Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from both psychology
and linguistics. It describes how language interacts with cognition,
how language forms our thoughts, and the evolution of language parallel
with the change in the common mindset across time.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word "cognitive" is defined as
"of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity
(such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)". Merriam-Webster also
defines linguistics as "the study of human speech including the units,
nature, structure, and modification of language".
Combining those two definitions together to form cognitive linguistics
would provide the notion of the concepts and ideas discussed in the
realm of cognitive linguistics. Within cognitive linguistics, the
analysis of the conceptual and experiential basis of linguistic
categories is of primary importance. The formal structures of language
are studied not as if they were autonomous, but as reflections of
general conceptual organization, categorization principles, processing
mechanisms, and experiential and environmental influences.
Since cognitive linguistics sees language as embedded in the
overall cognitive capacities of human beings, topics of special interest
for cognitive linguistics include: the structural characteristics of
natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, systematic polysemy, cognitive models, mental imagery, and conceptual metaphor); the functional principles of linguistic organization (such as iconicity and naturalness); the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics (as explored by cognitive grammar and construction grammar); the experiential and pragmatic background of language-in-use; and the relationship between language and thought, including questions about linguistic relativity and conceptual universals.
What holds together the diverse forms of cognitive linguistics is
the belief that linguistic knowledge involves not just knowledge of the
language, but knowledge of the world as mediated by the language. In addition, cognitive linguistics argues that language is both embodied and situated in a specific environment.
History
Cognitive linguistics is a relatively modern branch of linguistics. It was founded by George Lakoff and Ronald Langacker. Lakoff coined the term "cognitive linguistics" in 1987 in his book "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things",
one of his most famous writings. Lakoff had already previously written
many publications discussing the role of various cognitive processes
involved in the use of language. Some of these previous publications
include "The Role of Deduction in Grammar" and "Linguistics and Natural Logic".
In 1975, he published the paper "Cognitive Grammar: Some Preliminary Speculations", in which he also coined the term "cognitive grammar".
Soon after the field of cognitive linguistics had emerged, it was
criticized by many prominent linguists. However, by the end of the
1980s, the field had attracted the attention of many people and started
to grow.
The journal Cognitive Linguistics was established in 1990 as the first journal specialized in research in that field.
Three central positions
Cognitive linguists deny that the mind has any module for language-acquisition that is unique and autonomous. This stands in contrast to the stance adopted by Noam Chomsky and others in the field of generative grammar.
Although cognitive linguists do not necessarily deny that part of the
human linguistic ability is innate, they deny that it is separate from the rest of cognition. They thus reject a body of opinion in cognitive science suggesting that there is evidence for the modularity of language. Departing from the tradition of truth-conditional semantics,
cognitive linguists view meaning in terms of conceptualization. Instead
of viewing meaning in terms of models of the world, they view it in
terms of mental spaces.
They argue that knowledge of linguistic phenomena — i.e., phonemes, morphemes, and syntax — is essentially conceptual
in nature. However, they assert that the storage and retrieval of
linguistic data is not significantly different from the storage and
retrieval of other knowledge, and that use of language in understanding
employs similar cognitive abilities to those used in other
non-linguistic tasks.
With the goal of moving beyond cognitive linguistics' early
biases, such as a tendency to define language structures in
a-historical, a-cultural terms, more recent scholars in (frequently
diachronic) cognitive linguistics have been elaborating dynamic
perspectives to language in cognition. Since the late 1990s, this
perspective has shaped cognitive linguistics through the works of William Croft (linguist) (diachronic semantics), Elizabeth C. Traugott (pragmatics and its role in reconceptualization), Dirk Geeraerts (diachronic prototype semantics) and Adele Goldberg (linguist) (construction grammar), among others.
Two key commitments
Two
basic commitments were described by George Lakoff in 1990. These two
commitments are the basis of orientation and approach followed by
cognitive linguists:
- The Generalization Commitment: The aim of the generalization commitment is to pinpoint the broadest generalizations. Thus, molding and understanding general rules that fit all aspects and characteristics of human language. Since this commitment seeks generalization of principles of language, the previous ways of studying the language, like semantics (the meaning of words and meaning), phonology (sound), and morphology (word structure) won’t be suitable, because there is little room for generalization.
- The Cognitive Commitment: The cognitive commitment aim is to characterize the general principles of used language that are consistent with what is known about brain anatomy and functions from other sciences. So, this core philosophy of this commitment is that rules of the used language should agree with what is known about cognition from other sciences, especially psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
Areas of study
Cognitive linguistics is divided into three main areas of study:
- Cognitive semantics, dealing mainly with lexical semantics, separating semantics (meaning) into meaning-construction and knowledge representation.
- Cognitive approaches to grammar, dealing mainly with syntax, morphology and other traditionally more grammar-oriented areas.
- Cognitive phonology, dealing with classification of various correspondences between morphemes and phonetic sequences.
Aspects of cognition that are of interest to cognitive linguists include:
- Construction grammar and cognitive grammar.
- Conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending.
- Image schemas and force dynamics.
- Conceptual organization: Categorization, Metonymy, Frame semantics, and Iconicity.
- Construal and Subjectivity.
- Gesture and sign language.
- Linguistic relativity.
- Cultural linguistics.
Related work that interfaces with many of the above themes:
- Computational models of metaphor and language acquisition.
- Dynamical models of language acquisition
- 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, seeks 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.
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.
Criticisms
Three dogmas of embodiment
Cognitive
linguistics suffers from three defective dogmas, which are the scope of
much of the criticism cognitive linguistics receives. These three dogmas are from the hypotheses of embodiment engendered by CL.
- Embodiment as an eliminative reductionism: Sociocultural linguistics is an interdisciplinary science that conceptualize the linguistics as a resultant of the interaction of language with social and cultural components. However, cognitive linguistics empirical methodologies somehow contradict this. Lakoff's Neural Theory of Language asserted that “cognitive linguistics is not cognitive linguistics if it ignores relevant structure about the brain,” where brain’s structure imposes its superpositions, image schemas, and universal primitives onto language. The main objection to this concept is that the excessive focus on the brain structure, anatomically and functionally, will eliminate the socio-cultural theories of language. That is because you are studying the brain outside its “natural environment”.
- Embodiment as temporally static: This dogma complements the first one. We are live creatures, our brain is a dynamic and organic organ, and the development of the brain across time is a critical factor in determining the brain functions, the structure of the brain, and the molecular processes that govern it. Brain functions suffer a lot of biological variabilities; it varies across age; children, adults, and aging brain, it varies in right-handed versus left-handed people, in certain injuries, and evolutionarily over generations. Thus, since brain function and structure are dynamic, then language must be dynamic too. However, results from cognitive linguistics, so far, do not take the temporal progression into consideration. It merely describe facts about the use of language under certain solid conditions.
- Embodiment as consciousness (or as unconscious): There is a common misconception that studying a mental process means we are actually “conscious” of it. Nevertheless, that is not the case in cognitive linguistics. For example, our brain slices sound waves into phonemes unconsciously. Such process is studied using techniques like EEG which is not informative about whether neurolinguistics processes are conscious or not.
Controversy and Noam Chomsky's view
There
is significant peer review and debate within the field of linguistics
regarding cognitive linguistics. Critics of cognitive linguistics have
argued that most of the evidence from the cognitive view comes from the
research in pragmatics and semantics, and research in metaphor and
preposition choice. They suggest that cognitive linguists should provide
cognitive re-analyses of topics in syntax and phonology that are
understood in terms of autonomous knowledge (Gibbs 1996).
There is also controversy and debate within the field concerning
the representation and status of idioms in grammar and the actual mental
grammar of speakers. On one hand it is asserted that idiom variation
needs to be explained with regard to general and autonomous syntactic
rules. Another view says such idioms do not constitute semantic units
and can be processed compositionally (Langlotz 2006).
In his lectures and many of his publications, Noam Chomsky
discussed the cognitive components that are related to the languages
and its use — in other words, studying language as a branch of cognitive sciences. He thinks that the two fields address language aspects that are complementary to each other. However, he believes that his generative grammar
linguistic theory and cognitive linguistic philosophical foundations
oppose each other. He also believes that cognitive linguistics needs to
accept some foundation from the theory of generative grammar.
