Cognitive linguistics

Cognitive linguistics explores the interrelations (structural) and interactions (dynamical) between language (linguistics) and mind (cognition), exploring such questions as whether language impacts on cognition or whether language emerges from non-linguistic cognitive functioning. In the entry on cognitive linguistics in the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Karen van Hoek writes:

Cognitive linguistics is not a single theory but is rather best characterized as a paradigm within linguistics, subsuming a number of distinct theories and research programs. It is characterized by an emphasis on explicating the intimate interrelationship between language and other cognitive faculties.

In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens elaborate:

Cognitive Linguistics is the study of language in its cognitive function, where cognitive refers to the crucial role of intermediate informational structures in our encounters with the world. Cognitive Linguistics is cognitive in the same way that cognitive psychology is: by assuming 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. Language, then, is seen as a repository of world knowledge, a structured collection of meaningful categories that help us deal with new experiences and store information about old ones.

Aspects of language studied include, meaning (semantics), metaphor, grammar, and many other aspects of the language facility as it relates to thinking. As an interdisciplinary enterprise, it incorporates ideas from philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, computer science, and other discipines. Cognitive linguists develop their theoretical insights based on empirical (observational, experimental) methodologies.

Cognitive linguistics views language as based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind.

The guiding principle behind this area of linguistics is that language creation, learning, and usage are explained by reference to human cognition in general — the basic underlying mental processes that apply not only to language, but to all other areas of human intelligence.

Cognitive linguistics argues that language is both embodied and situated in specific bioregions. This can be considered a more developed form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in that not only are language and cognition mutually influential, but also embodied experience and environmental factors of the bioregion.

Areas of study

Cognitive linguists explore the mental underpinnings of language that account for the generation of thinking, which includes conceptualization, meaning (semantics), metaphor, grammar, and many other aspects of the language facility as it relates to thinking. It incorporates ideas from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, and develops theoretical insights based on empirical (observational, experimental) methodologies.

Cognitive linguistics is divided into two main areas of study, which are currently being reunified, as linguists have grown to understand their mutual interdependence:

• cognitive semantics, dealing mainly with lexical semantics
• cognitive approaches to grammar, dealing mainly with syntax, morphology and other traditionally more grammar-oriented areas.
• Cognitive phonology.

Aspects of cognition that are of interest to cognitive linguists include:

• Construction grammar and cognitive grammar.
• Conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending.
• Conceptual organization: Categorization, Metonymy, Image schemas, Frame semantics, Iconicity, and Force Dynamics.
• Construal and Subjectivity.
• Gesture and sign language.
• Linguistic relativism.
• Cognitive neuroscience.

Related work that interfaces with many of the above themes:

• Computational models of metaphor and language acquisition.
• Psycholinguistics research.
• Conceptual semantics, pursued by generative linguist Ray Jackendoff is related because of its active psychological realism and the incorporation of prototype structure and images.

Cognitive linguistics, more than generative linguistics, seek to mesh together these findings into a coherent whole. A further complication arises because the terminology of cognitive linguistics is not entirely stable, both because it is a relatively new field and because it interfaces with a number of other disciplines.

As an interdisciplinary group, scholars of cognitive linguistics publish articles in a variety of journals, including “Brain and Language”, which focuses on the neurobiology of language, and a dedicated journal, “Cognitive Linguistics”, which focuses on such topics as:

the structural characteristics of natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, cognitive models, metaphor, and imagery); functional principles of lingusitic organization (such as iconicity); the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics; the relationship between language and thought, including matters of universality and language specificity; the experiential background of language-in-use, including the cultural background, the discourse context, and the psychological environment of linguistic performance

Scholars of cognitive linguistics meet biennially at the International Cognitive Linguistic Conference, sponsored by the “International Cognitive Linguistic Association”.

Insights and developments from cognitive linguistics are becoming accepted ways of analysing literary texts, too. Cognitive Poetics, as it has become known, has become an important part of modern stylistics. The best summary of the discipline as it is currently stands is Peter Stockwell's Cognitive Poetics.

See also

• Cognitive science
• Embodied philosophy
• List of cognitive scientists