5 ) classify the relevant literature on Cognitive Linguistics into seven major categories in which diverse and perhaps competing orientations might overlap. First, there is Cognitive Linguistics research that is phenomenology-based; drawing on Husserl (1859–1938), this orientation calls for examining things as they are and incorporate fundamental veins in Cognitive Linguistics. These include prototype theory and categorization theory ( Rosch 1975 ) as well as conceptual metaphor and metonymy theories ( Lakoff and Johnson 1980a ), embodied realism and cognitive pragmatics. Some recent examples of this are Wen and Fu’s ( Wen and Fu 2021 ) examination of categorization as an ubiquitous component in reality and Zaifert’s ( Zeifert 2022 ) elaboration of prototype theory. Second, there is the Gestalt-psychology-based orientation which influenced Lakoff’s “Linguistic gestalt” ( Lakoff 1977 ), Langacker’s “Foundations of cognitive grammar” ( Langacker 1987 ) and Fillmore, Kay and O’Conner’s construction grammar ( Fillmore et al. 1988 ) as well as varieties of constructional approaches to cognitive grammar ( Langacker 2009 ). It also encompasses Talmy’s cognitive semantics such as his work on main verb properties ( Leonard Talmy 2016 ) as well as on force dynamics ( Leonard Talmy 2018 ) which does not examine reality but rather its conceptualization ( De Mulder 2021 ). Thus, it is possible to see a common thread running in most of cognitive linguistics research; rather than mirroring reality objectively, language actually imposes its structure on the world ( Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007 ), promoting intersubjectivity instead ( Langacker 2014 ).

Construction grammar, in particular, has received a special interest in cognitive linguistics literature, which merits further elaboration. It was developed originally by Fillmore, Kay, and O’Conner ( Fillmore et al. 1988 ). The basic premise in such theorization stems from the thesis that grammar can be modelled in constructions rather than through rules and words. A construction in that sense refers to a conventional language pairing of form and meaning; i.e., idiomatic expressions in particular ( Evans et al. 2007 ). Expressions such as kick the bucket or throw in the towel demonstrate such case since their meanings cannot be inferred from the meanings of their individual parts; instead, their meaning is stored as a whole—as a construction—within the linguistic competence of its users. Goldberg ( Goldberg 2005 ) later developed the theory further based on its original thesis ( Fillmore et al. 1988 ) as well as the work of Lakoff ( Lakoff 1977 ; Lakoff and Thompson 1975 ; Lakoff and Johnson 1980b ). Doing so, she extended the theory to incorporate regular constructions, in addition to the idiomatic irregular ones identified in previous thesis while utilizing cognitive concepts like polysemy and metaphor ( Evans et al. 2007 ). Goldberg also modified the notion of construction to be positioned within a lexicon-grammar continuum ( Goldberg 2005 ).

Cognitive Linguistics is known to be a prominent example of sematic-based linguistic theorization ( Winters and Nathan 2020 ); however, the third orientation reveals a popular trend in recent research inclined towards pragmatics and discourse ( Taylor and Wen 2021 ) in which Lakoff and Turner’s cognitive poetics ( Lakoff and Turner 1989 ), cognitive stylistics, and conceptual blending theory are all examples of this. Representations of discourse are also a salient category in this orientation. This is primarily due to the ‘intricate and inherent’ relation between linguistic units on one hand and discourse on the other; thus highlighting the potential role of context in molding and supporting its interpretation ( Langacker 2001b, p. 143 ). An up-to-date example of this trend is Attardo’s work on the theory of humor from a cognitive linguistics perspective ( Attardo 2021 ) in addition to Hart’s work on the link between cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis ( Hart 2013 ).

Another trend that has been reflected in relatively recent research is due to calls for the social turn ( Croft 2009 ; Harder 2010 ) in Cognitive Linguistics; that is cognitive sociolinguistics research. The need for such affiliation between cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics has been intensified ( Langacker 2016 ) due to the increasing usage-based inspiration within Cognitive Linguistics enterprise ( Kristiansen and Dirven 2008 ) and its expanding works on cognitive ideology and cognitive lexical variation research. For instance, Koller’s ( Koller 2008 ) examination of corporate mission statements reveals some cognitive ideological constructions that fall under this category. By the same token, Geeraerts ( Geeraerts 2008 ) explores how a relevant key cognitive construct, prototypes, are linked to Putnam’s ( Putnam 1975 ) socially based notion of stereotypes. A parallel affiliation is also present in the fifth orientation; connecting between Cognitive Linguistics and psycholinguistics. Despite being relatively a novel field ( Taylor and Wen 2021 ), it draws heavily on image schemas ( Johnson 1987 ), in which human sensory-perceptual experience is fundamentally structuring everyday life ( Tay 2021 ). This field offers an expanding arena for examining how figurative language, in all its forms, is inevitable in language processing, usage-based language acquisition, and lexical growth. This can be exemplified by Li’s ( Li 2012 ) work on learning idioms through image schemas and conceptual metaphors and Bergen’s ( Bergen 2015 ) detailed elaboration on embodiment as a central concept encompassing the ubiquitous relation between mind and body.

The sixth orientation targets cognitive historical linguistics as well as contrastive linguistic research which has flourished recently ( Hartmann 2021 ). By highlighting the diachronic aspect of linguistic theory, it encompasses works on linguistic variation such as Aldokhayel’s work on Classical Arabic case making ( Aldokhayel 2021 ) or Janda and Dickey’s work on Salvic languages ( Janda and Dickey 2017 ). It also encompasses works that are on a wider cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective, as in Belkhir’s work on the novice area of proverbs ( Belkhir 2021 ), Midor’s ( Midor 2019 ) work on women’s cross-cultural metaphorical representations of grief and child loss, and Zhou’s ( Zhou 2018 ) examination of cross-linguistic dog connotations. Finally, Taylor and Wen ( Taylor and Wen 2021 ) highlight a seventh orientation as applied cognitive linguistics, which further explores all the practical applications of the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise. In so doing, research within fields of language acquisition and pedagogy as well as translation and ideology is prominently included here. Similarly, research within multimodality ( Hart 2016 ; Ruth-Hirrel and Wilcox 2018 ), along with works on sign languages ( Siyavoshi 2019 ) also fall under this category. In fact, applications of Cognitive Linguistics have been extended to non-linguistic research too, Hurtienne ( 2014 ) for instance, utilizes implications of image-schematic metaphor to the field of user interface design.

What this classification does not acknowledge, however, is the potential of corpus linguistics tools in Cognitive Linguistics literature, which could be justified on the grounds that corpus linguistics is often presented as an interdisciplinary methodology within linguistic investigation. Since its early days, Cognitive Linguistics has had access to vast corpora (e.g., the Brown Corpus in the 1960s) ( Wong 2012 ). However, some criticize that period for focusing primarily on introspection-based theory-building rather than empirical data ( Divjak et al. 2016 ). Over the course of the next decades, however, this has changed drastically, inspiring Janda ( Janda 2013 ) to dub this fundamental shift in its literature as the quantitative turn.

Corpus linguistics has a substantial potential to research within the cognitive linguistic enterprise. This is primarily due to the fact that corpora can offer linguistic evidence that is based on authentic and natural language use and are inherently deeply rooted in language usage ( Arppe et al. 2010 ). Even prior to the aforementioned quantitative turn that took place a decade ago, such potential has been acknowledged and theorized within aspiring attempts; thus, resulting in an edited volume by ( Gries and Stefanowitsch 2006 ) presenting works by prominent cognitive linguists with corpus-based motivations. The book offered rigid research of where cognitive and corpus linguistics meet and flourish. For instance, Newman and Rice ( 2009 ) utilized corpus tools to investigate transitivity schemas associated with the English verbs eat and drink while Lemmens ( 2009 ) approached the cognitive-corpus linguistics affiliation from an experimental stance. This affiliation continued to consolidate as more empirical and experimental research within quantitative designs is published; only to name a few ( Blumenthal-Dramé 2016 ; Gries 2014 ; Luo 2018 ; Stefanowitsch 2011 ).

What is offered by these experimental cognitive-corpus linguistics applications are attempts to support the indirect links between cognition and linguistic data with ‘converging evidence’ ( Arppe et al. 2010, p. 6 ) in a way that allows for the replication of research design and procedure across different experimental conditions. Consistent with the quantitative turn identified earlier, some recent works with cognitive linguistic literature adhere to experimental approaches to analyzing cognitively based linguistic evidence. While such experimental trend can be detected across diverse fields within cognitive linguistics research, works relating to first language acquisition and second language learning have been prominent in experimental research. Tyler, for instance, offered both theoretical backgrounding as well as solid experimental application in a book investigating second language learning with some pedagogical implications ( Tyler 2012 ). By the same token, some other experimental cognitive works such as Aajami ( 2018 ) and Taylor and Wen ( 2021 ) examined the semantic schemas of English polysemous propositions such as to, for, and at.

This experimental vein reveals a strong connection to data-driven research within cognitive linguistics. In data-driven approaches, data are used to offer guidelines to the process of policymaking and decision makers to improve the feasibility of having an informed and strategic decision. In light of this, it does not come as a surprise that literature within second language pedagogy research also utilizes such take. Kilimci, for instance, offers pedagogical implications to inform second language learning of prepositions ( Kilimci 2017 ). Others, such as Brdar-Szabó and Brdar, advocate that data-driven approaches within cognitive linguistics could benefit from the affiliation with other introspection-based approaches ( Brdar-Szabó and Brdar 2012 ). Through a contrastive cross linguistic study, they argue for the need for obtaining converging evidence from both theoretical and empirical inspirations.

In short, Divjak, Levshina, and Klavan classify all these topics within Cognitive Linguistics as revolving around three axes, with each axis exhibiting unbalanced distribution of research in one direction over the other ( Divjak et al. 2016 ). There is the time dimension, exhibiting more synchronic investigations than diachronic ones. There is the linguistic diversity dimension, revealing more research examining one language (mostly English), over that investigating many languages. Finally, there is the modality dimension exhibiting more research centered around written language over multimodal research.

1.3. Scientific Contributions for Cognitive Linguistics

As stated in the previous discussion, the second half of the 1980s was quite critical in establishing Cognitive Linguistics as a major field within linguistic enquiry. This was ignited in 1989, when René Dirven organized a symposium in Duisburg, Germany, which was renamed latter as the ‘the First International Cognitive Linguistics Conference’ and resulted in two major landmarks in Cognitive Linguistics history ( Nerlich and Clarke 2007 ). At that conference, the International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA) ( Midor 2019 ) was established and the decision was made to publish a new journal, Cognitive Linguistics ( Cognitive Linguistics n.d. ), and a monograph series, Cognitive Linguistics Research, both by De Gruyter Mouton in Germany. The first issue of Cognitive Linguistics appeared in 1990, and it continues to lead current research in the field until present time while being indexed in Web of Science WoS (Social Sciences Citation Index SSCI—Arts and Humanities Citation Index AHCI) with an impact factor (IF) of 1.55 in 2020. The ICLA organizes its biennial international conference and is also affiliated with more than 14 organizations all over the world such as the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association, the UK Cognitive Linguistics Association and the Discourse and Cognitive Linguistic Society of Korea. Aside from its primary journal and monograph search, the ICLA sponsors many additional publications such as the Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics ( Review of Cognitive Linguistics n.d. ) and Cognitive Linguistics in Practice ( Cognitive Linguistics in Practice n.d. ); both of which are published by John Benjamins in the Netherlands. The first issue of the annual review appeared in 2003 and it also continues until present time; but it was renamed Review of Cognitive Linguistics in 2010. This journal is also indexed in WOS (SSCI—AHCI) with an IF of 0.41 in 2020. Other international journals in WOS include Language and Cognition (SSCI—AHCI, IF: 1.33), Pragmatics and Cognition (SSCI—AHCI, IF: 0.38) CogniTextes (Emerging Source Citation Index ESCI), Journal of Cognitive Science (ESCI) and Constructions and Frames (ESCI).

1.4. Purpose of the Study

The present study attempts to document the rise and scope of cognitive linguistics as it has transformed from its “revolutionary” status to a firmly “established” one ( Nerlich and Clarke 2007, p. 592 ). It no longer possesses a radical image as these transformations are happening year by year ( Dabrowska 2016 ). Instead, it projects itself as an interdisciplinary approach to modern day linguistics, adapting to more empirical and usage-based investigations. That said, this documentation of the rise and development of cognitive linguistics is inclusive of past (i.e., reviewing literature of the development of the field), present (i.e., bibliometric and scientometric review of existing literature), and providing insights into the directions of cognitive linguistics through analysis of past literature and mapping domains of existing literature.

2. Materials and Methods

The discipline of scientometrics focuses on the “study of artifacts; one examines not science and scholarship but the products of those activities” ( Glänzel and Schoepflin 1994, p. 491 ). Research in scientometrics examines “the quantitative aspects of the production, dissemination and use of scientific information with the aim of achieving a better understanding of the mechanisms of scientific research as a social activity” ( Chellappandi and Vijayakumar 2018, p. 6 ). This type of research does not necessarily improve published knowledge. It has been shown in several studies that “the task of determining quality papers is especially difficult in BIS [bibliometrics, informetrics and scientometrics] due to the very heterogeneous origin of the researchers” ( Egghe 1994, p. 390 ). Nonetheless, the primary objective of such studies remains to “reveal characteristics of scientometric phenomena and processes in scientific research for more efficient management of science” ( Parkinson 2011, p. 1 ).

The use of scientometric indicators is used to guide such studies. A measure may address one or more elements (e.g., publication, citations and references, potential, etc.) or may indicate a type (e.g., quantitative, impact) ( Parkinson 2011 ). Among the concepts commonly used in such studies is “mapping knowledge domains” which refers to creating “an image that shows the development process and the structural relationship of scientific knowledge”—using maps that are “useful tools for tracking the frontiers of science and technology, facilitating knowledge management, and assisting scientific and technological decision-making” ( Huang et al. 2021, p. 6201 ). Research in this field is increasingly inclusive, including all fields of study, rather than restricting itself to medical, health, and pure science settings ( Sooryamoorthy 2020 ). The present study examines cognitive linguistics as a branch of interdisciplinary linguistics that integrates with other fields like linguistics and cognitive sciences.

2.1. Measures

Both bibliometrics and scientometrics conceive of studies as tools for assessing knowledge production in a field (e.g., cognitive linguistics). Knowledge databases (e.g., Scopus, WOS, and Lens) are the most common source of bibliometric data ( Birkle et al. 2020 ; Burnham 2006 ; Pranckutė 2021 ; Penfold 2020 ). The majority of scientometric indicators are generated by scientometric software. In our current study, we used CiteSpace 5.8.R3 ( Chen 2014 ) and VOSviewer 1.6.18 ( van Eck and Waltman 2022 ). Table 1 shows that both bibliometric and scientometric criteria were used in this study.

Scientometrics and bibliometric indicators to measure development of Cognitive Linguistics, adapted from ( Alduais et al. 2022 ).

2.2. Data Collection and Sample

For data retrieval, we used three databases: Scopus, WOS, and Lens. These databases were included for a number of reasons. WOS and Scopus index publications according to their criteria only ( Pranckutė 2021 ; Birkle et al. 2020 ; Burnham 2006 ). Moreover, Lens provides a broader range of data unavailable in Scopus or WOS ( Penfold 2020 ).

Searches were conducted on Thursday, 16 June 2022. Language limitations were not taken into consideration as long as titles, abstracts, and keywords were provided in English. Since there were very few results available in our list of other languages, we manually verified the results to ensure that they were relevant. We considered articles, reviews, book chapters, books, dissertations, conference proceedings (full papers), and early access publications of these types for this study. Table 2 lists the strings for the three databases and other specifications.

Search strings for retrieving data to measure development of Cognitive Linguistics.

We assessed the growth and size of the cognitive linguistics field by using the concept of “cognitive linguistics.” Since the term cognitive linguistics results in a large number of results, we did not use specific search terms to narrow the results or find specific topics related to cognitive linguistics. The above search strings are suggested to be useful for searching for information about cognitive linguistics after a preliminary Google search and review of our prior knowledge in the field.

2.3. Data Analysis

Data analysis began with several steps taken. We exported Scopus data in three different formats: Excel sheets, RIS (i.e., Research Information Systems) files for CiteSpace, and CSV files for VOSviewer. In order to meet CiteSpace’s requirements, the RIS file was converted to WOS. Additionally, WOS data were retrieved in two formats: text documents converted to Excel sheets for bibliometric analysis, and plain text documents for CiteSpace and VOSviewer. For the bibliometric analysis and for VOSviewer, Lens data were retrieved in two formats: CSV and a full record CSV.

We removed duplicate documents using CiteSpace and Mendeley before using CiteSpace for analysis. In order to conduct the bibliometric analysis, Excel was used. Using Excel, we generated tables for the citation reports and converted them to figures.

We used both programs’ default settings for scientometric analysis. A different visualization was done for each database, including overlays, network visualizations, and density visualizations. Scoups and WOS analyses were conducted in three stages: cooccurrence analysis by author keywords, co-citation analysis by source, and co-citation analysis by cited author. There were four analyses conducted for Lens: cooccurrence by author keyword, citation by author, citation by source, and citation by document. The following analyses were performed in CiteSpace for Scopus and WOS: co-citations by document (references), co-citations by cited authors, and occurrence (keywords). Summaries of the results are presented as narratives, cluster summaries, maps, and burst tables.

There are two sections in the results. A bibliometric analysis of cognitive linguistics is presented in the first section. These indicators were derived based on data retrieved from the Scopus, WOS, and Lens databases. Bibliometric indicators include publications by year, top 10 countries, universities, journals, publishers, subject areas, and authors. A description of scientometric indicators pertaining to cognitive linguistics development is presented in the second section. To analyze these indicators, CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used. Among the indicators are co-citations, citations, and cooccurrences.

3.1. Bibliometric Indicators for the Study of Cognitive Linguistics

3.1.1. overview of cognitive linguistics studies from scopus, web of science, and lens.

We retrieved 2380 documents from Scopus, 1732 from WOS, and 9911 from Lens, all related to cognitive linguistics. Each database was based on data from 1983 to 2022, 1987 to 2022, and 1969 to 2022. This time span was selected based on the availability of the data. In other words, the starting data were automatically determined based on identifying documents in cognitive linguistics since 1969 and the ending data was based on the available papers on the three databases by the day of making the search. A total of 1485 articles, 239 review articles, 319 book chapters, 163 books, and 174 conference papers were included in Scopus. Among the documents from the WOS were 1326 articles, 34 review articles, 100 book chapters, 100 books, 13 early access papers, and 357 proceedings papers. From Lens, 7, 243 articles, 2133 unclassified, 716 book chapters, 464 books, 185 dissertations, 21 preprints, and 149 conference proceedings were included. These documents were mainly written in English, but included documents in Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French, Chinese, and other languages. As the analysis is based on title, keywords, abstract, and references, all of these include this information in English. Inclusion of this data was considered to avoid bias towards English-published data.

Figure 1 A–C shows the length of production by year for the three databases. There has been a significant rise in knowledge production in cognitive linguistics, reaching its peak in 2019 in Scopus with 219 publications, 2019 in the WOS with 185 publications, and 2015 in Lens with 792 publications. The Scopus database has a range of 1–219 publications, the WOS has a range of 1–185 publications, and Lens has a range of 1–792 publications. Further, of 14,023 included documents, only 350 documents were published before 2000. This supports the increase of knowledge production in cognitive linguistics, although the data for the current year (i.e., 2022) were only until 16 June. The lowest number of publications occurs the previous years. The last two decades have seen a rise in the production of cognitive linguistic knowledge.

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by year.

3.1.2. Production of Cognitive Linguistics Research by Country and University

Figure 2 A–C shows the top 10 producing countries for knowledge related to cognitive linguistics. There is a variable distribution of rankings for the top 10 countries producing knowledge in cognitive linguistics across the three databases. Although the US and Russia rank first and second in Scopus and WOS, China ranks first and the UK ranks second in Lens. Except for China from Asia, Brazil from South America, and South Africa from Africa, most of these top 10 countries are geographically located in Europe or North America.

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by country.

Figure 3 A–C presents the top 10 universities and/or research centers producing knowledge in cognitive linguistics. The majority of these universities are based in European countries, with a few universities located in Russia and the United States as well.

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by university/research center.

3.1.3. Production of Cognitive Linguistics Research by Journal and Publisher

Figure 4 A–D demonstrates the top 10 journals publishing research in cognitive linguistics. Several of the top journals are closely related or even include “cognitive” in their titles while the rest are related to cognitive sciences, computer science, language studies, and pragmatics. An extended list of journals based on publishers is shown in Figure 4 D. In this list, we can see several journals related to cognitive linguistics and cognitive sciences, as well as social sciences and linguistics journals.

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by journal.

Figure 5 A,B shows the list of top 10 publishers for knowledge in cognitive linguistics. Due to Scopus’ lack of publisher information, these lists are limited to the WOS and Lens databases. In both databases, Walter De Grujohnyter, Elsevier, and Springer Nature appear to be the top three publishers. Despite the difference in rankings, the same publishers are available in both databases.

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by publisher.

3.1.4. Production of Cognitive Linguistics by Research Area, Keywords, and Cooccurrence

Cognitive linguistics is part of interdisciplinary linguistics, which studies language and cognitive science, but also integrates these fields with many other fields ( Figure 6 A–C). According to Figure 6 A, social sciences, arts and humanities, psychology, and computer science account for the majority of publications in cognitive linguistics. Research in cognitive linguistics focuses primarily on linguistics, educational research, psychology, and arts and humanities, as shown in Figure 6 B. Further confirmation can be found in Figure 6 C, where cognitive linguistics, linguistics, psychology, and cognition are presented as the top four fields of study published in cognitive linguistics. More specific cognitive linguistics fields are presented on Lens (e.g., metaphors, natural language processing, metonymies, semantics).

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by research area.

3.1.5. Production of Cognitive Linguistics by Authors

In cognitive linguistics, contributions are not necessarily limited to a certain number of authors and a single article may constitute a contribution. Nevertheless, we aimed to show the authors who contributed more knowledge to cognitive linguistics ( Figure 7 A–C). It can be seen that Andrason ( Andrason 2016 ), Wang ( Wang and Berwick 2012 ), and Geeraerts ( Geeraerts 2008 ) are among the top positions, but this ranking is altered when the Lens database is considered.

Knowledge production size of cognitive linguistics by author.

3.2. Scientometric Indicators for the Study of Cognitive Linguistics

3.2.1. overview of cognitive linguistics studies from scopus, web of science, and lens.

We present here a scientometric analysis of the data that were retrieved from Scopus, WOS, and Lens databases. Several concepts, authors, references, and emerging trends are highlighted.

Using CiteSpace, we first show the top keywords with the strongest citation bursts from Scopus and WOS ( Figure 8 A,B). All research is represented by the green line. Red lines indicate the beginning and end of bursts. The word with the strongest citation burst in Scopus is cognitive system (=6.68) between 2001 and 2008, and conceptual integration (=3.47) between 2002 and 2014 for the WOS. Citation bursts vary by database. In the WOS, we can see second language and body, but in Scopus, we can see concept and grammar.

Top 10 keywords with the strongest citation bursts.

Visualizations of clusters and authors further illustrate these concepts ( Figure 9 A–D). Among the most explored topics in cognitive linguistics, Figure 9 A shows critical discourse, language teaching, and grammaticalization. Figure 9 B shows more specific concepts such as metaphoric competence, individual differences, and English teaching and learning. A list of the most cited authors is shown in Figure 9 C,D, along with the topics that were searched when these authors were cited. Among these topics are spatial metaphors, cognitive linguistics, and Russian word. (See Figure 9 C). WOS includes other words such as usage-based language, relevance theory, etc. (See Figure 9 D). More importantly, these figures are better understood in terms of the list of the clusters that were identified automatically based on the quantity of research sharing the same cluster. Next to each cluster is the intensity indicating how much research is produced in relation to this particular cluster. Some clusters are skipped automatically by the software to show the most the relevant clusters that are very specific to the use of the concept ‘cognitive linguistics’.

Top keywords, cited authors, and clusters.

Another important factor is the co-occurrence of used keywords. The three databases were visually mapped using VOSviewer to show the occurrence of the most commonly used cognitive linguistics keywords ( Figure 10 A–C). In cognitive linguistics, each color represents a particular direction. The larger the size of the font or the circles, the more research is produced in that area of research. Red indicates cognitive linguistics, blue shows cognitive computing, and purple depicts rhetoric (See Figure 10 A). Depending on the database, these colors may change. As shown in Figure 10 B, green indicates topics related to metonymy, pink to cognitive linguistics, and orange to machine learning. Figure 10 C displays metaphor and narrative keywords in gray.

Cooccurrence by author keywords network visualization.

We generated three visual network maps using VOSviewer for co-citation and citation by author ( Figure 11 A–C). Each color represents a co-citation or citation network between authors. A larger circle indicates that the author has been co-cited or cited more frequently. The same authors appear in all three databases, whether for co-citations or citations. These include Langacker ( Langacker 2012 ), Lakoff ( Lakoff 1990 ), Gibbs ( Gibbs 1999 ), etc.

Co-citation by cited author density visualization.

VOSviewer was used to generate three visual network maps of co-citations and citations by source ( Figure 12 A–C). Colors represent networks of co-citations or citations. An increased circle size indicates a greater number of co-citations. In Figure 12 A, Cognitive Linguistics appears to be the most co-cited source. Figure 12 B shows similar results using the WOS database with other notable journals (e.g., Cognitive Science, Journal of Pragmatics). The citation network for journals is shown in Figure 12 C. These include Human Cognitive Processing, Theory and Practice in Language, etc.

Co-citation by source network visualization.

Using the bibliometric data provided in Scopus, WOS, and Lens, we exported the citations reports and reported the top 10 cited works. We then merged them, removed duplicates, and presented citation counts for each ( Table 3 ). The most cited document are “Cognitive Linguistics” in Scopus with 1614 citations, “The brain’s concepts: The role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge” in the WOS with 1306 citations, and “Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought” in Lens with 5703 citations.

Top cited documents of Cognitive Linguistics using citation reports from Scopus, WOS, and Lens.

3.2.2. Impact of Research on Cognitive Linguistics by Clusters, Citation Counts, Citation Bursts, Centrality, and Sigma

The network is divided into 16 co-citation clusters (See Table 4 for details). The largest 6 clusters are summarized as follows. The largest cluster (#0) has 168 members and a silhouette value of 0.708. It is labeled as spatial metaphor by LLR, cognitive linguistics by LSI, and business communication (1.07) by MI. The most relevant citer to the cluster is “The Cambridge handbook of cognitive linguistics” ( Dancygier 2017 ).

Summary of the largest clusters in Cognitive Linguistics.

The network is divided into 19 co-citation clusters. (See Table 4 for details.). The largest 7 clusters are summarized as follows. The largest cluster (#0) has 188 members and a silhouette value of 0.69. It is labeled as usage-based language by LLR, cognitive linguistics by LSI, and special volume (1.73) by MI. The most relevant citer to the cluster is “Cognitive linguistics and its place in history of linguistics” ( Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013 ).

Citation Counts

In Scopus, the top ranked item by citation counts is Lakoff ( Lakoff 1989 ) in Cluster #6, with citation counts of 1206. The second one is Langacker ( Langacker 1989 ) in Cluster #1, with citation counts of 581. In the WOS, the top ranked item by citation counts is Lakoff ( Lakoff 1991 ) in Cluster #1, with citation counts of 646. The second one is [Anonymous] (1999) in Cluster #4, with citation counts of 570. The remaining top 10 citation counts in cognitive linguistics can be found in Table 5 .

Citation counts for Top 10 works in Cognitive Linguistics.

In Scopus, the top ranked item by bursts is Lakoff ( Lakoff and Johnson 2020 ) in Cluster #8, with bursts of 15.09. The second one is Littlemore ( Low et al. 2007 ) in Cluster #4, with bursts of 12.86. In the WOS, the top ranked item by bursts is Van Dijk ( Van Dijk 2011 ) in Cluster #1, with bursts of 6.79. The second one is Grady ( Grady 2005 ) in Cluster #2, with bursts of 6.45. See Table 6 and Figure 13 A–D for the remaining top 10 detected bursts in cognitive linguistics. The green colour represents the whole period of citation and red colour indicates the detected citation period.

Top 10 cited authors and references with the strongest citation bursts.

Detected bursts for top 10 works in Cognitive Linguistics.

In Scopus, the top ranked item by centrality is Chomsky ( Chomsky 1990 ) in Cluster #2, with centrality of 136. The second one is Jackendoff ( Jackendoff 1995a ) in Cluster #5, with centrality of 111. In the WOS, the top ranked item by centrality is Boers ( Boers 2001 ) in Cluster #3, with centrality of 104. The second one is Gibbs ( Gibbs 1996 ) in Cluster #1, with centrality of 103. For a list of the remaining 10 central top authors in cognitive linguistics, please refer to Table 7 .

Betweenness centrality for top 10 works in Cognitive Linguistics.

In Scopus, the top ranked item by sigma is Chomsky ( Chomsky 1990 ) in Cluster #2, with sigma of 0.00. The second one is Jackendoff ( Jackendoff 1995a ) in Cluster #5, with sigma of 0.00. In the WOS, the top ranked item by sigma is Boers ( Boers 2001 ) in Cluster #3, with sigma of 0.00. The second one is Gibbs ( Gibbs 1996 ) in Cluster #1, with sigma of 0.00. See Table 8 for the remaining top 10 works with sigma value in cognitive linguistics.

Sigma values for top 10 works in Cognitive Linguistics.

4. Discussion

This study examined cognitive linguistics as a branch of interdisciplinary linguistics that integrates with other fields such as linguistics and cognitive sciences. This purpose has been achieved by reviewing the rise of cognitive linguistics and by presenting both bibliometrics and scientometrics indicators of cognitive linguistics. Two sections comprise the results of the study. The first section presents the bibliometric indicators including publications by year, top 10 countries, universities, journals, publishers, subject areas, and authors. The second section presents the scientometric indicators, including citation, co-citation, and cooccurrence indicators. With reference to bibliometric indicators, seven key points are discussed: (1) knowledge production in cognitive linguistics increased in the last two decades reaching its peak in 2019 in both Scopus and WOS, and 2015 in Lens; (2) for the top 10 countries producing knowledge, the US and Russia rank first and second in both Scopus and WOS, while China ranks first and the UK ranks second in the Lens; (3) universities in the European countries dominate knowledge production in cognitive linguistics with a few universities in Russia and the US; (4) in both WOS and Lens, Cognitive Linguistics journal ranks the first, while it is proceeded by Voprosy Kognitivnoy Lingvistiki in Scopus; (5) Walter De Gruyter appears as the top publisher followed by Elsevier in WOS database, while John Benjamins Publishing Company appears first followed by Walter De Gruyter in Lens; (6) Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities are the top subject areas publishing in cognitive linguistics; and (7) Andrason ( Andrason 2016 ), Wang ( Wang and Berwick 2012 ), and Geeraerts ( Geeraerts 1991 ) are the top in the field.

With reference to scientometric indicators, our analysis identified the most cited keywords in Scopus and WOS. In Scopus, the most cited keywords include language acquisition ( Achard and Niemeier 2004 ), embodiment ( Johnson and Lakoff 2002 ), concept and conceptual system ( Evans et al. 2007 ), and cultural linguistics ( Sharifian 2017 ). In WOS, they include conceptual integration ( Turner 2010 ), construction ( Turner 2020 ), category ( Evans et al. 2007 ), brain ( Evans 2012 ), and science ( Sinha 2010 ).

In terms of the largest co-citation clusters, we analyzed data from both Scopus and WOS. In Scopus, the results include cognitive linguistics research, which theoretically and empirically studies language, conceptual systems, and human cognition ( Fauconnier 2006 ), and usage-based linguistics ( Behrens 2009 ). On the other hand, the results in WOS include financial news reporting, i.e., the interplay of language use and journalism, media and society ( Catenaccio et al. 2011 ), and spatial metaphor, for instance, in relation to memory ( Roediger 1980 ).

With regards to the contributions of the most cited authors, Littlemore ( Littlemore 2009 ) comprehensively deals with teaching cognitive linguistics. Both Lakoff and Johnson ( Lakoff and Johnson 1980b ) and Grady ( Grady 1999 ) discuss conceptual metaphor. Janda ( Janda 2015 ) provides an inclusive overview of cognitive linguistics, while Van Dijk ( Van Dijk 2019 ) outlines the theory of macrostructures.

Using bibliometric data, we pointed out the top 10 cited articles in both Scopus and WOS. They include topics such as the Invariance Hypothesis ( Lakoff 1990 ), metaphor and metaphorical thoughts ( Lakoff 1992 ), subjectification ( Langacker 1990 ), the mental spaces framework ( Fauconnier and Sweetser 1996 ), cognitive grammar ( Langacker 2001a ), and motion events ( Leonard Talmy 1991 ).

Lastly, we performed a sigma analysis to determine the top-ranked items in both Scopus and WOS. These include the notion of surface filter which explain certain properties of infinitival constructions ( Chomsky and Lasnik 1977 ), the theoretical foundations of Construction Grammar ( Goldberg 2005 ), the application of the concept of Invariance Hypothesis ( Brugman 1990 ), levels of mental representation (languages of the mind) ( Jackendoff 1995b ), and learners’ retention of idioms through imagery processing experiment ( Boers 2001 ).

5. Conclusions

5.1. practical implications.

Whenever it comes to scientometric studies, researchers should be careful in interpreting the results ( van Eck and Waltman 2014 ), no matter how popular this method has become ( van Eck et al. 2010 ; Moral-Muñoz et al. 2020 ). Ideally, data should be retrieved from multiple sources and avoided being confined to a single database unless well justified (e.g., we used Scopus, WOS, and Lens in this study). For the next step, different tools should be used for the analysis to incorporate various scientometric indicators (e.g., in this study both CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used). Another practical implication is related to the design and conduct of scientometric studies. In this study, we presented a sample study for conducting scientometric studies. We proposed a whole structure for the structure, content, and format to help researchers conduct similar studies in the future using similar structure, content, and format.

5.2. Theoretical Implications

This study has at least two theoretical implications. Firstly, linguistic analyses should not be restricted to words, phrases, and concepts, but should include sentence structures, text structures, context structures, and discourse structures, as well as the comparison of data from different languages to assess convergence and/or divergence. As a second point, behavioral evidence should include both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of communication in order to obtain evidence regarding cognitive processes involving human communication (e.g., ( Al-Mansour et al. 2015 ; Almukhaizeem and Alduais 2015a ; Alduais and Almukhaizeem 2015 ; Almukhaizeem and Alduais 2015b ; Alduais 2017 )). Furthermore, brain imaging evidence should incorporate multiple linguistic and non-linguistic tasks at all levels (i.e., as mentioned in the linguistic analysis) to provide more concrete evidence of cognitive processes occurring in the brain. In rehabilitation for those with language breakdown caused by brain injury, trauma, or other causes, this last one will play a significant role.

5.3. Limitations

Certain limitations of this study could be addressed in future research. For example, the study focused primarily on the presentation and visualization of bibliometric and scientometric indicators without a significant amount of discussion of the scope of cognitive linguistics. Therefore, a scoping review of cognitive linguistics that considers defining and conceptualizing the field may be an appropriate first step for future research. This study also has the limitation of presenting evidence concerning the development of cognitive linguistics. While both bibliometric and scientometric indicators can be used for such objectives, they remain insufficient to assess the quality of the knowledge produced. Consequently, future research should examine the credibility and practicality of the methods used to study cognitive linguistics. One more limitation is that we did not use any additional search keywords that also include cognitive linguistics (e.g., memory, perception, recall, etc.).

Funding Statement

This research was funded by King Saud University grant number RSP-2021/251.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, A.A.-K., S.A. and H.A.; Data curation, A.A.; Formal analysis, A.A.; Funding acquisition, H.A.; Investigation, A.A. and H.A.; Methodology, A.A.; Project administration, A.A. and H.A.; Resources, A.A.-K. and S.A.; Software, A.A.; Supervision, A.A.; Validation, A.A. and H.A.; Visualization, A.A.; Writing—original draft, A.A., A.A.-K. and S.A.; Writing—review & editing, A.A. and H.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

This research did not require IRB approval.

Informed Consent Statement

Neither human nor non-human subjects were involved directly in this research. Therefore, informed consent was not required.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Te Kura Tātari Reo

School of --> school of linguistics and applied language studies, cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics.

Explore LALS research into the connections between language, cognition and behaviour.

Cognitive Linguistics

At its core, cognitive linguistics research investigates the interdependency between cognition and language. In LALS, our researchers draw from cognitive linguistics to study a range of different topics, such as the how formulaic language reflects the organisation of language in the mind. Along the same lines, our researchers also investigate how speakers make pragmatic and discourse-level inferences from figurative and humorous language. Other research in the school is devoted to exploring how the intersection of syntax and semantics contributes to conceptual knowledge among speakers of different languages, and how this knowledge may transfer when learning a new language.

Active research projects in this area

• Conceptual transfer of spatiotemporal concepts among speakers of English, Mandarin Chinese, and Indonesian
• Crosslinguistic transfer of abstract syntactic patterns among speakers of English, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese
• Cognitive processing and comprehension of humorous and ironic (satirical) discourse
• Computational analyses of linguistic patterns associated with humorous and figurative language
• Representation and processing of figurative and literal formulaic language in children and adults
• Crosslinguistic transfer in formulaic language processing in Chinese-English bilinguals

Researchers able to supervise in this area

• Victoria Chen
• Irina Elgort
• Anna Siyanova
• Stephen Skalicky

Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental representations and processes used in the production and comprehension of language.

Active and recent research projects in this area

• How iconic, or ‘biological’, meanings of voice pitch interact with social uses of pitch in perception
• How prosodic cues are used to track important information in speech, and how this affects interpretation, across languages
• Production and perception of sound change in language (for example, the merger of the EAR and AIR vowels in NZ English)
• The on-line processing of formulaic language by first and second language speakers (in particular, English, Chinese and Italian) using behavioural and eye-tracking methodologies
• The processing of formulaic language in individuals with developmental dyslexia
• The prosody of formulaic language
• The on-line processing of gender stereotypes by children, adults, and the elderly, using behavioural methodologies
• The use of prosodic information in the resolution of sentence ambiguity
• Investigation of the psycholinguistic aspects of morphological productivity
• Acquisition and processing of meanings of ambiguous word in the first and second language
• Reading comprehension and related skills in English as a first and second language
• Anna Siyanova (especially in the area of the psycholinguistics of formulaic language)
• Irina Elgort (word representation, processing, and acquisition)
• Sasha Calhoun (spoken language processing, especially prosody)

What Is Cognitive Linguistics?

A new paradigm in the study of language and the mind..

Posted July 12, 2019 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought that originally began to emerge in the 1970s due to dissatisfaction with formal approaches to language. As I explain in my book, Cognitive Linguistics: A Complete Guide , it is also firmly rooted in the emergence of modern cognitive science in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in work relating to human categorization, and in earlier traditions such as Gestalt psychology .

Early research was spearheaded during the second half of the 1970s by the so-called "founding fathers" of cognitive linguistics: Ronald Langacker , George Lakoff and Leonard Talmy .

Langacker, during this period, began work on his theory of Cognitive Grammar, then dubbed "space grammar." Lakoff was working on a related approach to grammar that came to be dubbed Construction Grammar, as well as a semantic basis for grammar, termed "linguistic gestalts." This notion later evolved into his theory of conceptual metaphor theory, developed with philosopher Mark Johnson .

During the 1980s, Lakoff, influenced by his colleagues Charles Fillmore and Eleanor Rosch at University California, Berkeley, began applying new approaches to categorization, in particular, Prototype Theory to modeling linguistic representation in the minds of language users. This gave rise, among other things, to a new "cognitive" approach to semantics, especially lexical semantics. Meanwhile, Talmy was engaged in developing a theory which he termed Cognitive Semantics.

By the mid to late 1980s these approaches, together with research from other leading researchers, most notably French-American researcher Gilles Fauconnier , had coalesced into a broad research program that adopted a broad empiricist and non-modular approach to language and mind, that came to be called "cognitive linguistics;" in essence, the various theories shared a common impulse to model language and human communication in ways that were cognitively realistic, rather than adopting the modular, computational view of mind inherited from early research in cognitive science.

And 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 this "marked the birth of cognitive linguistics as a broadly grounded, self-conscious intellectual movement."

The Cognitive Linguistics Enterprise

Cognitive linguistics is described as a "movement" or an "enterprise" because it is not a specific theory. Rather, 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.

The cognitive linguistics enterprise is characterized by two key commitments. These are:

• The Generalisation Commitment : A commitment to the characterization of general principles that are responsible for all aspects of human language.
• The Cognitive Commitment : A commitment to providing a characterization of general principles for language that accords with what is known about the mind and brain from other disciplines. As these commitments are what imbue cognitive linguistics with its distinctive character, and differentiate it from formal linguistics.

The Generalisation Commitment

Cognitive linguists make the assumption that there are common structuring principles that hold across different aspects of language; moreover, they further assume that an important function of language science is to identify these common principles.

In modern linguistics, the study of language is often separated into distinct areas such as phonetics (sound production and reception), phonology (sound patterns), semantics (word and sentence meaning), pragmatics (meaning in discourse context), morphology (word structure) syntax (sentence structure) and so on.

This is particularly true of formal linguistics: a set of approaches to modeling language that posit explicit mechanical devices or procedures operating on theoretical primitives in order to produce the complete set of linguistic possibilities in a given language.

Within formal linguistics (such as the Generative Grammar approach developed by Noam Chomsky ), it is usually argued that areas such as phonology, semantics and syntax concern significantly different kinds of structuring principles operating over different kinds of primitives.

For instance, a syntax module is an area—a neurological system—in the mind/brain specialized for structuring words into sentences. In contrast, a phonology component of the mind would be concerned with structuring sounds into patterns permitted by the rules of any given language, and by human language in general.

This modular view of mind reinforces the idea that modern linguistics is justified in separating the study of language into distinct sub-disciplines, not only on grounds of practicality but because the components of language are wholly distinct and, in terms of organization, incommensurable. This is a view I critiqued in my earlier book, The Language Myth .

Cognitive linguists typically acknowledge that it may often be useful, for practical purposes, to treat areas such as syntax, semantics, and phonology as being notionally distinct. The study of syntactic organisation involves, at least in part, the study of slightly different kinds of cognitive and linguistic phenomena than the study of phonological organisation.

However, given the Generalisation Commitment, cognitive linguists disagree that the modules or subsystems of language are organised in significantly divergent ways, or indeed that distinct modules or subsystems even exist in the mind/brain.

The Cognitive Commitment

The Generalisation Commitment leads to the search for principles of language structure that hold across all aspects of language. In a related fashion, the Cognitive Commitment represents the view that principles of linguistic structure should reflect what is known about human cognition from other disciplines, particularly the other cognitive sciences ( philosophy , psychology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience ).

Hence, it follows from the Cognitive Commitment that language and linguistic organisation should reflect general cognitive principles rather than cognitive principles that are specific to language.

Accordingly, cognitive linguistics rejects the modular theory of mind that I mentioned above. The modularity of mind is associated particularly with formal linguistics, but is also explored in other areas of cognitive science such as philosophy and cognitive psychology, and holds that the human mind is organised into distinct "encapsulated" modules of knowledge.

While there are different versions of the modularity thesis, in general terms, modules are claimed to "digest" raw sensory input in such a way that it can then be processed by the central cognitive system (involving deduction, reasoning, memory and so on). Cognitive linguists specifically reject the claim that there is a distinct language module, which asserts that linguistic structure and organisation are markedly distinct from other aspects of cognition.

The Field of Cognitive Linguistics

Cognitive linguistics has its roots in theoretical linguistics. Today, cognitive linguists no longer restrict themselves to the narrow remit of theory construction: ideas, theories, and methods from cognitive linguistics are increasingly applied to a wide array of aesthetic, communicative, developmental, educational and cultural phenomena across a wide array of disciplinary contexts including the behavioural, biological, cognitive and social sciences as well as the humanities. This is a testament to the broad appeal and applicability of the range of ideas and theoretical frameworks that have emerged within the cognitive linguistics enterprise.

Cognitive linguistics has two main foci. The first constitutes a focus on the way in which knowledge representation—conceptual structure—is organised in the mind. Given the core commitments of the enterprise, cognitive linguists hold that language reflects cognitive organisation. Consequently, cognitive linguists deploy language in order to investigate conceptual structure.

A clear example of this is the conceptual metaphor theory. Conceptual metaphors are claimed to be units of knowledge representation, in the mind, rather than being linguistic in nature. Yet, as language reflects conceptual organisation, their existence is revealed by patterns in language: patterns in language reveal patterns in the mind, an issue I address in my book: The Crucible of Language.

Of course, as language provides a somewhat partial window on the mind, cognitive linguists invoke the notion of converging evidence. Behavioural studies from experimental psychology have been deployed in order to provide converging evidence for the psychological reality of conceptual metaphors, for instance. The upshot is that cognitive linguistic theories, that have deployed language as the lens through which cognitive phenomena can be investigated amount to models of the mind.

The second constitutes a focus on language: After all, cognitive linguists, like other linguists, study language for its own sake. But again, a consequence of the commitments of the enterprise, language is held to reflect general aspects of cognition. And as such, language can't be artificially separated from the conceptual phenomena that it in large part reflects and is shaped by. One concrete manifestation of this is that language is held to reflect more general, organisational properties of cognition, such as embodiment and the nature of categorisation.

Another is that aspects of language that are treated as discrete and encapsulated in formal linguistics, such as grammar, cannot be treated as such within cognitive linguistics; cognitive linguists take a broadly functional perspective: language emerged to facilitate communicative meaning. Hence, grammatical organisation, which supports situated meaning, cannot be artificially separated from the study of meaning, which it is specialised to facilitate.

Within cognitive linguistics, the study of language often exhibits either a focus on semantics, or on grammar, although there is typically no hard and fast division between the way the two are studied, despite the specific focus adopted. In practice, the division arises due to the focus of a particular researcher, or of the research question being investigated, rather than due to a principled division.

The area of study involving cognitive linguistics approaches to semantics is concerned with investigating a number of semantic phenomena. One such phenomenon is linguistic semantics, encompassing phenomena traditionally studied under the aegis of lexical semantics (word meaning), compositional semantics (sentence meaning), and pragmatics (situated meaning). It also encompasses phenomena not addressed under these traditional headings, such as the relationship between experience, the conceptual system and the semantic structure encoded by language during the process of meaning construction.

Cognitive linguistics approaches to grammar take the view that a model of meaning (a "cognitive semantics" account), has to be delineated before an adequate cognitive model of grammar can be developed. This is because grammar is viewed within the cognitive linguistics enterprise as a meaningful system in and of itself, which therefore shares important properties with the system of linguistic meaning and cannot be functionally separated from it.

Cognitive grammarians have also typically adopted one of two foci. Scholars including Ronald Langacker have emphasised the study of the cognitive principles that give rise to linguistic organisation. In his theoretical framework, Cognitive Grammar, Langacker has attempted to delineate the principles that serve to structure a grammar, and to relate these to aspects of general cognition.

The second avenue of investigation, pursued by researchers aims to provide a more descriptively detailed account of the units that comprise a particular language. These researchers have attempted to provide an inventory of the units of language. Cognitive grammarians who have pursued this line of investigation are developing a set of theories that can collectively be called construction grammars, or sometimes constructionist models. This approach takes its name from the view in cognitive linguistics that the basic unit of language is a form-meaning symbolic assembly which is called a construction.

It follows that cognitive approaches to grammar are not restricted to investigating aspects of the grammatical structure largely independently of meaning, as is often the case in formal traditions. Instead, cognitive approaches to grammar encompass the entire inventory of linguistic units defined as form-meaning pairings.

These run the gamut from skeletal syntactic configurations such as the ditransitive construction, e.g., The window cleaner blew the supermodel a kiss, to idioms, He bent over backward, to bound morphemes such as the -er suffix, to words. This entails that the received view of clearly distinct "sub-modules" of language cannot be meaningfully upheld within cognitive linguistics, where the boundary between cognitive approaches to semantics and cognitive approaches to grammar is less clearly defined.

Instead, meaning and grammar are seen as two sides of the same coin: to take a cognitive approach to grammar is to study the units of language and hence the language system itself. To take a cognitive approach to semantics is to attempt to understand how this linguistic system relates to the conceptual system, which in turn relates to embodied experience. The concerns of cognitive approaches to semantics and cognitive approaches to grammar are thus complementary.

The following diagram provides a schematic representation of the main theoretical foci of cognitive linguistics.

Evans, Vyvyan. 2019. Cognitive Linguistics: A Complete Guide . Edinburgh University Press.

Evans, Vyvyan. 2015. The Crucible of Language: How Language and Mind Create Meaning . Cambridge University Press.

Evans, Vyvyan. 2014. The Language Myth: Why Language is not an Instinct. Cambridge University Press.

Vyvyan Evans, Ph.D. , is a language and communication consultant. He received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University.

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211 Research Topics in Linguistics To Get Top Grades

Many people find it hard to decide on their linguistics research topics because of the assumed complexities involved. They struggle to choose easy research paper topics for English language too because they think it could be too simple for a university or college level certificate.

All that you need to learn about Linguistics and English is sprawled across syntax, phonetics, morphology, phonology, semantics, grammar, vocabulary, and a few others. To easily create a top-notch essay or conduct a research study, you can consider this list of research topics in English language below for your university or college use. Note that you can fine-tune these to suit your interests.

Linguistics Research Paper Topics

If you want to study how language is applied and its importance in the world, you can consider these Linguistics topics for your research paper. They are:

• An analysis of romantic ideas and their expression amongst French people
• An overview of the hate language in the course against religion
• Identify the determinants of hate language and the means of propagation
• Evaluate a literature and examine how Linguistics is applied to the understanding of minor languages
• Consider the impact of social media in the development of slangs
• An overview of political slang and its use amongst New York teenagers
• Examine the relevance of Linguistics in a digitalized world
• Analyze foul language and how it’s used to oppress minors
• Identify the role of language in the national identity of a socially dynamic society
• Attempt an explanation to how the language barrier could affect the social life of an individual in a new society
• Discuss the means through which language can enrich cultural identities
• Examine the concept of bilingualism and how it applies in the real world
• Analyze the possible strategies for teaching a foreign language
• Discuss the priority of teachers in the teaching of grammar to non-native speakers
• Choose a school of your choice and observe the slang used by its students: analyze how it affects their social lives
• Attempt a critical overview of racist languages
• What does endangered language means and how does it apply in the real world?
• A critical overview of your second language and why it is a second language
• What are the motivators of speech and why are they relevant?
• Analyze the difference between the different types of communications and their significance to specially-abled persons
• Give a critical overview of five literature on sign language
• Evaluate the distinction between the means of language comprehension between an adult and a teenager
• Consider a native American group and evaluate how cultural diversity has influenced their language
• Analyze the complexities involved in code-switching and code-mixing
• Give a critical overview of the importance of language to a teenager
• Attempt a forensic overview of language accessibility and what it means
• What do you believe are the means of communications and what are their uniqueness?
• Attempt a study of Islamic poetry and its role in language development
• Attempt a study on the role of Literature in language development
• Evaluate the Influence of metaphors and other literary devices in the depth of each sentence
• Identify the role of literary devices in the development of proverbs in any African country
• Cognitive Linguistics: analyze two pieces of Literature that offers a critical view of perception
• Identify and analyze the complexities in unspoken words
• Expression is another kind of language: discuss
• Identify the significance of symbols in the evolution of language
• Discuss how learning more than a single language promote cross-cultural developments
• Analyze how the loss of a mother tongue affect the language Efficiency of a community
• Critically examine how sign language works
• Using literature from the medieval era, attempt a study of the evolution of language
• Identify how wars have led to the reduction in the popularity of a language of your choice across any country of the world
• Critically examine five Literature on why accent changes based on environment
• What are the forces that compel the comprehension of language in a child
• Identify and explain the difference between the listening and speaking skills and their significance in the understanding of language
• Give a critical overview of how natural language is processed
• Examine the influence of language on culture and vice versa
• It is possible to understand a language even without living in that society: discuss
• Identify the arguments regarding speech defects
• Discuss how the familiarity of language informs the creation of slangs
• Explain the significance of religious phrases and sacred languages
• Explore the roots and evolution of incantations in Africa

Sociolinguistic Research Topics

You may as well need interesting Linguistics topics based on sociolinguistic purposes for your research. Sociolinguistics is the study and recording of natural speech. It’s primarily the casual status of most informal conversations. You can consider the following Sociolinguistic research topics for your research:

• What makes language exceptional to a particular person?
• How does language form a unique means of expression to writers?
• Examine the kind of speech used in health and emergencies
• Analyze the language theory explored by family members during dinner
• Evaluate the possible variation of language based on class
• Evaluate the language of racism, social tension, and sexism
• Discuss how Language promotes social and cultural familiarities
• Give an overview of identity and language
• Examine why some language speakers enjoy listening to foreigners who speak their native language
• Give a forensic analysis of his the language of entertainment is different to the language in professional settings
• Give an understanding of how Language changes
• Examine the Sociolinguistics of the Caribbeans
• Consider an overview of metaphor in France
• Explain why the direct translation of written words is incomprehensible in Linguistics
• Discuss the use of language in marginalizing a community
• Analyze the history of Arabic and the culture that enhanced it
• Discuss the growth of French and the influences of other languages
• Examine how the English language developed and its interdependence on other languages
• Give an overview of cultural diversity and Linguistics in teaching
• Challenge the attachment of speech defect with disability of language listening and speaking abilities
• Explore the uniqueness of language between siblings
• Explore the means of making requests between a teenager and his parents
• Observe and comment on how students relate with their teachers through language
• Observe and comment on the communication of strategy of parents and teachers
• Examine the connection of understanding first language with academic excellence

Language Research Topics

Numerous languages exist in different societies. This is why you may seek to understand the motivations behind language through these Linguistics project ideas. You can consider the following interesting Linguistics topics and their application to language:

• What does language shift mean?
• Discuss the stages of English language development?
• Examine the position of ambiguity in a romantic Language of your choice
• Why are some languages called romantic languages?
• Observe the strategies of persuasion through Language
• Discuss the connection between symbols and words
• Identify the language of political speeches
• Discuss the effectiveness of language in an indigenous cultural revolution
• Trace the motivators for spoken language
• What does language acquisition mean to you?
• Examine three pieces of literature on language translation and its role in multilingual accessibility
• Identify the science involved in language reception
• Interrogate with the context of language disorders
• Examine how psychotherapy applies to victims of language disorders
• Study the growth of Hindi despite colonialism
• Critically appraise the term, language erasure
• Examine how colonialism and war is responsible for the loss of language
• Give an overview of the difference between sounds and letters and how they apply to the German language
• Explain why the placement of verb and preposition is different in German and English languages
• Choose two languages of your choice and examine their historical relationship
• Discuss the strategies employed by people while learning new languages
• Discuss the role of all the figures of speech in the advancement of language
• Analyze the complexities of autism and its victims
• Offer a linguist approach to language uniqueness between a Down Syndrome child and an autist
• Express dance as a language
• Express music as a language
• Express language as a form of language
• Evaluate the role of cultural diversity in the decline of languages in South Africa
• Discuss the development of the Greek language
• Critically review two literary texts, one from the medieval era and another published a decade ago, and examine the language shifts

Linguistics Essay Topics

You may also need Linguistics research topics for your Linguistics essays. As a linguist in the making, these can help you consider controversies in Linguistics as a discipline and address them through your study. You can consider:

• The connection of sociolinguistics in comprehending interests in multilingualism
• Write on your belief of how language encourages sexism
• What do you understand about the differences between British and American English?
• Discuss how slangs grew and how they started
• Consider how age leads to loss of language
• Review how language is used in formal and informal conversation
• Discuss what you understand by polite language
• Discuss what you know by hate language
• Evaluate how language has remained flexible throughout history
• Mimicking a teacher is a form of exercising hate Language: discuss
• Body Language and verbal speech are different things: discuss
• Language can be exploitative: discuss
• Do you think language is responsible for inciting aggression against the state?
• Can you justify the structural representation of any symbol of your choice?
• Religious symbols are not ordinary Language: what are your perspective on day-to-day languages and sacred ones?
• Consider the usage of language by an English man and someone of another culture
• Discuss the essence of code-mixing and code-switching
• Attempt a psychological assessment on the role of language in academic development
• How does language pose a challenge to studying?
• Choose a multicultural society of your choice and explain the problem they face
• What forms does Language use in expression?
• Identify the reasons behind unspoken words and actions
• Why do universal languages exist as a means of easy communication?
• Examine the role of the English language in the world
• Examine the role of Arabic in the world
• Examine the role of romantic languages in the world
• Evaluate the significance of each teaching Resources in a language classroom
• Consider an assessment of language analysis
• Why do people comprehend beyond what is written or expressed?
• What is the impact of hate speech on a woman?
• Do you believe that grammatical errors are how everyone’s comprehension of language is determined?
• Observe the Influence of technology in language learning and development
• Which parts of the body are responsible for understanding new languages
• How has language informed development?
• Would you say language has improved human relations or worsened it considering it as a tool for violence?
• Would you say language in a black populous state is different from its social culture in white populous states?
• Give an overview of the English language in Nigeria
• Give an overview of the English language in Uganda
• Give an overview of the English language in India
• Give an overview of Russian in Europe
• Give a conceptual analysis on stress and how it works
• Consider the means of vocabulary development and its role in cultural relationships
• Examine the effects of Linguistics in language
• Present your understanding of sign language
• What do you understand about descriptive language and prescriptive Language?

List of Research Topics in English Language

You may need English research topics for your next research. These are topics that are socially crafted for you as a student of language in any institution. You can consider the following for in-depth analysis:

• Examine the travail of women in any feminist text of your choice
• Examine the movement of feminist literature in the Industrial period
• Give an overview of five Gothic literature and what you understand from them
• Examine rock music and how it emerged as a genre
• Evaluate the cultural association with Nina Simone’s music
• What is the relevance of Shakespeare in English literature?
• How has literature promoted the English language?
• Identify the effect of spelling errors in the academic performance of students in an institution of your choice
• Critically survey a university and give rationalize the literary texts offered as Significant
• Examine the use of feminist literature in advancing the course against patriarchy
• Give an overview of the themes in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
• Express the significance of Ernest Hemingway’s diction in contemporary literature
• Examine the predominant devices in the works of William Shakespeare
• Explain the predominant devices in the works of Christopher Marlowe
• Charles Dickens and his works: express the dominating themes in his Literature
• Why is Literature described as the mirror of society?
• Examine the issues of feminism in Sefi Atta’s “Everything Good Will Come” and Bernadine Evaristos’s “Girl, Woman, Other”
• Give an overview of the stylistics employed in the writing of “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernadine Evaristo
• Describe the language of advertisement in social media and newspapers
• Describe what poetic Language means
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing on Mexican Americans
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing in Indian Americans
• Discuss the influence of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” on satirical literature
• Examine the Linguistics features of “Native Son” by Richard Wright
• What is the role of indigenous literature in promoting cultural identities
• How has literature informed cultural consciousness?
• Analyze five literature on semantics and their Influence on the study
• Assess the role of grammar in day to day communications
• Observe the role of multidisciplinary approaches in understanding the English language
• What does stylistics mean while analyzing medieval literary texts?
• Analyze the views of philosophers on language, society, and culture

English Research Paper Topics for College Students

For your college work, you may need to undergo a study of any phenomenon in the world. Note that they could be Linguistics essay topics or mainly a research study of an idea of your choice. Thus, you can choose your research ideas from any of the following:

• The concept of fairness in a democratic Government
• The capacity of a leader isn’t in his or her academic degrees
• The concept of discrimination in education
• The theory of discrimination in Islamic states
• The idea of school policing
• A study on grade inflation and its consequences
• A study of taxation and Its importance to the economy from a citizen’s perspectives
• A study on how eloquence lead to discrimination amongst high school students
• A study of the influence of the music industry in teens
• An Evaluation of pornography and its impacts on College students
• A descriptive study of how the FBI works according to Hollywood
• A critical consideration of the cons and pros of vaccination
• The health effect of sleep disorders
• An overview of three literary texts across three genres of Literature and how they connect to you
• A critical overview of “King Oedipus”: the role of the supernatural in day to day life
• Examine the novel “12 Years a Slave” as a reflection of servitude and brutality exerted by white slave owners
• Rationalize the emergence of racist Literature with concrete examples
• A study of the limits of literature in accessing rural readers
• Analyze the perspectives of modern authors on the Influence of medieval Literature on their craft
• What do you understand by the mortality of a literary text?
• A study of controversial Literature and its role in shaping the discussion
• A critical overview of three literary texts that dealt with domestic abuse and their role in changing the narratives about domestic violence
• Choose three contemporary poets and analyze the themes of their works
• Do you believe that contemporary American literature is the repetition of unnecessary themes already treated in the past?
• A study of the evolution of Literature and its styles
• The use of sexual innuendos in literature
• The use of sexist languages in literature and its effect on the public
• The disaster associated with media reports of fake news
• Conduct a study on how language is used as a tool for manipulation
• Attempt a criticism of a controversial Literary text and why it shouldn’t be studied or sold in the first place

Finding Linguistics Hard To Write About?

With these topics, you can commence your research with ease. However, if you need professional writing help for any part of the research, you can scout here online for the best research paper writing service.

There are several expert writers on ENL hosted on our website that you can consider for a fast response on your research study at a cheap price.

As students, you may be unable to cover every part of your research on your own. This inability is the reason you should consider expert writers for custom research topics in Linguistics approved by your professor for high grades.

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Tongue-Tied Off a Tab: Can Linguistic Effects of LSD Reimagine How We Approach Mental Health Research?

In our project, we investigated three linguistic variables – Disfluency/Stuttering, Figurative Language, and Introspection/Emotional Language – to explore their occurrence and patterns in speech, particularly under the influence of LSD. Disfluency manifests as disruptions or hesitations in speech, while stuttering involves involuntary sound repetition. Figurative language employs metaphors and analogies, and introspective/emotional language conveys inner thoughts and feelings. Through data analysis, we observed instances of disfluency, such as stuttering, unfinished sentences, and prolonged pauses, alongside examples of figurative language, like metaphoric expressions. Throughout the timeframe, introspective language emerged, reflecting individuals’ contemplation of existential questions and emotional experiences.

Our findings revealed a notable increase in all three linguistic variables among LSD-exposed individuals compared to controls. This heightened occurrence suggests a potential influence of LSD on speech patterns, with introspective and figurative language showing significant upticks. Notably, the use of introspective language during LSD exposure may hold implications for therapeutic practices, particularly in trauma-focused therapy and emotional exploration. Leveraging LSD’s capacity to facilitate uninhibited self-expression, therapists could effectively navigate sensitive topics and evoke relevant memories, potentially enhancing treatment outcomes for individuals struggling with emotional trauma.

The linguistic effects of LSD present promising avenues for advancing mental health research and therapeutic interventions. By harnessing the potential of psychedelics like LSD within therapeutic contexts, we may redefine approaches to trauma resolution and personal growth. With further exploration and integration of these findings into clinical practice, we anticipate transformative changes in mental health treatment paradigms, offering hope for individuals across diverse communities.

Introduction and Background

Can psychedelics really be used as a medical treatment? This is a question that has puzzled the minds of researchers since the late 1900s. It has been long known that LSD impacts cognitive function (Wießner et. al, 2023). As such, researchers were interested to see if LSD could impact language usage. One study has observed that people under the influence of LSD have increased usage of emotional language and metaphorical speech (Bryła, 2022). Additionally, another study has seen that there is an increase in disfluency and incoherent speech when people talk under the influence of LSD (Sanz et. al, 2021). Although there has been interest in using psychedelic drugs such as LSD as an alternative way to treat people with mental disorders, there has not been much research on how exactly LSD affects communication.

Our research aims to elucidate how LSD impacts communication by examining the patterns of speech of people under the influence of LSD and comparing it to the normal speech of people who are not under the influence of any psychedelics. We hypothesize that LSD will cause an increase in disfluency, such as disruptions stuttering, and figurative language use. Our research contributes to the psychedelic research field by studying specific linguistic variables that have not yet been studied in the context of LSD and other psychedelics. LSD is an illegal drug, making it difficult for researchers to legally obtain and study it under ethical conditions. It is important to fully understand the effects of LSD before using it as an approved medical treatment.

For our methods, all subjects in this project design are adults between the ages of 21 and 30 years old, and they all identify as frequent LSD users. Under the influence of LSD, we observed patterns of disfluency, stuttering, emotional/introspective language, and figurative language use. We gathered data from two primary sources. The first source was a public YouTube video titled, “Adam and Quentin’s ENTIRE Live Acid Trip | Bicycle Day Special” . The video was posted on April 21st, 2021, and went on for 5.5 hours. The participants in this video, Adam and Quentin, both spent the first 10 minutes of the video sober. We observed their speech patterns and behavior during this time as the control. After 10 minutes had passed, both took 250ug of LSD and felt the effects about 45 minutes later. Our second source consisted of 4 anonymous volunteers who took 150µg of LSD each. For the control, their sober speech and behavior were observed and recorded for about 30 minutes before taking the LSD. On average each volunteer felt the effects take hold about 1 hour after consumption and the effects wore off after about 4.5 hours. All 4 participants experienced this trip together and were recorded with oral and written consent. Due to confidentiality agreements as well as ethical and safety measures for our volunteers, their names were omitted from this project and the recording was converted into a transcript.

Results and Analysis

In our project, we studied three linguistic variables: Disfluency/Stuttering, Figurative Language, and Introspection/Emotional Language. Disfluency is discontinued speech or lowered quality and unfinished sentences. Stuttering is the involuntary repetition of sound. Figurative language is talking about one kind of thing, in terms of another. Introspection/Emotional language is speech conveying one’s inner thoughts and consciousness. Some quoted examples of disfluency from our data are: stuttering – “to-together?”, unfinished sentences  – “I don’t know how, like…”, long pauses, and many “uhh”’s. Examples of figurative language from our data: “in the back of your head”, “in the back of your mind”, and “Like, as soon as our soul leaves our body, the vultures swoop in. Humans are basically, like, vultures, you know?”. Lastly, a few examples of introspective language from our data are: “What do you think is gonna happen when you die?”, and “Like I feel like, I believe in like, reincarnation a little bit…”.

We can see from our results that disfluency had the highest frequency among all of our volunteers. The rate of disfluency was about 2-3 times more frequent than both figurative language and introspection, except for volunteer two, who had much less disfluency than the rest of the volunteers. Figurative language occurred the least, except for volunteer three. Though it only occurred slightly less than introspection/emotional language. Compared to our control data, all three of our variables were higher when participants had taken LSD. The most shocking difference was that of disfluency, which remains pretty low in our control data, and is extremely high (comparatively) in all of our volunteers once they had taken LSD.

Discussion and Conclusion

When beginning our research, we set out to find evidence that consumption of LSD had an impact on speech patterns. We assessed the variables of stuttering/disfluency, introspective/emotional speech, and the use of figurative language; across all modalities of our data collection, we found that there was an increased occurrence of all three variables.

One particularly important implication of this research is related to the subjects’ increase in the use of introspective and figurative language when under the influence of LSD. With the growing field of psychedelic-assisted therapy projected to double its global market value in the next four years, we believe it is important to steer this research in the direction of enhancing current protocols for talk therapy. LSD’s ability to invoke upon the user an uninhibited, vocalized train of thought, with a particular emphasis on sharing emotional memories, could prove to be extremely useful in therapeutic settings where there are feelings of shame around discussing certain events. Therapists who center their treatment on trauma-resolution and shifting a patient’s overall perspective on life may find LSD useful for broaching sensitive topics and eliciting relevant memories.

The linguistic effects of LSD demonstrate great potential for reimagining the scope of mental health research and how to treat individuals for which traditional therapeutic interventions have not been successful. We believe that, with further research into this field, large-scale changes can be implemented that will impact the lives of individuals across many different communities.

Bryła, M. (2022). What Conceptual Metaphors Appear in Texts on Psychedelics and Medicine?  Corpus-Based Cognitive Study. Respectus Philologicus , 42(47) , 154-166. https://doi.org/10.15388/RESPECTUS.2022.42.47.115

Krebs, T. S., & Johansen, P.-Ø. (2013). Over 30 million psychedelic users in the United States. F1000Research , 2 , 98. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-98.v1

Sanz, C., Pallavicini, C., Carrillo, F., Zamberlan, F., Sigman, M., Mota, N., Copelli, M., Ribeiro, S., Nutt, D., Carhart-Harris, R., & Tagliazucchi, E. (2021). The entropic tongue: Disorganization of natural language under LSD. Consciousness and Cognition , 87 , 103070. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2020.103070

Wießner, I., Falchi, M., Daldegan-Bueno, D., Palhano-Fontes, F., Olivieri, R., Feilding, A., B. Araujo, D., Ribeiro, S., Bezerra Mota, N., & Tófoli, L. F. (2023). LSD and language: Decreased structural connectivity, increased semantic similarity, changed vocabulary in healthy individuals. European Neuropsychopharmacology , 68 , 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2022.12.013

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Calling all USC Faculty: Apply by July 1 to join the inaugural Propel AI scholar community

Building on the robust foundation of our existing Propel program, the Office of the Vice President for Research is proud to unveil a new initiative called Propel AI. This new Propel program is designed to enrich and extend the skills of our academic community by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across USC’s comprehensive research domains. Propel AI will empower faculty to weave AI into the fabric of their scholarly and research activities, regardless of field of study, academic rank or previous experience with AI.         

Through a series of meticulously curated one-day workshops throughout the 2024-2025 academic year, Propel AI will grow faculty competence in cutting-edge AI technologies and the rapidly changing landscape of AI research. The programming is designed to incubate brand new research initiatives in AI, fostering creativity in the ways faculty engage AI in their scholarship. Through Propel AI activities, the program will enhance connectivity , encouraging radical interdisciplinarity and novel collaborative partnerships.

Propel AI: What to expect

The Propel AI program is under development, with specific workshop dates and topics to be announced in late summer/early fall. Each workshop will take a deep dive into a vital facet of AI technology and its social impacts. These sessions are crafted not just as instructional spaces but as springboards for interdepartmental networking and inventive collaboration, inviting faculty of diverse expertise to conceive and implement AI-driven research ventures.

The inaugural class of Propel AI scholars will receive:

• Invitations to participate in six one-day workshops throughout the academic year. Sessions will include expert guests, hands-on skill building, creative planning, and built-in networking.
• Matching with a group of fellow Propel AI scholars with intersecting interests for guided small group conversations.
• The opportunity to apply for dedicated ASPIRE seed funding through the Office of the Vice President for Research to support meritorious projects emerging from the Propel AI program.
• A warm welcome into the campus-wide Propel AI scholar network , which will facilitate sharing the specialized expertise and skillsets of participating faculty members to enable collaboration.
• External promotion via an outward-facing site featuring all Propel AI scholars.

Apply for Propel AI by Monday, July 1

The Office of the Vice President for Research will accept applications for the inaugural Propel AI scholar community via our REDCap application form through Monday, July 1. Complete application details are available in the Request for Applications (RFA) document (pdf).

To ensure a smooth application process, applicants are encouraged to review the RFA document carefully and draft their responses before entering them into the REDCap form. Applicants will not be able to edit form responses after submitting them via REDCap.

Eligibility

Any USC faculty member that meets the criteria below may apply. To be considered for Propel AI, faculty members must:

• Be employed at USC Columbia, the USC schools of medicine in Columbia or Greenville, a four-year USC comprehensive institution or a USC Palmetto College campus.
• Hold a faculty or research faculty position; all faculty ranks are eligible to participate in Propel AI.
• Demonstrate a proven record of or abiding interest in interdisciplinary scholarship, as demonstrated through past projects, collaborations, publications, etc.
• Clearly describe their expectations for the program. (No prior knowledge of AI is required, but applicants should be able to articulate their intentions and goals.)
• Define at least two specific goals for their work in the program.
• Not be a participant in the 2024-2025 Propel Research Mentorship program .

All Propel AI scholars must commit to completing the following program requirements:

• Actively participate in six in-person sessions on Fridays from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. between September and May (in-person attendance is required for all sessions).
• Arrive at all invited speaker sessions with prepared questions and ideas.
• Participate in assigned peer group activities (scholar peer groups will consist of two to four interdisciplinary faculty).
• Define and achieve two to three goals by participating in the program. AI scholars are encouraged to think outside the box to develop diverse and innovative goals. (See RFA for examples.)
• Complete before and after self-reflection surveys.
• Complete small projects, trainings or workshops between sessions as appropriate for their AI interests and goals (e.g. library-sponsored online trainings on particular tools).
• Be willing to inventory their skills and competencies as part of a new “AI Community of Scholars” that will be made available to USC faculty and students.

Questions about Propel AI? Contact Elizabeth Renedo at [email protected] for support.

Thank you to our Propel AI faculty leaders:

• Emily Manetta, Professor and Director of Linguistics Program, College of Arts and Sciences
• Banky Olatosi, Associate Professor and Co-PI of the Big Data Health Science Center, Arnold School of Public Health
• Bryant Walker Smith, Associate Professor of Law and affiliate scholar with the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School

3 June 2024

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