essay about cognitive linguistics

Cognitive Linguistics: Elements and Structure Essay

The concept of cognitive linguistics is complex in its simplicity. The very idea that makes the foundation for a better understanding of how language works, how it develops, and how the communication process occurs, is rooted in the relationship between the nature of the language, the speaker’s perception, and the sociophysical experience that provides the impetus for producing speech. Therefore, it can be stated that there is no direct correlation between the elements of a particular situation and the linguistic structure used to convey the meaning.

At this point, the concept of a construal needs to be mentioned. Typically defined as the elements of a situation that refer to specific linguistic elements, construals allow creating the perspective from which a situation can be observed and interpreted. When considering examples of how elements of speech can be used in a specific linguistic situation, one may bring up the use of a metaphor.

Being one of the most common tools for introducing a unique meaning to a particular speech, a metaphor is a graphic that proves that there is no correlation between the choice of the structure and the meaning of the message. For example, using the expression “ocean of tears,” one creates the metaphor for grief, therefore, building a link between the domains of familiar and new meanings (i.e., the images of an ocean and tears and the notion of grief). Similarly, the expression “You’ve lost me” as the substitute for the following message: “I do not understand you” implies a change in the structure of the message and at the same time suggests that the idea of understanding someone could be represented by, or construed as, being lost.

The concept of perspective also has to be addressed when considering the way in which the linguistic structure interacts with the meaning of the message. Particularly, the proponents of cognitive linguistics point to the fact that a significant change in the form of a message does not necessarily trigger an immediate change in its meaning. The use of the Passive Voice versus the Active Voice is a common example; for instance, the following sentences have the same meaning despite the obvious difference in their structure: “Betty fed the cat” and “The cat was fed by Betty.”

Foregrounding is another linguistic concept that is typically associated with a construal. By definition, foregrounding implies placing a particular element into the limelight. The personification of inanimate objects, a change in the number of syllables in a poem, and the use of a metaphor as a semantic deviation can all be considered examples of foregrounding. For example, a shift from an iambic meter to a thoracic one in poetry can be viewed as an example of foregrounding. Therefore, foregrounding allows identifying a construal and placing it accurately. Since foregrounding defines the placement of a construal, it should be viewed as an aspect thereof.

Similarly, framing is viewed as a means of identifying the construal. Framing can be defined as the way of influencing the target audience’s perception of the message. As a rule, gain and loss frames are singled out as the key types of framing. For example, when getting the following message across: “A healthy diet is important,” one may use the gain frame: “If you follow a healthy diet, you will get better” and the loss frame: “If you do not follow a healthy diet, you will have health issues.” Frames help shape a construal, which means that framing is an essential aspect of a construal.

Since, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the communication process is defined by the factors such as the nature of the language, the specifics of the speaker’s individual perception, and the sociophysical experience, the choice of the linguistic structure used to create a specific message is not static and can be altered based on the goals that the speaker pursues. Therefore, the scenario in which a certain message is supposed to be delivered does not restrict the speaker in the choice of the tools that can be used to communicate.

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IvyPanda. (2020, September 10). Cognitive Linguistics: Elements and Structure. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cognitive-linguistics-elements-and-structure/

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IvyPanda . (2020) 'Cognitive Linguistics: Elements and Structure'. 10 September.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Cognitive Linguistics: Elements and Structure." September 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cognitive-linguistics-elements-and-structure/.

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IvyPanda . "Cognitive Linguistics: Elements and Structure." September 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cognitive-linguistics-elements-and-structure/.

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“Cognitive Linguistics: Looking back, looking forward”

Since its conception, Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language has been enjoying ever increasing success worldwide. With quantitative growth has come qualitative diversification, and within a now heterogeneous field, different – and at times opposing – views on theoretical and methodological matters have emerged. The historical “prototype” of Cognitive Linguistics may be described as predominantly of mentalist persuasion, based on introspection, specialized in analysing language from a synchronic point of view, focused on West-European data (English in particular), and showing limited interest in the social and multimodal aspects of communication. Over the past years, many promising extensions from this prototype have emerged. The contributions selected for the Special Issue take stock of these extensions along the cognitive, social and methodological axes that expand the cognitive linguistic object of inquiry across time, space and modality.

You have your way . I have my way . As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist . Nietzsche

Since its conception, Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language has been enjoying ever increasing success worldwide. With quantitative growth has come qualitative diversification, and within a now heterogeneous field, different – at times opposing – views on theoretical and methodological matters have emerged. The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together a number of eminent researchers who identify or sympathize with Cognitive Linguistics and represent different perspectives on what Cognitive Linguistics is or should be. With the working title Looking back, Looking forward we aimed to survey the many faces Cognitive Linguistics currently has and map out the roads Cognitive Linguistics is likely to take in the future.

the “reductionist” decision to consider language as a mental phenomenon and provide an interface with the cognitive sciences in order to arrive at an encompassing account;

the “social” decision to foreground the social dimension of language and incorporate the social forces that shape language in our account of linguistic structures;

the “methodological” challenge posed by the many options available to cognitive linguists: introspection and experimentation have been supplemented with corpus-based methods and the requirement of using ever more advanced quantitative techniques risks fragmenting the field.

the dimension of “time”: synchrony versus diachrony; do we consider data from language as spoken at one particular time, or do we track changes over time?

the dimension of “linguistic diversity”: one language versus many; do we study phenomena within one language or trace their diversity across many?

the dimension of “modality”: sound versus gesture; do we restrict attention to language in its written form, or expand our study to take into account other modes of communication?

The historical “prototype” of Cognitive Linguistics may be described as predominantly of mentalist persuasion, based on introspection, specialized in analysing language from a synchronic point of view, focused on West-European data (English in particular), and showing limited interest in the social and multimodal aspects of communication. Over the past years, many promising extensions from this prototype have emerged. The contributions selected for the Special Issue take stock of these extensions along the cognitive, social and methodological axes that expand the cognitive linguistic object of inquiry across time, space and modality. In the Sections that follow, we review each of these axes and dimensions in turn.

1 The three axes

1.1 the cognitive axis.

Cognitive Linguistics has a mentalist orientation; its proponents endeavour to provide an account of language that is consistent with what is generally known about human cognition, an aim often referred to as the “Cognitive Commitment” ( Lakoff 1990 : 40). Work in the cognitive linguistic tradition likes to stress that the analyses proposed are “in line with what is known about the mind”. But what does this mean? From the very beginning, there seem to have been two interpretations of the term “cognitive”, i. e., the option to use insights from the cognitive sciences to guide the careful examination of data obtained by introspection versus the use of linguistic data to validate and further insights from the cognitive sciences. Over the past 25 years, at least three different interpretations of the “Cognitive Commitment” have found their way into Cognitive Linguistics, namely cognitive plausibility, cognitive reality and biological/neurological reality.

The earliest interpretation of “cognitive” within the cognitive linguistic tradition refers to the tendency to use insights from the cognitive sciences to guide the careful examination of data obtained via introspection. “The Cognitive Commitment is a commitment not to isolate linguistics from the study of the mind, but to take seriously the widest range of other data about the mind” ( Lakoff 1990 : 46). This cognitively or psychologically “realistic” approach ( Nesset 2008 : 9–10) yields hypotheses about mental grammars that can be tested using experimental techniques from psychology, for example. But this cognitive “realism” often remains no more than an aspiration, based at best on “hand-me-downs” from the cognitive sciences. Examples here are analytic concepts for which there is extensive evidence in the cognitive sciences, evidence that remains underutilized in Cognitive Linguistics, however. Think, for example, of prototypes and radial networks. Cognitive linguists know prototypes from the presentation and interpretation offered in Lakoff (1987) or Taylor (1989) , and rarely consult the original literature, let alone the extensions that have been proposed since the publication of the original findings (see Murphy 2002 for an overview). Conversely, there are also examples of analytical concepts that are extensively invoked by cognitive linguists, yet lack (direct) psychological evidence. Examples here are image schemata ( Johnson 1987 ), entrenchment (see Divjak and Caldwell-Harris 2015 for a discussion) and mental spaces ( Fauconnier and Turner 2002 ).

A more recent interpretation of the Cognitive Commitment takes it as a commitment to describe and explain language processing and knowledge in the way that it occurs or is represented in the speaker’s mind. Here, there is or should be significant overlap with research done on language within the cognitive sciences. Yet, there does not appear to be much contact between the disciplines, let alone overlap in the points highest up on the respective research agendas. The contribution by Dąbrowska highlights some of the areas where cognitive linguists can improve their engagement with the cognitive sciences, especially with cognitive psychology. Some of the areas where collaboration would be fruitful include, but are not limited to, the following: What does it mean for a speaker to “have” a construction? How is constructional knowledge represented in memory (e. g., is it declarative or procedural)? What cognitive processes are involved in construal (and how can they be measured)?

An emerging interpretation of the Cognitive Commitment sees it as a commitment to detect neural correlates of language knowledge in the speaker’s brain. Should we aim to detect linguistic (form- and meaning-related) categories in the brain (cf. Allen et al. 2012 ) and if we do, what do we expect to find? What motivates researchers to look for grammatical elements (morphemes, constructions) in the brain? How realistic is it to find something, and how reliable are the findings presented so far? These questions are taken up in the contribution by Blumenthal-Dramé who argues for a deeper engagement of Cognitive Linguistics with neurolinguistics. While a deeper engagement is seen as essential when interest lies in the cognitive realism of usage-based models, we are also cautioned against two major stumbling blocks: blind confidence and extreme scepticism. Neuroimaging data are not any clearer or less open to debate and interpretation than any other language-related data, which obviates the concern that “looking into the brain” oversimplifies matters.

At this junction, the question becomes: how should Cognitive Linguistics define ‘cognitive reality’? Can we fruitfully link all three interpretations? Is it desirable to have linguists propose categories that seem optimized for psychological or neurological verification? Two centrifugal forces are at work: one is the linguistic desire to classify phenomena as economically as possible while accounting for as much of the data as possible. This clashes with the commitment to classify phenomena in a way that is in line with what we know about human cognition . If our concern is with linguistic description, then we presumably want to find the most parsimonious description, regardless of its cognitive reality. If our concern is with cognitively real(istic) description, we may need to settle for less classification power: human brains multitask and can therefore not be optimized for every task. The linguistically “best” description is not by definition also the cognitively “most relevant/realistic” description – think of statistical classifiers that outperform humans, but lack our flexibility and ability to learn quickly from sparse data. The contribution by Milin and collaborators highlights the importance of insights from research on learning for usage-based, emergentist theories of language. In addition to implementing the Cognitive Commitment at the level of data annotation, modelling and analysis, such methods naturally accommodate many of the concepts that are core to Cognitive Linguistics. Moreover, these methods can be extended to handle pragmatic and social patterns of variation, thereby offering a potential solution to one of the most pressing challenges Cognitive Linguistics currently faces.

1.2 The social axis

The classical works in Cognitive Linguistics (e. g., Johnson 1987 ; Lakoff 1987 ; Langacker 1987 ; Goldberg 1995 ; Talmy 2000 ) describe the linguistic competence of the abstract idealized speaker of a language (predominantly English). Although the social basis of language was taken as a given in theory ( Langacker 2016 ), this aspect was backgrounded in actual practice. In this regard, Cognitive Linguistics was not too different from generative linguistics.

With time, the limitations of this practice have become evident to many scholars. For example, Croft criticizes the foundations of Cognitive Linguistics as being too solipsistic, that is, too much “inside the head” ( Croft 2009 : 395). The accumulation of such critical ideas has triggered what is labelled as a ‘social turn’ in Cognitive Linguistics ( Harder 2010 ). This change reflects the general paradigmatic development in linguistics, also known as “recontextualization” ( Geeraerts 2010 ). Recontextualization represents the return to a pre-structuralist holistic view of language, where language emerges and functions at the intersection of the cognitive, social, historical, cultural and biological domains. This shift in focus is also mirrored in the contributions to the Special Issue, as the majority of the authors advocate for the social dimension to take centre stage in cognitive linguistic research.

The catalyst for the “social revolution” has been the growing importance of corpora in cognitive linguistic research. Corpus data represent language used by speakers in specific communicative situations, which can be described in terms of registers, genres, individual styles, dialects and other ‘lects’. The use of corpora brings the heterogeneity of real communication to the foreground and necessitates the inclusion of sociolinguistic, geographic and other lectal variables in multifactorial linguistic models ( Geeraerts 2005 ).

One can speak about two directions of interaction between Cognitive Linguistics and the social dimension: Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Social Cognitive Linguistics. Although these terms are often used interchangeably, there is a subtle difference in scope. Namely, Cognitive Sociolinguistics focuses mainly on language varieties (lects), lectal variants and their cognitive representations (e. g., language attitudes) (e. g., Kristiansen and Dirven 2008 ; Geeraerts et al. 2010 ), arguing strongly for the inclusion of a variational and sociolinguistic perspective to cognitive linguistic studies. For example, Geeraerts (2016 ) advocates the Sociosemiotic Commitment that should complement the Cognitive Commitment, i. e., a commitment to make our account of human language accord with the status of language as a social semiotic tool (i. e., an intersubjective, historically and socially variable tool).

In contrast, the main aim of Social Cognitive Linguistics is to describe the social-interactional mechanisms of how usage shapes linguistic knowledge at the level of speaker and hearer. These mechanisms are rooted in general social cognitive abilities, such as joint action, coordination and convention ( Croft 2009 ). An example of this approach is Schmid’s Entrenchment and Conventionalization Model ( Schmid 2015 and 2016 ). The name of the model, which includes the cognitive notion of entrenchment and the social concept of conventionalization, iconically suggests that the cognitive and social aspects of language use should be treated on a par. At a more philosophical level, these aspects can be integrated, as demonstrated by Zlatev (2016) , with the help of phenomenology, a discipline that focuses on human experience and helps to resolve the issues of whether language as “experience” is individual or social, pre-linguistic or linguistic, unconscious or conscious.

1.3 The methodological axis

Although it can be argued that Cognitive Linguistics has always been empirical with its usage-based approach and employment of a wide variety of data, there is no question that introspection is deeply embedded in Cognitive Linguistics. Introspection owes its privileged status to both the history as well as the theoretical assumptions of the discipline. As a reaction to the extreme empiricism of the behaviourists, the 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of introspection as the main source of evidence in linguistics, especially within the domain of formal syntax. Much of the work by the “founding fathers” of Cognitive Linguistics is (quite naturally) focused more on theory-building than data gathering and analysis. It was not until the mid-1990s that there was a shift in paradigm; for the journal Cognitive Linguistics , the year 2008 “marks the quantitative turn” ( Janda 2013 : 2). Yet, it is the discipline’s theoretical assumptions, namely its cognitive nature, its usage-based perspective, and its contextualizing approach ( Geeraerts 2006 : 31) that make Cognitive Linguistics a particularly good candidate for championing the methodological progress of linguistics. Recent years have witnessed an exponential growth in studies that use statistical analysis of corpus data or experimental findings. The shift in paradigm, especially in Cognitive Linguistics, has resulted in the publication of various edited volumes and monographs on linguistic methodology (e. g., Gonzalez-Marquez et al. 2007 ; Glynn and Fischer 2010 ; Newman and Rice 2010 ; Janda 2013 ; Glynn and Robinson 2014 ), as well as textbooks introducing linguists to statistics (e. g., Baayen 2008 ; Johnson 2008 ; Gries 2009 ; Levshina 2015 ). In fact, the pendulum may have swung to the other extreme – concerns have been raised that the field may be becoming too empirical and that much of the quantitative work published under the Cognitive Linguistic umbrella does not pay enough attention to language and theory. There is talk about doing “numbers just for numbers’ sake” ( Langacker 2016 ), “number-crunching” ( Nesset 2016 , Langacker 2016 ), and “empirical imperialism” ( Geeraerts 2006 : 34; Schmid 2010 ).

It is in the context of the sharp quantitative turn that one of the central axes becomes particularly pertinent – the Cognitive Commitment. As pointed out by the contributors to this Special Issue, the quantitative turn will not make the Cognitive Commitment superfluous ( Nesset ), but it raises the question of which methods are adequate ( Milin et al. ). A number of the papers in 2016 therefore discuss the use of advanced empirical methods in the context of cognitive plausibility, e. g., (psycho)linguistic experiments ( Dąbrowska ) including neuroimaging ( Blumenthal-Dramé ) and computational modelling ( Milin et al. ). A particularly strong case is made for using techniques that are based on biologically and psychologically plausible learning algorithms, such as Parallel-Distributed Processing or Connections Modeling, Analogical Modeling, Memory-Based Learning, Naive Discriminative Learning ( Milin et al. ). Many of the papers in this Special Issue also take a stance on some of the theoretical issues involved in using advanced methodology, including, for example, the discussion on the theoretical status of corpus-based generalisations (Blumenthal-Dramé, Dąbrowska) and assuming that distribution equals meaning ( Dąbrowska ). Other papers address areas where there are “problems” with large quantities of data and/or gathering and interpreting the data; these include, for example, historical linguistics ( Nesset ), typology ( Croft ), multimodal communication ( Cienki ), and neurolinguistics ( Blumenthal-Dramé ).

As to the second central axis of the Special Issue – the social axis and those who advocate it (e. g., Geeraerts, Zlatev, Schmid, Croft 2016 ) – it is stressed that our account of human language should be based on a methodology that transcends the individual, i. e., looking at language as an intersubjective, historically and socially variable tool. Geeraerts (2016) emphasises that the existence of variation within language, be it socially structured or individual, affects the methodological requirements of Cognitive Linguistics. This increases the pressure on the average cognitive linguist – how, practically speaking, can one take into account all the possible sources of data? The inclusion of a social stance may be very appealing, but the field has yet to see empirical studies that validate adopting this approach. This brings us to an important question – what counts as data in Cognitive Linguistics? Decisions about how human language is defined, i. e., whether we identify language as individual or social (or both), have crucial implications for the methodology we adopt.

Can the cognitive linguist’s existential question be phrased as “to be empirical or to be introspective” ( Zlatev 2016 )? The papers in the Special Issue champion both approaches and both are argued to be crucial for the development of Cognitive Linguistics. As pointed out by Langacker (2016) “qualitative descriptions provide the basis for quantitative methods such as experiment, neural imaging, and computer modeling – they suggest what to look for and allow the interpretation of results”. Naturally, those who do introspective (qualitative) research will proclaim that there is too little of this type of research being done ( Langacker 2016 ) and those who do empirical research, will claim that the field is still very much dependent on introspective data ( Dąbrowska 2016 ). Given this, it is pivotal to avoid attitudes that claim the superiority of one method over another, as this would be detrimental to the field and inhibit the development of the cognitive linguistic enterprise.

2 The three dimensions

2.1 the dimension of time: “synchrony vs. diachrony”.

The majority of cognitive linguistic studies describe and explain synchronic phenomena. From a historical perspective, this preference can be explained by the long-lasting influence of the structuralist view that synchrony has a privileged position in linguistic description. Now that pre-structuralist linguistics is enjoying renewed attention (e. g., Hermann Paul, who is considered one of the first usage-based linguists, cf. Hopper 2015 ), it is time to re-assess this opposition and transcend it. Such a synthesis or Aufhebung in Hegel’s sense is possible, in particular, if we assume the usage-based evolutionary approach to language-specific phenomena and typological generalizations (e. g., Croft 2016 ). On a more practical note, diachronic data are less easily available for many research questions than synchronic data, which may include large diverse corpora, experimental evidence, survey data etc. Moreover, many important cognitive and socio-interactive details (such as the extra-linguistic information available to the speaker and hearer, as well as intonation, gestures and other multimodal clues) may be very difficult or impossible to obtain. This can make an estimation of the cognitive plausibility of a theory problematic.

In spite of practical difficulties, there has been a substantial body of cognitive linguistic work based on diachronic evidence. The earliest examples are studies in historical lexical semantics ( Geeraerts 1983 ; Winters 1987 ) and grammatical change ( Kemmer 1992 ). The grammaticalization studies, which deal with similar questions, although they are usually not subsumed under the label of Cognitive Linguistics (e. g., Traugott 1985 ), also naturally incorporate the historical perspective. Further examples can be found in Winters (2010) . An important new area of research, which has become possible due to the emergence of large diachronic corpora, is diachronic Construction Grammar (e. g., Israel 1996 ; Verhagen 2000 , Traugott and Trousdale 2013 ; Hilpert 2013 , see an overview in Hilpert 2015 ). A less common direction is historical cognitive phonology, which is represented by Nesset (2016) , who investigates the cognitive factors of prosodic change in Eastern Slavic. While taking stock of the Cognitive Commitment in the context of historical linguistics, he also acknowledges that both the “social” and “quantitative” turns open up important perspectives and provide new opportunities for cognitive historical linguistics.

2.2 The dimension of diversity: “One language vs. many”

Most studies in Cognitive Linguistics are based on data from one language. There is a strong bias towards Indo-European languages, and to English in particular. At the same time, there have been quite a few notable exceptions. Particularly fruitful has been the collaboration between Cognitive Linguistics and semantic and lexical typology, which goes back to the famous study of Basic Colour Terms by Berlin and Kay (1969) . Abundant cross-linguistic co-lexification data, which have become available recently (e. g., List et al. 2014 ), allow the linguist to identify the most common semantic extensions and compare how languages “carve up” different semantic domains. A concise overview of this research area is presented in Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2015) . The grammatical pole has enjoyed less attention. Notable exceptions are Talmy’s ( 1985 ) influential typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages, which differ with regard to the expression of motion events, and Newman’s ( 1996 ) cognitive linguistic study of GIVE-verbs and the corresponding constructional patterns in a large sample of typologically diverse languages.

Importantly, typological evidence enables the linguist to identify the conceptual dimensions that are recurrent in different languages of the world and find the universal focal points and other discontinuities in the conceptual space. This provides a welcome addition to the traditional works in cognitive semantics, such as Talmy (2000) , where the conceptual categories emerge as a result of introspection. In some cases, typological evidence can challenge the existing cognitive linguistic theories that are biased towards the (Indo-)European languages. For instance, Sweetser (1990) , who discusses the conceptual metaphor KNOWING IS SEEING, claims that the objective, intellectual side of our mental life is regularly linked with the sense of vision because vision is the primary source of objective data about the world. In contrast, verbs of hearing would not normally be used to express the sense ‘know’ ( Sweetser 1990 : 2.4). However, it has been shown by Evans and Wilkins (2000) that semantic extensions from the auditory domain to cognition are popular in Australian Aboriginal languages, while the visual sense tends to extend into aggression, desire and sexual attraction. Only by taking the typological perspective seriously can one avoid conceptual Eurocentrism.

Overall, the collaboration between cognitive linguists and grammatical typologists has not been very intense. There seem to be two important reasons for that. First, although functional typology sometimes resorts to cognitive explanations (e. g., iconicity, economy, processing complexity), many grammatical typologists are not particularly interested in the cognitive underpinnings of linguistic universals ( van der Auwera and Nuyts 2007 ; see also Croft 2016 ). Second, grammatical typology usually involves a rather coarse-grained description of linguistic phenomena and uses comparative concepts (e. g., VERB, PASSIVE, MORPHEME), which do not have to be cognitively real and are evaluated only in terms of their practical usefulness ( Haspelmath 2010 ). A notable attempt to combine the cognitive reality of descriptive grammatical categories with a typological perspective is Radical Construction Grammar ( Croft 2001 , see also Croft 2016 ). In this approach, language-specific constructions are treated as primary units of linguistic description, while grammatical categories (e. g., ADJECTIVE, CLITIC, PERSON), which are also language-specific, are secondary and derived from constructions ( Croft 2001 ). However, due to the lack of sufficient distributional data for many languages of the world, the creation of such a bottom-up grammatical typology remains largely a task for the future.

2.3 The dimension of modality: “Sounds and gestures”

Cognitive Linguistics has embraced and supported gesture studies more than any other theoretical linguistic framework ( Kok and Cienki 2016 ). The match between the two was made in heaven. For one, the global organization of Cognitive Grammar, which lies at the very heart of Cognitive Linguistics, reflects the semiological function of language by permitting meanings to be symbolized phonologically ( Langacker 2013 ). Symbolic structures, such as words and sentences, consist of a sound pole and a semantic pole, where either is able to evoke the other. The sound pole comprises not only orthography and phonology but also gesture. Thanks to this, gesture studies slot in perfectly alongside work on orthographically or phonologically represented communication.

Secondly, one of the areas that was boosted by research within the Cognitive Linguistic tradition is metaphor; the original evidence for conceptual metaphors stems from the systematic analysis presented in Lakoff and Johnson (1980) . Yet, a longstanding objection about conceptual metaphor theory is that showing that metaphors are part of thought, and not just language, requires independent non-linguistic evidence ( Gibbs 2015 : 177). One of the non-linguistic domains that has provided evidence for this relationship is gesture studies ( Cienki and Müller 2008 ). A number of experimental studies in this tradition have shown how metaphoric gestures support and extend information beyond the message conveyed by a speaker’s words. McNeill and Levy (1982) were the first to show how schemas – conceptual metaphors – are signalized visually through the use of metaphorical gestures. Metaphoric gestures substantiate cross-domain cognitive mappings and visualize how a metaphor’s source domain is present and activated in the speaker’s mind ( Chui 2011 : 454).

In other words, gestures are manifestations of embodied cognition, another idea that has received prominent support from research originating in the cognitive linguistic tradition. Motor theories of cognition have a long history in psychology and have been proposed as explanations for a wide range of mental processes ( Hickok 2009 ). Embodiment theory was strengthened by the discovery of mirror neurons in macaques ( di Pellegrino et al. 1992 ), i. e., neural structures in the area of the macaque brain dedicated to manual and oral action control. These mirror neurons were found to fire not only when performing a motor action, but also when observing either the action itself or a representation of the action (i. e., by means of an iconic gesture). The discovery of mirror neurons in the macaque frontal cortex sparked a resurgence of interest in motor/embodied theories of cognition. Based on these insights, Gallese and Lakoff (2005) formulated a model of a conceptual system according to which conceptual structure is directly embodied at the neural level.

As witnessed by the recently published Handbook of Body – Language – Communication ( Müller et al. 2013 , 2014 ), gesture studies have given rise to a new and exciting field of multimodal communication and Cienki (2016) discusses the history and future of research into multimodal communication. For Cognitive Linguistics to make the most of this development, it will be crucial to keep in mind the rationale the community had for looking at gesture in the first place: non-verbal communication should not become another domain to be studied in isolation but remain integrated with verbal communication, and with cognitive scientific work on concept and concept representation. Overall, this line of research has the potential to contribute significantly to the overall endeavour of unravelling how language is grounded in neurobiology.

3 Conclusions

One set of problems that may inhibit progress relates to the ideological divide within Cognitive Linguistics. For one, the field is yet to see a full-fledged détente between empiricists and introspectionists. Employing empirical methods, especially the use of controlled experiments, seems counter-intuitive to many cognitive linguists who see the study of language as a study of (other) human beings and their cultures, rather than physical objects. Some even claim that Cognitive Linguistics is in essence non-objectivist, which goes against the use of methods (such as corpus methods) involving an attempt to maximize the objective basis of linguistic descriptions ( Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007 : 745). The call for empiricism that was launched 20 years ago (e. g., Sandra and Rice 1995 ; Cuyckens et al. 1997 ) remains open, albeit with the added requirement of using methods that accord with what is known about language, more specifically language in relation to cognition. Questions that need answering are: How much of our toolbox needs to be cognitively real for us to be cognitive linguists? Is the cognitive reality of a linguistic category necessary for it to be useful to cognitive linguists? How do we relate to categories that are unlikely to have cognitive relevance? Or, do we really need the traditional linguistic categories at all? Should we instead prioritize models that do away with these distinctions and use cognitively plausible categories for annotation, cognitively plausible models for modelling and test their predictions against behavioural data?

Adding social and historical extensions to the cognitive linguistic prototype not only raises questions about the autonomy of Cognitive Linguistics, its boundaries and scope, but also about its methods. Although it is uncontroversial to say that a sound linguistic theory should not discard the social and historical aspects of communication, it is open to question whether Cognitive Linguistics should try to embrace all these aspects with the same amount of detail. Perhaps Cognitive Linguistics should maintain a special focus on linguistic cognition, as suggested by Croft (2016) ? One crucial issue here is methodological in nature: while cognitive sociolinguists have been instrumental in introducing analytical techniques for very rich datasets into Cognitive Linguistics, social cognitive linguists have not yet proposed a way to include the social dynamics into linguistic analyses and it is unclear what such an approach would look like from a methodological point of view.

Overall, we can conclude that there are many theoretical impulses and visions within the field, each with their own methodological challenges. The biggest challenge resides perhaps in fully acknowledging these alternative and at times competing strands, and asking ourselves how to approach this diversity: should we try to reconcile the competing forces or allow them all to flourish, each in their own way? We hope that the papers collected in this Special Issue will trigger reflection about the challenges that Cognitive Linguistics faces and how these challenges can be addressed with respect for our theoretical foundations and aspirations.

Article Note:

The idea for this Special Issue grew out of the theme session we organised for the 13 th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Newcastle, UK. We are thankful to the presenters and audience for stimulating accounts and discussion.

Funding statement: Work on this project was supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to Dagmar Divjak (Grant/Award Number: ‘R/142065’).

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to John Newman for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Journal and Issue

Articles in the same issue.

Cognitive Linguistics

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Cognitive linguistics is a cluster of overlapping approaches to the study of language as a mental phenomenon. Cognitive linguistics emerged as a school of linguistic thought in the 1970s.

In the introduction to Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings (2006), linguist Dirk Geeraerts makes a distinction between uncapitalized cognitive linguistics ("referring to all approaches in which natural language is studied as a mental phenomenon") and capitalized Cognitive Linguistics ("one form of cognitive linguistics").

See the observations below. Also see:

• Chomskyan Linguistics
• Cognitive Grammar
• Conceptual Blending , Conceptual Domain , and Conceptual Metaphor
• Conversational Implicature and Explicature
• Linguistics
• Mental Grammar
• Metaphor and Metonymy
• Neurolinguistics
• Phrase Structure Grammar
• Psycholinguistics
• Relevance Theory
• Shell Nouns
• Transitivity
• What Is Linguistics?

Observations

• " Language offers a window into cognitive function, providing insights into the nature, structure and organization of thoughts and ideas. The most important way in which cognitive linguistics differs from other approaches to the study of language, then, is that language is assumed to reflect certain fundamental properties and design features of the human mind." (Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green, Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction . Routledge, 2006)
• "Cognitive Linguistics is the study of language in its cognitive function, where cognitive refers to the crucial role of intermediate informational structures with our encounters with the world. Cognitive Linguistics... [assumes] that our interaction with the world is mediated through informational structures in the mind. It is more specific than cognitive psychology, however, by focusing on natural language as a means for organizing, processing, and conveying that information...
• "[W]hat holds together the diverse forms of Cognitive Linguistics is the belief that linguistic knowledge involves not just knowledge of the language, but knowledge of our experience of the world as mediated by the language." (Dirk Geeraerts and Herbert Cuyckens, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics . Oxford University Press, 2007)

Cognitive Models and Cultural Models

• "Cognitive models, as the term suggests, represent a cognitive, basically psychological, view of the stored knowledge about a certain field. Since psychological states are always private and individual experiences, descriptions of such cognitive models necessarily involve a considerable degree of idealization. In other words, descriptions of cognitive models are based on the assumption that many people have roughly the same basic knowledge about things like sandcastles and beaches. "However,... this is only part of the story. Cognitive models are of course not universal, but depend on the culture in which a person grows up and lives. The culture provides the background for all the situations that we have to experience in order to be able to form a cognitive model. A Russian or German may not have formed a cognitive model of cricket simply because it is not part of the culture of his own country to play that game. So, cognitive models for particular domains ultimately depend on so-called cultural models . In reverse, cultural models can be seen as cognitive models that are shared by people belonging to a social group or subgroup. "Essentially, cognitive models and cultural models are thus just two sides of the same coin. While the term 'cognitive model' stresses the psychological nature of these cognitive entities and allows for inter-individual differences, the term 'cultural model' emphasizes the unifying aspect of its being collectively shared by many people. Although 'cognitive models' are related to cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics while 'cultural models' belong to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics , researchers in all of these fields should be, and usually are, aware of both dimensions of their object of study." (Friedrich Ungerer and Hans-Jörg Schmid, An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics , 2nd ed. Routledge, 2013)

Research in Cognitive Linguistics

• "One of the central assumptions underlying research in cognitive linguistics is that language use reflects conceptual structure, and that therefore the study of language can inform us of the mental structures on which language is based. One of the goals of the field is therefore to properly determine what sorts of mental representations are constructed by various sorts of linguistic utterances . Initial research in the field (e.g., Fauconnier 1994, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Langacker 1987) was conducted by way of theoretical discussions, which were based on the methods of introspection and rational reasoning. These methods were used to examine diverse topics such as the mental representation of presupposition, negation, counterfactuals and metaphor, to name a few (cf Fauconnier 1994). "Unfortunately, the observation of one's mental structures via introspection may be limited in its accuracy (e.g., Nisbett & Wilson 1977). As a result, investigators have come to realize that it is important to examine theoretical claims by using experimental methods..." "The methods that we will discuss are ones that are often used in psycholinguistic research. These are:​a. Lexical decision and naming features. b. Memory measures. c. Item recognition measures. d. Reading times. e. Self report measures. f. The effects of language comprehension on a subsequent task. Each of these methods is based on observing an experimental measure to draw conclusions about the mental representations constructed by a certain linguistic unit." (Uri Hasson and Rachel Giora, "Experimental Methods for Studying the Mental Representation of Language." Methods in Cognitive Linguistics , ed. by Monica Gonzalez-Marquez et al. John Benjamins, 2007)

Cognitive Psychologists vs. Cognitive Linguists

• "Cognitive psychologists, and others, criticize cognitive linguistic work because it is so heavily based on individual analysts' intuitions,... and thus does not constitute the kind of objective, replicable data preferred by many scholars in the cognitive and natural sciences (e.g., data collected on large numbers of naive participants under controlled laboratory conditions." (Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., "Why Cognitive Linguists Should Care More About Empirical Methods." Methods in Cognitive Linguistics , ed. by Mónica González-Márquez et al. John Benjamins, 2007)
• Definition and Discussion of Chomskyan Linguistics
• Definition and Discussion of Lexical-Function Grammar
• What Is Psycholinguistics?
• Construction Grammar
• Indeterminacy (Language)
• Definition and Examples of Text Linguistics
• What Is Parsing? Definition and Examples in English Grammar
• Definition and Examples of Diachronic Linguistics
• Linguistic Typology
• The Cultural Transmission of Language
• English Language Sentence Structure
• Learn the Definition of Mental Grammar and How it Works
• Definition and Examples of Corpus Linguistics
• What Is Linguistic Functionalism?

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43 Cognitive Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

Martin Pütz (PhD 1987, Dr Habil. 1993) is professor of linguistics and English language at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Campus Landau, Germany). He taught for several years at the Universities of Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Greifswald, and Groningen. His main research interests involve the fields of applied Cognitive Linguistics, multilingualism, and foreign language teaching/learning. Among his publications are several edited volumes, including The Construed of Space in Language and Thought (with René Dirven, 1996); Applied Cognitive Linguistics, 2 vols. (with Susanne Niemeier and René Dirven, 2001); Cognitive Models in Language and Thought: Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings (with René Dirven and Roslyn Frank, 2003); Language, Discourse and Ideology (with JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer and Teun van Dijk, 2004); and ‘Along the Routes to Power’: Explorations of Empowerment through Language (with Joshua A. Fishman and JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer, 2006). He is the review editor and an editorial board member of the journal Cognitive Linguistics. In 1989, he organized, with René Dirven, the First International Cognitive Linguistics Conference at the University of Duisburg, Germany. Since the year 2000, he has been the main organizer of the biannual International LAUD Symposium, held at Landau University, Germany. Martin Pütz can be reached at [email protected].

• Published: 18 September 2012
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Applied cognitive linguistics is concerned with the acquisitional and pedagogical implications of cognitive linguistics in second and foreign language teaching/learning. In the past, there have been several fruitful attempts to integrate cognitive linguistics into the realm of applied linguistic knowledge. This article discusses applied linguistics and some of the main tenets of second language acquisition in the light of linguistic theories, focusing on how they are related to the cognitive linguistics enterprise. It then gives a brief overview of studies which so far have dealt with pedagogical considerations in light of the theory of cognitive linguistics. It also outlines the major mental principles or operations such as iconicity, construal, and prototypicality, which are relevant for a didactic application of cognitive linguistic theory to practical fields such as organized language learning. Finally, it explores the teaching and learning strategies of specific grammatical and lexical constructions such as phrasal verbs and phraseology.

1. Introduction: Definition and Outline

The term “applied linguistics” as defined in The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics refers “somewhat exclusively to the field of language teaching and learning, rather than to any field where language is a relevant consideration” (Johnson and Johnson 1998 : 9). Likewise, for the purpose of the present chapter, Applied Cognitive Linguistics is concerned with the acquisitional and pedagogical implications of Cognitive Linguistics in Second and Foreign Language Teaching/Learning. Some broader applied topics are dealt with in other chapters of the section “Applied and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” of the present Handbook .

Recently, Langacker ( 2001a ) has recognized the importance of the applied and didactic implications of cognitive linguistic theory. Generally he sees “the effectiveness of pedagogical applications as an important empirical test for linguistic theories,” and self-assuredly he expects that “in the long run, cognitive grammar will not fare badly in this regard” (3). In the past, there have been several fruitful attempts to integrate Cognitive Linguistics into the realm of applied linguistic knowledge. However, it must equally be stated that, as yet, the application of cognitive linguistic theory to language use in the foreign language classroom is restricted to very few theoretically sound studies. Some of these will be discussed in more detail in section 3 .

The chapter is organized in the following fashion: section 2 discusses some of the main tenets of Second Language Acquisition in the light of linguistic theories and relates them to the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise. section 3 gives a brief overview of studies which so far have dealt with pedagogical considerations in light of the theory of Cognitive Linguistics. section 4 outlines in detail the major mental principles or operations, such as iconicity, construal, and prototypicality, which are relevant for a didactic application of cognitive linguistic theory to practical fields such as organized language learning. section 5 presents the main ideas, methodologies, and results of some of these studies in more detail by briefly exploring the teaching and learning strategies of specific grammatical and lexical constructions such as phrasal verbs and phraseology. In conclusion, section 6 offers an outlook on future research.

2. Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Before outlining a Cognitive Linguistics inspired approach to language pedagogy, I will briefly describe and evaluate, from a cognitive linguistic perspective, earlier accounts of foreign-language instruction and methods of grammar teaching which were formulated in the wake of successive approaches to linguistic theory.

Historically, it has always been a hotly debated question as to whether grammar should be taught deductively or inductively (Johnson and Johnson 1998 : 146–48). On the deductive approach, learners are supposed to consciously learn the rules of grammar, and they should possess an explicit, metalinguistic knowledge of these rules. The rationale is based on the traditional approach to the teaching of Latin and is commonly described by its detractors as the grammar-translation method. Sets of grammatical rules and long lists of words have to be memorized, and the written language rather than the spoken language is emphasized. Cognitive Linguistics, likewise, offers the learner so-called rules for correct usage, but the Cognitive Grammar conception of a grammatical rule takes the form of a constructional schema, a generalization over a set of linguistic expressions (Achard 1997 : 164). Furthermore, Cognitive Linguistics does not focus on the violation of some arbitrary rule of syntax; rather, it assumes that syntactic structures are subject to a semantic explanation, as forms which symbolize meanings (Taylor 1993 ).

The inductive approach, however, argues that the rules of foreign languages may be induced by learners if language input is organized and offered in a systematic way. This view developed as a result of the structural approach to linguistics, which was geared toward analyzing human language in terms of minimally contrasting units. The structural syllabus was mainly associated with the method of audiolingualism in the 1950s, which focused on sentence patterns as the unit of analysis. In the behaviorist climate of Bloomfieldian Structuralism, the discovery of sentence patterns was coupled with pattern drills. In the wake of Cognitive Linguistics, it has become clear that patterns (now called “constructions”) are linguistic realities indeed governing a large amount of language use. This does not mean, however, that the process of sentence construction is largely determined by the grammatical properties of linguistic units, such as words—as has traditionally been held in formal linguistics (e.g., Harris 1964 ). From a cognitive linguistic perspective, meaning, rather than grammar, is unarguably the primary determinant of whether linguistic units can combine with each other (Lee 2001 : 70).

The audiolingual approach was soon called into question in the 1960s following Chomsky's ( 1959 ) devastating criticism of Skinner's Behaviorism and his view of learning. Chomsky proposed a mentalist approach to acquisition, whereby sentences are not learned by stimulus-response drills on patterns but generated from the learner's underlying competence. Chomsky's generative theory of grammar and language acquisition involving an autonomous Language Acquisition Device only led to a didactic oversimplification, equating first and second language, with no rule formulation and mainly rich learning environments for the Language Acquisition Device to operate. 1 Chomsky's narrowing down of linguistic competence to grammatical competence and its intuitive strategies of acquisition provoked a reaction from functionalist and sociolinguistic approaches to language, synthesized by Hymes ( 1974 ) in terms of the notion “communicative competence” and in terms of his “ethnography of communication.” Following the rise of sociolinguistics and of functionalism in theoretical linguistics (Halliday 1985 ), a great deal of attention was indeed being paid to the social and functional aspects of language use. In the area of language teaching, this, in turn, led to the “communicative approach”—a largely British innovation. It opposes the view that consciously learning the grammar of a language will result in an ability to use that language in social interaction. More specifically, its focus is on a functional account of language use which places emphasis on language as an instrument for conveying meanings in social situations. In other words, the functional and communicative potential of language should be emphasized (e.g., ‘requests’, ‘denials’, ‘offers’, ‘complaints’, etc.), rather than the mere mastery of formal structures (e.g., phonological, grammatical). Communicative competence, the ability to use the linguistic system effectively and appropriately, is the desired goal. These characteristics of the communicative view of language are in line with Richards and Rodgers's ( 1986 : 71) assumptions that (i) the primary function of language is for interaction and communication and (ii) the structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses.

This last point raises the need to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, the structural aspects of Second Language Acquisition and, on the other hand, its functional and sociolinguistic aspects. In other words, a linguistic theory is needed which stresses the conceptual link between the form and the function of language. Clearly, nothing is to be expected here from Generative Grammar, where Second Language Acquisition research has been mainly syntactic in nature, abstracted from social and functional considerations. Achard ( 1997 ) illustrates the issue by means of a syntactic analysis of English modals: the generative paradigm simply claims the existence of an innate universal grammar providing the possible parameters for language and uses a parameter-setting approach depending on which specific language is involved; it views acquisition as complete “once the appropriate parameters have been set properly” (162). Given the belief in an autonomous language module, functional considerations of the conventional and social usage of modals by the young child are not taken into account. Generativists adhere to the theorem that the use or function of language is something analytically distinct from the structure of language.

As such, a model is needed which emphasizes that language relates to our conceptual world and our human experience in such a way that every grammatical construction reflects its conceptual experiential value. It is precisely the theoretical model of Cognitive Grammar which represents a valid framework within which Second Language Acquisition research may take place, especially “because it affords a satisfying conceptual integration of the structural and social aspects of L2 acquisition” (Achard 1997 : 159). Apprehension of the physical, social, cultural, and linguistic context is implicitly acknowledged in Langacker's dynamic usage-based model (see section 4.2 in more detail), which focuses on the actual use of the linguistic system and a speaker's knowledge of this use. Basically, the model claims that linguistic units are abstracted from usage events, that is, the actual instances of language use, and that such events consist of “a comprehensive conceptualization, comprising an expression's full contextual understanding, paired with an elaborate vocalization, in all its phonetic detail” (Langacker 2001b : 144). The contextual facets of Cognitive Linguistics including the social, cultural, and discourse ingredients of language can therefore be exploited for a communicative and usage-based approach to language teaching in the classroom.

Independently of Cognitive Linguistics, another trend opposing Chomsky's views developed, the so-called cognitive-code learning theory, which allows for a conscious focus on grammar and a recognition of the role of abstract mental processing in language learning. This view implies that learners should be made aware of the correspondences between varying structures and that grammar can be taught and learned deductively (Johnson and Johnson 1998 : 149). Although there has been considerable interest in the implication of the cognitive-code theory for language teaching, no particular method incorporating this view of learning has emerged (Richards and Rodgers 1986 : 60).

3. Overview of Applied Cognitive Linguistics Oriented Studies

Having positioned Cognitive Linguistics within the context of a number of models and methods of Second Language Acquisition, I will now present a selection of studies which are viewed as instances of the cognitive linguistic approach to language pedagogy. Given the duality in early Cognitive Linguistics between Langacker's concentration on grammar and Lakoff's conception of the world of thought via metaphor research, we can expect these two trends to emerge in Applied Cognitive Linguistics, too.

One of the first linguists to discuss in detail the cognitive-didactic approach to English grammar is Dirven ( 1989a ), who investigated where Cognitive Linguistics can make a contribution to the general process of facilitating language learning. More specifically, the following four major tenets of Cognitive Linguistics were dealt with in the light of one learning problem, namely that of the English modality system: (i) the unity of linguistic levels (i.e., morphology, syntax, and semantics); (ii) the role of context for a linguistic expression; (iii) the concepts of profile and base in the characterization of linguistic expressions; and (iv) the concepts of prototypes and schematicity, the former covering the more frequent senses of expressions and the latter representing the commonality between all senses. The analysis shows that in general a pedagogical grammar of English is bound to analyze language-specific forms from a categorizing perspective, that is, to uncover the conceptualizations encoded in linguistic expressions. With respect to the issue of Foreign Language Learning, this means that cross-linguistic contrasts between conceptualizations must be identified in order to facilitate the learning process (see section 4.5 ).

The first systematic and principled account of the application of cognitive linguistic insights in the teaching and learning of grammar is provided by Taylor ( 1993 ). He starts from the process of “consciousness raising,” which, in the wake of the contrastive linguistics approach of the 1960s and 1970s, had been developed as a new insight in foreign language pedagogy, particularly as a counterbalance against purely intuitive communicative learning. Given its view of meaning as largely identical to conceptualization, Cognitive Linguistics can only strongly support the role of consciousness in language learning, at the same time emphasizing other cognitive linguistic principles such as the notion of imagery and rules in Cognitive Grammar. Central to Taylor's account is the general cognitive assumption that syntax is motivated by semantics and that therefore the perceived arbitrariness of the foreign language system must be reduced and its motivated structures explained to the language learner. In a less didactic contribution, but intended as a fragment of a pedagogical grammar of English, Dirven and Taylor ( 1994 ) are concerned with the basic conceptualizations of modal auxiliaries such as can, may , and must/have to . On the basis of the schematic meanings of modal auxiliaries, the different domains of modality (e.g., potentiality, necessity, desirability) and the forms that are used in each domain, for example can/could (ability), may (permission), may have/might have (potentiality), are identified. Although the didactic aspect is not explicitly outlined in this paper, we may conclude from the analysis that a schematic account of the basic meanings of the modal auxiliaries provides cognitive insight in the rule complexes of English modality, thus facilitating the language learning process.

Most studies on metaphor provide predominantly theoretical accounts of the cognitive underpinnings to language teaching (e.g., Low 1988 ; MacLennan 1994 ; Radden 1994 ; Barcelona 2001 ) or engage in experimental studies to demonstrate the usefulness of the cognitive approach in foreign language pedagogy (e.g., Lazar 1996 ; Deignan, Gabryś, and Solska 1997 ; Verspoor 1997 ; Boers and Demecheleer 1998 ; Boers 2000a , 2000b ). Methodological approaches to figurative language and metaphor are proposed by Lazar ( 1996 ) and Lindstromberg ( 1996 ), who suggest appropriate teaching techniques and sample procedures. One of the first studies to give metaphor a more prominent place in language teaching from a cognitive linguistic perspective is Low ( 1988 ), which looks at the functions of metaphor in language use and the pedagogical implications for devising teaching and reference materials. Low argues quite convincingly that the systematicity of metaphor requires a discussion of methodological problems, such as constraints on the design of teaching materials and the development of effective types of exercise (e.g., multitext and multitask activities). A more theoretical account of the implications of cognitive insights to Foreign Language Learning is provided by Radden ( 1994 ), who discusses the importance of image schemas and conceptual metaphors in order to make explicit to the learner the systematic coherence of metaphorical expressions in language use. Central to his claim is the idea that a considerable part of the lexicon is iconically motivated and therefore cognitively easier to grasp for the language learner (see section 4.1 ). Boers ( 2000b ), then, introduces Cognitive Semantics into the field of “English for Specific Purposes” and explores the potential benefits of an enhanced metaphorical awareness on the part of the language learner. Such an enhanced metaphorical awareness may be achieved by drawing students' attention to the source domain or the origin of the figurative expressions (for instance, in socioeconomic discourse). As the results of a small-scale experiment show, enhanced metaphorical awareness may indeed help learners to better retain unfamiliar figurative expressions.

From a cross-linguistic perspective, Deignan, Gabryś, and Solska ( 1997 ) suggest awareness-raising activities for Polish learners of English and develop strategies for comprehending and creating metaphors in the second language (see also section 4.5 ).

Another important area of applied cognitive linguistic research includes work on phrasal verbs and verb particles. In this respect, Rudzka-Ostyn ( 2003 ) worked out materials stimulating learners to develop strategies in order to grasp the meaning of English phrasal verbs and particles that are used metaphorically (see especially section 5 ). More general discussions on the importance of the cognitive linguistic approach to phrasal verbs and phraseological expressions can be found in Dirven ( 2001 ), Kurtyka ( 2001 ), and Queller ( 2001 ). Finally, the more general study of idiomaticity is dealt with in Kövecses and Szabó ( 1996 ), Cornell ( 1999 ), and Kövecses ( 2001 ).

4. Conceptual Frameworks and Acquisition

Having outlined the relevance of some major studies for Applied Cognitive Linguistics, I will now examine some specific tenets of Cognitive Linguistics and relate them to pedagogical implications and Second Language Acquisition research.

4.1. Learning through Insight in Motivation: Iconicity and Language Awareness

According to Ungerer and Schmid ( 1996 : 273), “The liberation from the form/content division is probably the most important contribution that cognitive linguistics has made to pedagogical grammar and language teaching.” In other words, natural language is not just a system consisting of arbitrary signs, as assumed in the Saussurean paradigm; instead, large areas of language structure also turn out to be motivated as part of our conceptual system. The cognitive claim is that, beyond the single lexeme, language shows a strong tendency for a structural or formal correspondence between a symbol's form and its meaning. In this regard, Radden ( 1992 ) refers to Haiman's ( 1985 ) notion of “iconicity,” which is said to provide an excellent case against the “dogma of arbitrariness” and which may explain a great deal of motivation in language use.

Uncovering the iconic structure of language is closely linked with the concept of consciousness raising or language awareness, defined by Rutherford and Sharwood Smith ( 1985 : 274) as a “deliberate attempt to draw the learner's attention specifically to the formal properties of the target language.” Although the terms “consciousness raising” and “language awareness” may be used interchangeably, the latter has a wider connotation in that it refers to knowledge about language not simply in the second language learning context, but also in the framework of first language learning and teacher education (Johnson and Johnson 1998 : 85). It is the latter concept of language awareness which is particularly relevant for the purposes of Applied Cognitive Linguistics oriented language pedagogy. It not only includes recognition of second language structures but also an awareness of equivalent structures in the first language, thus allowing insight into the conceptual differences of the target system and the first language or mother tongue.

From a cognitive linguistic perspective, language awareness involves making the learner aware of the semantic impact of so-called symbolic units. These include not only morphosyntactic and lexical categories, but also metaphors, idioms, and formulaic phrases. The principle of language awareness and the recognition of form-meaning pairings has especially been emphasized in applied cognitive linguistic studies on figurative expressions and language teaching. In particular, students should not be geared toward random blind memorization of symbolic units, but should rather be offered explanations of the systematicity and schematic nature of idiomatic language and metaphorical expressions. When linguistic expressions are paired with their underlying conceptual metaphors, they will become more transparent to the language learner; in other words, the motivation behind their idiomatic meaning will become obvious.

Furthermore, it will be a central instructional principle to take into account cross-cultural differences in metaphorical themes, and in conceptual metaphors in particular (see section 4.5 ). Lazar ( 1996 ), for instance, refers to the figurative meaning of different colors which may vary from one language community to another. Idiomatic expressions like to be green and to have green fingers may evoke certain associations in some cultures which may be different from what we find in British English, where the color ‘green’ is conventionally, though not uniquely (e.g., green-eyed ‘jealous’; greenhorn ‘inexperienced’) associated with nature and innocence. Obviously, students should be made aware of these cross-cultural differences by comparing the two language systems—first language and second language—in a principled way, thereby enhancing their metaphor awareness (Boers 2000b ). More instances of linguo-cultural features and their underlying metaphorical sources are discussed by MacLennan ( 1994 : 102) and Deignan, Gabryś, and Solska ( 1997 : 354).

4.2. Context- and Usage-Based Language Learning

The present subsection discusses the contextual basis of Cognitive Semantics and its implications for language pedagogy. Traditionally, from the perspective of the methodology of language teaching, three major theoretical views of language and language proficiency may be distinguished (Richards and Rodgers 1986 : 16).

The structural view . It refers to language as a system of structurally related elements for the encoding of meaning; the mastery of the elements of this system (phonological, grammatical, lexical) is seen as the target of language learning.

The functional view . It suggests that language is a means for the expression of functional meaning. The focus is on the semantic and communicative dimension rather than on the structural and grammatical characteristics of language.

The interactional view . It sees language as a vehicle for the expression of interpersonal relations and the creation and maintenance of social relations. Language teaching is then organized around linguistic exchanges and conversational analysis.

Clearly, the functional and, to a certain extent, the interactional approach to language learning, both of which focus on the communicative function of language, seem to be most compatible with the tenets and insights of Cognitive Linguistics. The structural view is obviously the least compatible as it is in conflict with the cognitive linguistic tenet that semantics determines syntax. Recently, Langacker ( 2001b : 143) stated that “the grounding of language in discourse and social interaction is a central if not a defining notion within the functionalist tradition” and furthermore “this is no less true for cognitive linguistics.” Langacker ( 1994 , 1997 , 2000 , 2001b ) explicitly states that the study of language in its social, cultural, and discourse context is fully compatible with his claim that a conceptual and encyclopedic view of meaning must be contextually grounded. He even goes so far as to say that “despite its mental focus, cognitive linguistics can also be described as social, cultural, and contextual linguistics” (Langacker 1997 : 240). Langacker identifies language and culture as facets of cognition and, at the same time, recognizes the role of context and of social interaction in language use and situated discourse. In this regard, the anthropological notion of schema (see also Ungerer and Schmid's 1996 : 45–52 discussion of cognitive and cultural models)—which implies an interdependence of language, culture, and cognition—turns out to be useful as well. Consider, for instance, Sharifian's ( 2001 : 125) study of Aboriginal English texts. By identifying major schemas in these texts, such as the travel schema, the hunting schema, and the observing schema, Sharifian is able to show that cultural knowledge and schemas may shape or influence the conceptualizations underlying discursive structures in Aboriginal speech; in other words, schemas are cognitive structures that can be determined by cultural experiences; they are thus reflected in linguistic expressions or discourse patterns.

From a language teaching perspective, then, differences in cultural practices and conceptualizations may therefore lead to miscommunication between indigenous students and the representatives of the mainstream schooling system.

The functional and interactional approaches are compatible with a learner-centered and experience-based view of second language pedagogy (Richards and Rodgers 1986 : 69). This experiential view is likewise inherent in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, where it is suggested that the world is not something merely objectively given, but that it is something construed by human perception; this construal is, in turn, guided by cultural cognition, that is, by the associations and impressions which people make as part of their personal and sociocultural experiences. The notion of “construal” and its implications for language pedagogy will be discussed in the next section.

4.3. The Learner as Conceptualizer: Construal and Linguistic Choices

According to Langacker ( 2000 : 5), the meaning of an expression consists not only of the conceptual content it evokes; equally significant is how that content is construed. Speakers are able to construe the same content in alternate ways, which may then result in substantially different meanings; in other words, construal refers to a speaker's choice between various alternatives. As such, linguistic production is in particular to be seen as an instance of the individual speaker's choice or construal. These construals or linguistic alternatives may be determined by (i) the specificity or precision with which a scene is portrayed; (ii) the speaker's perspective, which includes the Figure/Ground organization and the related aspect of viewpoint; and (iii) background assumptions which the use of a linguistic form may evoke. From a cognitive point of view, this suggests that in choosing one way of expression over the other the speaker encodes certain meanings in a specific way.

The notion of “construal” certainly has an impact on the teaching of grammar, as appears from Achard (n.d.), in which an account is given of a construal-based approach. In particular, Achard considers two causative constructions in French that differ from each other in their word order:

In (1), the causee (John) is represented as the initiator of the leaving event, which results in the choice of a V-V-O order; in (2), John is not presented as the source of energy initiating the process, making V-O-V the favored choice. It can be seen, then, that the two different word orders reflect the speaker's selection of a linguistic expression more than the grammatical rules of the system per se. These different perspectives must be taken into account by the language instructor. Certainly, more research on construal-based approaches to lexical and grammatical constructions is needed.

4.4. Frequent Uses (Prototypes) and General Meaning (Schematicity) in Language Learning

The cognitive notions of “prototype” and “schematicity” can be helpful in spelling out the semantic content of a word or a grammatical construction and can thereby facilitate the language learning process. Recall that, in Langacker's terms, a prototype is “a typical instance of a category (and) there are degrees of membership based on degrees of similarity” (1987: 371), which means that some members of a category appear to be more typical and more salient than others. When considering the category ‘furniture’, we think immediately of ‘tables’ and ‘chairs’ as best examples, not of ‘mirrors’ and ‘clocks’, which suggests that membership in a category is a matter of gradience. The internal structure of categories in terms of prototypical or central members and noncentral or peripheral members is likewise reflected in the semantics of grammatical categories. Taylor ( 1993 : 211), for example, proposes as the prototype of ‘count noun’ a three-dimensional, concrete ‘thing’ and as the prototype of ‘mass noun’ an internally homogenous, divisible ‘substance’ (e.g., ‘bottle’ vs. ‘beer’). This distinction between ‘thing’ and ‘substance’ may then be transferred to the domain of time and events, which can be seen as things, and to the domain of emotional states and activities, which can bee seen as a substance.

In contrast to the notion of prototype, which is a typical instance of a category, a schema is “an abstract characterization that is fully compatible with all the members of the category it defines” (Langacker 1987 : 371); in other words, the schema embodies the commonality of its members. The importance of schematic characterizations for language pedagogy has been shown by a study on English complementation carried out by Dirven ( 1989b ). Each of the complement clauses (e.g., to-infinitive, gerund, that -clause, etc.) has a very distinct schematic value of its own, which may be given different values and meanings in concrete contexts. Consider the following example (taken from Dirven 1989b : 116):

It's easy to park your car here.

Parking the car is a problem.

The to -infinitive in (3a) denotes a bounded single occurrence of the event (of parking one's car) while the predicate a problem in (3b) is a more abstract notion which requires a nonspecified, unbounded construal of the event. In structural grammar, the learner has no choice but to learn by rote the many verbs, adjectives, or nouns that govern a specific complement pattern. From the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics, however, it will be possible to formulate a schematic characterization of each complement pattern—which entails various contextual senses—thus facilitating the language learning process.

Let us now return to the notion of prototype and focus more closely on its function in the construal of prepositional meanings. In Lakoff's ( 1987 ) cognitive semantic framework, prepositions may be described as radial categories or networks which are built around central or prototypical senses and from which various senses radiate outward and are linked to the central sense by such meaning-extension processes as metaphor and metonymy. Prepositions are thus polysemous items which have different, yet related senses, and are described by various relations in English. Such locative relations as the up-down and front-back orientations, for instance, reflect basic experiences and are regarded as “image schemas,” simple and basic cognitive structures which are derived from our everyday interaction with the external world (see Oakley, this volume, chapter 9 ). 2 Making use of work by Brugman ( 1981 ) and Lakoff ( 1987 ), Lindstromberg ( 1996 ) was one of the first to apply the findings of prototype semantics to prepositional meaning, thereby indicating pedagogical applications of prepositional semantics in the field of English Language Teaching. According to the author, current English Language Teaching methods and material are not satisfactory on the grounds that only a very small set of meanings for any one preposition is presented, thus neglecting that prepositional semantics is to a large extent systematically structured. With regard to the preposition on , for instance, Lindstromberg presents a set of learning points that identify a sense of the preposition “which is worth bringing to the attention of individual students at some point in their learning career” (Lindstromberg 1996 : 228). In particular, exploiting the notion “prototypicality,” he attempts to demonstrate that a wide range of nonspatial meanings of the preposition on can be regarded as special instances or metaphorical extensions of its spatial meanings. Just like on in its concrete meaning denotes ‘contact’ (e.g., The pencil is on the book ) and, we may add, ‘support’ (e.g., The man is sitting on the chair ), in its metaphorical extensions it also means mental contact (e.g., I spoke to her on the phone ) or mental support (e.g., You can rely on me ). All in all, Lindstromberg's study provides one of the first attempts to consider the applied cognitive linguistic aspects of prepositional meaning (see also his more comprehensive volume on explaining prepositions, Lindstromberg 1998 ).

The prototype perspective is also employed by Ungerer ( 2001 ), who is concerned with the notion of basic-level terms and their application in vocabulary acquisition. Ungerer holds that superordinate and subordinate concepts in First Language Acquisition are acquired later than basic ones and that this order should also serve as a model in context of Second Language Acquisition, especially in the teaching of vocabulary. Traditionally, frequency lists or pedagogical vocabularies have been devised without any semantic principles underlying the composition of basic vocabulary lists. Ungerer attempts to show that a more systematic ordering of vocabulary is possible when basic terms are discussed and taught in light of their intrinsic connection with the superordinate and subordinate terms. On the basis of a corpus study comprising German textbooks of English and several newspapers, he demonstrates that vocabulary selection, for example, would benefit mostly from the basic/nonbasic distinction if basic-level terms were preferred as entry points, “where the respective superordinate concepts involve less tangible taxonomic notions” (2001: 216), rather than being introduced at a later stage.

To conclude this section, let us consider a different view of radial categories put forward by Tyler and Evans ( 2001 ). Their approach is likely to have an impact on the way English tenses may be taught in the classroom setting. Tyler and Evans's comprehensive and detailed discussion is centered around the analysis of a schematic account of tense phenomena in English. The central thesis of their paper is that the so-called exceptional, nontemporal uses of tense are related to its time-reference function in a motivated way. A number of distinct and fundamentally nontemporal meanings associated with tense can be distinguished, such as intimacy (between speakers), salience (foregrounding vs. backgrounding), actuality (realis vs. irrealis), and attenuation (linguistic politeness), all of which are shown to be related to each other in a systematic principled way. However, unlike Lakoff, Tyler and Evans do not consider “metaphorical extensions” an all-revealing explanation. Rather, they assume that the exceptional meanings associated with tense are grounded in experience, by virtue of so-called experiential correlations, that is, “independently motivated and recurring correspondences in experience” (2001: 68). All in all, Tyler and Evans's approach to language seems to be particularly helpful for teachers as well as learners. The traditional view, treating nontemporal uses as exceptions or ignoring them altogether, often led to difficulties for language learners as they tended to be discussed in terms of arbitrary meaning patterns to be memorized. Tyler and Evans's unified approach offers a systematic, motivated account of how English tense usage works.

4.5. Cross-Cultural Learning: Different Conceptualizations

Contrastive Analysis, the comparison of the linguistic systems of two languages, was developed and practiced in the 1950s and 1960s as an application of Structural Linguistics to language teaching. The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis broadly claims that difficulties in second language learning derive from the differences between the target language and the learner's first language and are mainly caused by interference from the first language. As Taylor ( 1993 ) points out, Contrastive Analysis is compatible with a cognitive approach to grammar as well; however, this cognitive approach will focus on semantic content and conceptualization rather than on merely formal entities. In other words, target language structures will be difficult to learn to the extent that they symbolize conceptual categories which are not found in the learner's first language (e.g., for learners of English, the distinction between simple and progressive tense forms). Specific conceptualizations may thus exhibit, for a learner, a high or low degree of cognitive naturalness, depending on the similarity or the differences between conceptual categories found in the source and target language. In this respect, a fine-grained comparison between the ways a conceptual metaphor is linguistically construed in two languages has been provided by Barcelona ( 2001 ), who compares English and Spanish conceptual metaphors for emotional domains such as ‘sadness’/‘happiness’, ‘anger’, and ‘romantic love’. For instance, speakers of English and Spanish conceptualize the domain of anger differently in that English invokes the container image while Spanish is not container -oriented (e.g., The news threw him into a terrible rage vs. Su conducta me puso furioso [His behavior me put furious] ‘His behavior made me furious’). Such an analysis may uncover the differences in metaphorical themes and ultimately predict a number of errors a learner may engage in. Similarly, Soffritti and Dirven ( 1998 ) make a strong claim that Second Language Acquisition research must take into consideration any previously acquired linguistic structure (first language) and linguistic categories. This generally means, from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics, that the learners' task must be to revise first language categories, schemas, and prototypes at all levels of language and that the revision means “adapting an old mental situation to specific data from a foreign language” (1998: 268). These similarities and dissimilarities in conceptualization should be made explicit to the foreign language learner.

A theoretically interesting, contrastive analysis is provided by Boers and Demecheleer ( 1998 ), who investigate prepositional semantics from an applied cognitive linguistic perspective. They discuss the pedagogical importance of drawing learners' attention to the links between a preposition's spatial sense and its metaphorical extensions. From a cross-linguistic perspective, obviously, the factor of first language interference plays a vital role in the conceptualization of linguistic expressions or metaphors. For French learners of English, one of the spatial senses of the English preposition behind in which the trajector pushes the landmark forward (e.g., the man behind the wheelbarrow ) is absent from its French equivalent derrière ( lʼhomme à la brouette ). Since French derrière does not have this spatial sense, it also lacks its extension; that is, the figurative, causal sense of behind also appears to be absent from French derrière , as in What's the motive behind this crime? versus Quel est le motif (à lʼorigine) du crime? (1998: 200). Boers and Demecheleer hypothesize that the lack of the causal sense of the French derrière causes more comprehension problems than may be evident in regard to the other figurative senses of behind . They suggest that it may be pedagogically fruitful to draw learners' attention to the spatial sense behind an unfamiliar figurative sense. In particular, they suggest highlighting the conceptual links between the spatial sense and its figurative extension by offering to the language learner similar examples which involve different levels of abstraction such as (i) the man behind the wheelbarrow , (ii) the man behind the wheel of the company , and (iii) the people behind the strike (1998: 200).

Obviously, drawing learners' attention to the contrastive uses of figurative senses refers to the important dimension of metaphor awareness in Foreign Language Teaching (already discussed in section 4.1 ). In several language learning experiments, Boers ( 2000b ) has shown that unfamiliar figurative expressions can systematically be traced back to a limited number of metaphorical themes or conceptual metaphors. Raising metaphor awareness in language learners constitutes a motivating factor and makes it possible to enhance in-depth comprehension and to facilitate the acquisition of vocabulary. In a similar vein, Deignan, Gabryś, and Solska ( 1997 ) discuss the need for students to develop “metaphorical competence” and to teach metaphors to them using awareness-raising activities. Their cross-linguistic comparison between the English and Polish metaphor system revealed similarities and differences between the two languages both in terms of conceptual metaphor and linguistic expressions. From the perspective of language transfer, it turned out that some types of metaphor were particularly difficult for Polish learners of English. For example, due to the lack of an identical metaphor in the two languages, linguistic expressions such as bring something (a fact, situation) home to someone and drive a message/idea home do not have semantically similar equivalents in the students' first language (Polish) (Deignan, Gabryś, and Solska 1997 : 355). In order to encourage students to explore and discuss the ways in which metaphorical use varies across two languages, the authors designed a series of awareness exercises focusing mainly on the cultural aspects of metaphors. As a result, students experienced less difficulty in learning English metaphors if they were asked to think about conceptual metaphors and their linguistic expressions in their first language (Polish) and to compare them to equivalents in the target language English.

5. Cognitive Linguistics Inspired Language Instruction: Phrasal Verbs

Having referred to central tenets of the cognitive framework and their implications for Second Language Acquisition, I will now discuss in more detail the application of these cognitive tenets to the teaching and learning of concrete linguistic expressions, and of phrasal verbs and phraseology in particular. According to Biber et al.'s ( 1999 ) corpus-based grammar of spoken and written English, there are four major kinds of multiword combinations (403–8): (i) phrasal verbs, (ii) prepositional verbs, (iii) phrasal-prepositional verbs and (iv) other multiword verb constructions. Both phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs represent single semantic units which cannot be derived from the individual meanings of the two parts. What makes phrasal and prepositional verbs even more difficult for the language learner is the fact that especially activity verbs often have secondary meanings in some other domain. The phrasal verbs make up, make out, sort out, and take in can all refer to either physical or mental activities, as in I find myself obliged to make up ground versus I used to make up stories for him (Biber et al. 1999 : 408). In general, phrasal verbs are predominantly used in fiction and conversation and therefore constitute an important linguistic means of expression for the language learner, especially in the context of a communicative approach to language teaching/learning. Given the importance of the domain of space for Cognitive Linguistics (Langacker's Cognitive Grammar was first called Space Grammar; see also Zlatev, this volume, chapter 13 ), it should not come as a surprise that much work has been on the conceptualization of space, especially on its expression by prepositions and particles in combination with verbs.

The textbook Word Power: Phrasal Verbs and Compounds—A Cognitive Approach , designed by the late Rudzka-Ostyn ( 2003 ), is a didactic application of Cognitive Linguistics, largely based on the concepts of trajector and landmark and involving the extension of prototypical literal senses into metaphorized, more abstract senses represented in radial networks. The aim is “to discover which semantic features are conveyed by the particle or by the phrasal verb as a whole” (ix), that is, to make the learner acquainted with the nonspatial or figurative meanings inherent in the particle and/or prepositional system. Moreover, it adheres to one of the principles of a pedagogical grammar—that it should be based on an, at least implicitly, contrastive approach (Dirven 2001 : 18)—in that it provides the students with cognitive insights and tools to analyze the ways in which their native language expresses similar relations with the world.

Unlike traditional, nonsemantic ways of grouping particles around one specific verb, this textbook groups verbs around particles/prepositions. In this way, the figurative meanings of the particles/prepositions can become transparent, and this transparency is said to lead to more meaningful learning. While traditional approaches to teaching phrasal verbs largely concentrate on the formal (syntactic) aspects of their use or on those aspects in which the semantic content of specific verbs is emphasized (Kurtyka 2001 : 30), Word Power examines the various senses of the particles/prepositions, their internal coherence, and their gradual buildup from the concrete prototype to the peripheral abstract meanings. This process can be illustrated, for instance, by the semantic network of the particle out . The basic spatial meaning of out involves the container concept and an object which moves out of the container. In general, the container may be whatever surrounds a given entity that moves out of it.

Graphic synthesis of the related meanings of out

In this regard, ‘one's home’, ‘groups’/‘sets’, and ‘body’/‘mind’/‘mouth’ can be seen as literal/spatial containers while ‘states’/‘situations’ may represent extended/metaphorical containers (Rudzka-Ostyn 2003 : 41).

Generally, visualization in terms of abstract drawings plays an important role in a cognitive approach to language and even more so in a didactic presentation. figure 43.2 , taken from Word Power (Rudzka-Ostyn 2003 : 41), refers to the spatial, prototypical meaning of the most frequent particles/prepositions.

Such visual representations of meaning alongside verbal explanations and example sentences seem to facilitate language learning considerably, as could be demonstrated by Kurtyka ( 2001 ) in a small-class experiment. While understanding the different senses of a particle is considered to be the first important step in the learning process, full command of the verbs is only guaranteed through repetition and dynamic use. Therefore, so-called exetests (a combination of an exercise and a test) give students an opportunity to go through a succession of small steps of learning as often as necessary before testing their knowledge of the phrasal verbs in question.

Metaphorical or extended meanings of the particles

Although Dirven ( 2001 : 17) recognizes Rudzka-Ostyn's work as a “unique milestone on the road to a full-fledged Pedagogical Grammar of English,” he still sees the necessity to consult in detail the descriptive work done in the area of phrasal verbs and phraseology.

6. Outlook on Future Research: Programs

This chapter has attempted to show how the various strands of Cognitive Linguistics can provide a framework of starting points that may be used to systematically investigate the pedagogical implications of the interplay between language, experience, and cognition. The application of cognitive linguistic theory to Foreign Language Teaching and Learning is still in its infancy, and more substantial work on Applied Cognitive Linguistics from different perspectives seems necessary and desirable. In this regard, it has been advocated that the metaphorical structure of language should be presented to foreign language learners as an integral part of language that is nonarbitrary in nature and that allows systematic treatment.

Not much research is available on the concrete application of applied cognitive linguistic material in the foreign language classroom. The use of authentic and appropriate speech is certainly one of the prerequisites in order to make the cognitive enterprise in the classroom a success. A first step in the right direction is reflected in the set of exercises or teaching aids propagated by Lennon ( 1998 ), which are intended as guidelines for the teacher to stimulate cognitive activity in the learner's mind (see also Deignan, Gabryś, and Solska 1997 ). In addition to language material representing actual usage, we must consider the necessity of taking into account large corpora of authentic speech. These may provide an extremely useful resource for investigating, for instance, idioms and metaphors (see especially Aston 2001 ) and their situated use in communication. A field which has hardly been researched involves the multicultural classroom, in which the status and use of the underlying contrastive metaphor systems in two or more languages could be systematically explored (Lennon 1998 : 21). In this regard, more work should be done on the role of interference, which can give an account of the learner's cognitive strategies and provide an understanding of the social range of linguistic expressions in the target language (Achard 1997 ).

Although research has focused on various grammatical and lexical aspects of linguistic structure, there is still a need to provide further substantial studies from an applied cognitive linguistic perspective in order to show the all-embracing embodied nature of human language, in other words, a holistic understanding of the way language works. In order to demonstrate that, for example, grammar has an experiential and interactional grounding and to allow young learners “‘to grasp’, ‘feel’ or ‘see’ the syntax of English” (Lapaire 2002 : 624), it will be necessary to understand grammar as fundamentally embodied and imaginative, through metaphor and image schemas. From this, it also follows that more emphasis should be given to visualization within the applied cognitive framework, that is, the ability to form mental representations of verbal and nonverbal input (Kurtyka 2001 ). Pictures, drawings, and diagrams, and especially so-called KineGrams (Lapaire 2002 : 624) as conceptualizing gestures, may illustrate the schematic nature of grammatical meaning.

We may conclude that the theory of Cognitive Linguistics, as applied to the domain of language teaching/learning, provides fascinating insights into the relationship between language, cognition, and foreign language teaching/learning; at the same time, these interrelationships deserve further investigation.

I wish to thank Rene Dirven for his valuable suggestions and criticisms of an earlier draft of this chapter and Hubert Cuyckens for his careful editing of this chapter.

Image schemas are structures which are grounded in physical, bodily experience and which organize our perception and understanding of physical space. It is worth mentioning that these schemas are not to be regarded as fixed pictures, but rather should be seen as less stable structures which are applied in a flexible way. For example, Boers ( 1996 : 12) in this regard refers to the container schema which is applied to both three-dimensional entities (a box) and two-dimensional ones (e.g., a bounded area). (For further information on image schemas, see Oakley, this volume, chapter 9 ).

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MacLennan, Carol H. G. 1994 . Metaphors and prototypes in the learning and teaching of grammar and vocabulary.   International Review of Applied Linguistics 32: 97–110.

Queller, Kurt. 2001 . A usage-based approach to modeling and teaching the phrasal lexicon. In Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier, and René Dirven, eds., Applied cognitive linguistics , vol. 2, Language pedagogy 55–83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Radden, Günter. 1992 . The cognitive approach to natural language. In Martin Pütz, ed., Thirty years of linguistic evolution: Studies in honour of René Dirven on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday 513–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Radden, Günter. 1994 . Konzeptuelle Metaphern in der kognitiven Semantik. In Wolfgang Börner and Klaus Vogel, eds., Kognitive Linguistik und Fremdsprachenerwerb: Das mentale Lexikon 69–87. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr Verlag.

Richards, Jack C., and Theodore S. Rodgers. 1986 . Approaches and methods in language teaching: A description and analysis . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rudzka-Ostyn, Brygida. 2003 . Word power: Phrasal verbs and compounds: A cognitive approach . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Rutherford, William, and Michael Sharwood Smith. 1985 . Consciousness raising and universal grammar.   Applied Linguistics 6: 274–282.

Sharifian, Farzad. 2001 . Schema-based processing in Australian speakers of Aboriginal English.   Language and Intercultural Communication 1: 120–34.

Soffritti, Marcello, and René Dirven. 1998 . Language comparison: Sociology of language, language typology and contrastive linguistics. In René Dirven and Marjolijn Verspoor, eds., Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics 247–77. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Taylor, John R. 1993 . Some pedagogical implications of cognitive linguistics. In Richard A. Geiger and Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, eds., Conceptualizations and mental processing in language 201–23. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Tyler, Andrea, and Vyvyan Evans. 2001 . The relation between experience, conceptual structure and meaning: Non-temporal uses of tense and language teaching. In Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier, and René Dirven, eds., Applied cognitive linguistics , vol. 1, Theory and language acquisition 63–105. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Ungerer, Friedrich. 2001 . Basicness and conceptual hierarchies in foreign language learning: A corpus-based study. In Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier, and René Dirven, eds., Applied cognitive linguistics , vol. 2, Language pedagogy 201–22. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Ungerer, Friedrich, and Hans-Jörg Schmid. 1996 . An introduction to cognitive linguistics . London: Longman.

Verspoor, Marjolijn. 1997 . True blue: A cognitive approach to vocabulary acquisition. In Birgit Smieja and Meike Tasch, eds., Human contact through language and linguistics 203–17. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Cognitive Pragmatics

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Cognitive Pragmatics by Marco Mazzone LAST REVIEWED: 21 February 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 21 February 2023 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0303

If pragmatics is the study of human communication (with a specific focus on verbal language) in context, cognitive pragmatics can be defined as the study of the psychological processes and states involved in that activity. As a matter of fact, however, its focus is almost exclusively on language understanding, while very little attention has been paid to language production. Cognitive pragmatics has grown out of a tradition rooted in philosophy and linguistics. Philosophical pragmatics has especially provided two general frameworks. One is Paul Grice’s theory, according to which comprehension is essentially an inferential process, through which the addressee reconstructs the communicative intention behind the speaker’s use of a certain utterance in context. Grice coins the word “implicature” to refer to this inferential transition from what the utterance conventionally says to what the speaker intends with it in a specific context. The other framework is John Austin’s theory of speech acts, which stays closer to Wittgenstein’s idea that utterances are to be understood as components of linguistic games, that is, they gain their specific contextual meaning against the background of (more or less) conventional activities the speakers are engaged in. Within philosophical pragmatics, a synthesis of the two approaches has been proposed by Strawson and Searle, but while Grice’s framework has deeply influenced the development of psychologically oriented research in pragmatics, Austin’s approach is often preferred by scholars who claim to be interested in normative, rather than psychological, views of language use. Starting from Grice’s framework, cognitive pragmatics has gone beyond him in exploring the idea that there must be some specific psychological mechanism responsible for the contextual, intention-based inferences involved in comprehension, and that this is what ensures a theoretically robust definition of pragmatics as distinct from semantics. This theoretical investigation of the mechanism(s) underlying pragmatic understanding is older than their relatively recent experimental assessment, whether by psycholinguistic methods (experimental pragmatics in a strict sense) or by neuroscientific and clinical ones (neuropragmatics and clinical pragmatics). Here the focus will be on this theoretical level of description—we might describe it as theoretical psychology of (verbal) understanding—in a middle ground between traditional philosophical pragmatics and more recent experimental pragmatics.

Cognitive pragmatics is singularly lacking in introductory presentations of the field. Bara 2010 , Bara 2011 , Mazzone 2018 (all cited under General Theories ) are some papers and books which have “cognitive pragmatics” as their main title but whose focus, in fact, is less on providing a comprehensive and impartial state of the art than on arguing in favor of their own perspectives (although not without extended discussion of others’): which is why they are listed in General Theories . The closest thing to genuine introductions to the field are Domaneschi and Bambini 2020 and Panther 2022 , while Mazzone 2021 lies somewhere in the middle. Besides them, Dominiek, et al. 2009 , Horn and Ward 2004 , and Schmid 2012 are edited volumes, and Carston, et al. 2002 is the introduction to a special issue of the journal Mind & Language dedicated to pragmatics and cognitive science. Two possible explanations for this long-standing gap in the literature are (i) the fact that, until the relatively recent development of experimental pragmatics, cognitive approaches to the subject have scarcely been perceived as clearly distinct from philosophical-linguistic ones, and (ii) the attractive force of Relevance Theory (see General Theories ), which has already satisfied the need for a widely shared paradigm on the cognitive side.

Carston, R., S. Guttenplan, and D. Wilson. 2002. Introduction: Special issue on pragmatics and cognitive science. Mind & Language 17.1–2: 1–2.

DOI: 10.1111/1468-0017.00185

Very short introduction to the special issue on pragmatics and cognitive science, it makes explicit the common commitment toward the claim that pragmatics belongs within cognitive science; it also identifies as key topics (i) the existence of a modular cognitive system for pragmatics and its relation to mind-reading; (ii) the distinctions between semantics and pragmatics, and between explicit and implicit communication. The issue contains some seminal papers on these topics.

Domaneschi, F., and V. Bambini. 2020. Pragmatic competence. In The Routledge handbook of philosophy of skill and expertise . Edited by E. Fridland and C. Pavese, 419–430. London: Routledge.

Useful short introduction to cognitive and experimental pragmatics, with a focus on the Gricean view and the fact that pragmatic processing needs to be supported by mind-reading and other cognitive functions in ways that differ across pragmatic tasks.

Dominiek, S., J. O. Östman, and J. Verschueren, eds. 2009. Cognition and pragmatics . Amsterdam: Benjamins.

One of the ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights published by Benjamins. Essentially an introduction to psycholinguistics, with chapters dedicated to such general topics as language acquisition, cognitive science, experimentation, and developmental psychology.

Horn, L., and G. Ward, eds. 2004. The handbook of pragmatics . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

The last of its four sections is specifically dedicated to “Pragmatics and Cognition” (it hosts, among other things, updated presentations of Relevance Theory by Wilson and Sperber, and by Carston), but also in the other sections there are significant papers on cognitive pragmatics.

Mazzone, M. 2021. Cognitive pragmatics. In The Routledge handbook of cognitive linguistics . Edited by X. Wen and J. R. Taylor, 433–449. London: Routledge.

Brief overview of the field focusing on which aspects of Grice’s theory are still alive in cognitive pragmatics, especially addressing Grice’s legacy, Relevance Theory, the debate between contextualism and minimalism, the role of consciousness in pragmatics, and recent objections against inferential pragmatics and (communicative) intentions.

Panther, H. U. 2022. Introduction to cognitive pragmatics . Amsterdam: Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/clip.4

Comprehensive textbook, looking at both the pragmatic tradition (Gricean implicature, speech act theory) and cognitive linguistics. Considerable space is dedicated to inferences and pragmatic reasoning, with a basic distinction between analogical reasoning (involved in metaphor) and associative reasoning (involved in metonymy). Inferences are analyzed as a source of meaning construction in entailment and presupposition, and in cases of metonymic inferencing—which has been a major contribution of the author to the field.

Schmid, H. J., ed. 2012. Cognitive pragmatics . Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

Edited book with twenty-one contributions from top researchers in their respective fields. Its underlying conception of cognitive pragmatics is in terms of construal of meaning-in-context, with room for key pragmatic theories (Relevance Theory, graded salience hypothesis), intercultural pragmatics and research on pragmatic disorders, but with several contribution also from psycholinguistics (spanning from processing of pragmatic information in discourse to the development of pragmatic competence) and from cognitive linguistics (e.g., the emergence of linguistic structures).

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Thresholds of liminality in literature, linguistics, philosophy and culture

University of Siedlce

Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies

University of the Balearic Islands

Faculty of Philosophy and Art

would like to kindly invite all scholars from across the Humanities to take part in the

9 th Annual Siedlce Forum for Contemporary Issues

in Language and Literature

to be held online for the purpose of presenting unpublished research findings in English on November 21st-22 nd , 2024.

The leitmotif of the conference is:

Thresholds of liminality

in literature, linguistics, philosophy and culture

Although Arnold van Gennep initially introduced the notion of liminality in his work Rite de Passage (1909) as an anthropological term delineating the intermediate phase in different ritual transitions, it has subsequently been applied to several disciplines, including psychology, sociology, literature and linguistics, among others. Coming from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold” or “boundary”, the liminal may occur in various moments and situations. 

In literature, liminality is commonly seen as the space where various and contrasting forms, ideas and concepts converge—such as life and death, the individual and society, fact and fiction, among several—and together they create a distinctive aesthetic encounter. Some genres, like the Gothic, have used liminality as one of their main motifs going beyond and exploring the possibilities it offers, such as the exploration of border and thresholds or transgression. Using such techniques alongside ample imagination and a good degree of fantasy, a literary text becomes an avenue to depart from our mundane reality, with its trivial—or not so trivial—concerns, responsibilities and routine existence, and enter a world where boundless possibilities unfold. That way, literature draws the line between the realm of the present reality, the “here”, carrying the tangible and factual aspects of the world, and the realm of fiction, the “there”, characterised by its departure from reality and its reliance on imagination.

Liminality is also a matter of significant importance and inquiry within the field of linguistics. As it refers to transition, uncertainty, and a state of being in between, liminality deals with, among other things, the question of boundaries and the degree to which categorical distinctions can be made in language description as well as the implications such blurred and unstable borders may have for understanding and describing the language. In the globalised world, contact between cultures opens enormous possibilities for language interference and change, leading to overlapping at its different levels. In the realm of cognitive linguistics, liminality relates closely to mapping cognitive content onto the appropriate language frame, with diversity in language corresponding to diversity in human conceptualization. Moreover, research in liminality may extend to the sphere of discourse and pragmatic prosody, meticulously examining the pragmatic, cultural, and discourse-functional aspects that exert influence on the usage of language.

Liminality, the concept of being in a transitional state or on the threshold between two distinct phases, has long captured the imagination of philosophers across various traditions. From ancient inquiries into the nature of existence and being to contemporary explorations of identity and uncertainty, liminality serves as a rich terrain for philosophical inquiry. Our conference aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and critical reflection on the philosophical dimensions of liminality.

We encourage participants to explore and share illuminating insights on the literary, cultural, and discourse-functional dimensions of liminality, thereby significantly enhancing our comprehension of the intricate nature of language and its profound impact on communication and the dynamics of culture.

Suggested Research Areas

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• literary representations of liminality
• liminal experiences in literature
• liminal experiences within different literary genres
• symbolic meanings associated with liminal spaces and thresholds in literature
• narrative structures and techniques employed to depict liminal spaces and thresholds in literature
• archetypal representations of liminality in literature
• representations of liminality in popular culture
• diversity and similarity within a language and across languages
• connotative and associative meaning in social and cultural context
• liminal practices in translation
• overlapping in languages for special purposes
• figurative language
• idiomatic meanings and their motivation
• pragmatic and discourse-functional dimensions of meaning
• cultural aspects of language usage
• intercultural communication
• intercultural learning
• the metaphysics of liminality: exploring the ontological status of transitional states and thresholds
• liminality and identity: examining how liminal experiences shape individual and collective identities
• ethical considerations of liminality: reflecting on the moral implications of navigating transitional phases and ambiguous spaces
• phenomenology of liminality: analyzing lived experiences of liminal states and transitions
• cultural and historical perspectives on liminality: investigating how different cultures and historical contexts conceptualize and navigate thresholds of liminality
• the role of liminality in philosophical traditions: exploring how liminality is addressed in various philosophical traditions and schools of thought.

Plenary Speakers

Richard Jorge, University of the Basque Country

Marek Łukasik, Pomeranian University in Słupsk

The conference will be a virtual event. The organizing committee will do their best to ensure that all participants have the IT support they need to access the conference.

Oral Sessions

Each presentation will be scheduled for a 20-minute slot, followed by a 10-minute discussion.

Abstract Submission

An abstract of 200-300 words (including a bibliography) should be submitted by October 15th, 2024 in .doc or .docx format via e-mail to [email protected] . Your abstract must be accompanied by the following information: name of the author , title of the paper , affiliation , academic degree , research area and a biographical note of 60-80 words in length . Notifications of acceptance will be sent by October 31st, 2024.

The registration form will be available soon on our official site. If you wish to receive an invoice, please tick off the Invoice Box in the registration form.

Conference Fee

All participants are requested to return the registration form and pay the conference fee by November 10th, 2024. The fee is EUR 50 or PLN 230.

Publication

Submitted text proposals will be considered for publication either in the journal Forum for Contemporary Issues in Language and Literature or in a peer-reviewed volume. The texts will need to be submitted by February 15th, 2025 to [email protected] . Further information concerning publication as well as submission guidelines will be available soon on the conference website.

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Organising Committee

Edward Colerick (University of Siedlce)

Andrés L. Jaume (UIB)

Charlie Jorge Fernández (UIB)

Katarzyna Kozak (University of Siedlce)

Katarzyna Mroczyńska (University of Siedlce)

Agnieszka Rzepkowska (University of Siedlce)

Astrid Marie Schwegler Castañer (UIB)

Magdalena Wieczorek (University of Siedlce)

‘The Age of Magical Overthinking’ tries to pinpoint our mental health crisis

Amanda montell casts a wide net in her new essay collection. maybe too wide..

Every generation has its own crisis, the linguist and podcaster Amanda Montell writes. In the 1960s and ’70s, young Americans organized against “physical tyrannies” such as voter suppression and workplace discrimination. But times have changed.

The 21st century brought a shift in our attention from external threats to internal ones, Montell says. Rates of anxiety and depression among U.S. teens and adults have spiked. Loneliness is a public health threat . We’re glued to our phones, alienated from loved ones and surrounded by misinformation.

People everywhere, Montell writes, are facing a crisis of the mind.

From this grim landscape emerges “ The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality ,” Montell’s third book and a sweeping look at mental health, behavioral science, misinformation and online culture in the 2020s. In it, she argues that the ills of the internet era are best explained by looking back on humanity’s history, when our minds developed shortcuts to improve our odds of survival. Those shortcuts are called cognitive biases, and they may lead us to do strange things like fall for a conspiracy theory or accept mental health advice from an untrained influencer .

Montell leads us through an engaging roundup of “21st century derangement,” from celebrity worship to tradwife discourse , examining how cognitive biases may contribute. But by positioning her work as a response to America’s broad struggle with mental health, Montell promises more than she delivers. Rather than focusing on a tour of our shared cognitive glitches, she juggles meta-commentary on such vast topics as the modern mind and the internet, dropping balls along the way.

The book opens with an account of Montell’s struggles with anxiety and overwhelm, as well as the steps she took to feel better. “My most cinematic attempt at mental rehab involved picking herbs on a farm in Sicily under a light-pollution-free sky,” she writes.

Eventually, she had an aha moment: The same cognitive biases she encountered while researching toxic social groups for her second book, “ Cultish ,” could explain why the internet age felt like a “mass head trip.” Glutted with more information in a day than we can ever hope to process, we fall back on mental habits developed when humans were simpler creatures, Montell writes. For example, social media celebrity worship could be fueled by the “halo effect,” where we assume a person with one good quality (writing hit pop songs) has other good qualities (a perfectly tuned moral compass). Or perhaps we spend hours comparing ourselves with other people on Instagram because the “zero-sum bias” has convinced us that life is a game of winners and losers.

Montell backs up her connections in many instances with nods to evolutionary biology. For early humans, it made sense to attach ourselves to the strongest and most powerful, so now we glom onto Taylor Swift or Charli XCX. Resources like mates and status were limited in ancient human communities, Montell notes, so it’s natural that we view hot people on Instagram as immediate threats to our survival.

Montell finds examples of cognitive bias in internet culture flash points, such as the millennial obsession with New Age therapy-speak. Faced with big problems, such as anxiety or depression, our minds seek big explanations, such as childhood trauma or a scarcity mind-set, rather than examining all the smaller problems at play.

In other spots, she shares stories from her own life. In her late 20s, she struggled to end an abusive relationship, terrified that giving up meant she’d wasted years of her life — a classic “sunk cost fallacy.” Humans are social creatures, Montell notes, afraid of inviting scrutiny by admitting mistakes.

“My hope is for these chapters to make some sense of the senseless,” Montell says early on. “To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in.” And indeed, in some moments, her sharp descriptions of behavioral foibles and her talent for cutting through doublespeak clear room for hope: Maybe noticing our warped thinking will make its effects less painful. Maybe our generational “crisis” is a story of not-enough-neurons encountering too-many-terabytes.

When confidence in Montell’s analysis wavers, it’s because the targets are too broad, the claims imprecise. For instance, we’re never quite sure of the shape of the national mental health crisis she repeatedly references. Early on, she draws a distinction between Americans’ current mental health struggles and 20th-century battles against bodily oppression. This neat separation doesn’t reflect reality — “The Age of Magical Overthinking” was published after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and during ongoing fights for voter access, health care and the right to protest. It also doesn’t reflect what science has shown about illnesses like depression, which are often tied up with a person’s physical and political well-being. Ultimately, we’re left with the sense that Montell’s crisis of the mind begins and ends with the vague feelings of anxiety and dread many people feel after scrolling on social media apps.

Montell implies that the breakdown of Americans’ mental health began after 2000, brought on by internet access and introspection. Conflating “the internet” with social media, she draws loose connections between online scrolling and mental turmoil, making no reference to the complicated science around how social media use affects our brains. Some studies have found bumps in anxiety and depression associated with social media use, but more recent meta-analyses call their methods and findings into question . To date, researchers have found no consistent causal link between spending time on social apps and experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Of course, future research may uncover new ways to measure how social media use or other online activities affect the mental health of different populations. Perhaps we should rely on a different measure altogether, like qualitative research into young people and their families. Rather than critique the existing science or offer an alternative lens, Montell picks two studies that support her thesis and hand-waves at the dire state of things.

Finally, although Montell says cognitive biases affect everyone, she aims her jabs at the safest of targets: “Disney adults,” “male girlbosses,” “Facebook-addicted Karens.” Readers hoping for fresh or counterintuitive takes on internet culture — and its heroes and villains — may walk away disappointed.

Montell says from the jump that her analysis of 2020s malaise is “not a system of thought,” likening her work instead to a Buddhist koan — meant to be pondered, not understood. That’s fine, and “The Age of Magical Overthinking” ultimately features interesting topics, fun research and vivid stories. But in Montell’s effort to critique the spirit of our times, she asks imprecise questions and offers unsatisfactory answers.

Tatum Hunter is a consumer technology reporter at The Washington Post based in San Francisco. Her work focuses on health, privacy and relationships in the internet era.

The Age of Magical Overthinking

Notes on Modern Irrationality

By Amanda Montell

Atria/One Signal. 272 pp. $28.

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