Cognitive Linguistics, Psychology and Cognitive Science

It is proposed to examine, in brief, the relationship between linguistics and cognition. With Chomsky's mentalist approach linguistics became a study of cognition, and a member of the cognitive sciences. The field of cognitive linguistics has arisen in part to formalize this relationship between linguistics and cognition. It represents a revolt against some of the established norms of linguistics, as practiced around the last two or three decades of the twentieth century, and also a logical culmination represented as adoption and application of the thinking prevalent in the cognitive sciences to the study of language. Cognitive linguistics is a relatively new filed, but it has dedicated adherents and an expanding base. The concerns emergent of the association between linguistics and cognition are worthwhile of pursuit by a wide range of cognitive scientists. A review of the perspectives on linguistics and cognition is presented here.

2012

Studies in Linguistics and Cognition, edited by BárBara EiZaGa rEBoLLar, is a collection of essays on the interface between linguistics and cognition originated from a conference called II Jornadas de Lingüística y Cognición held at the university of Cadiz in March 2009 and organized by the research group Pragmalingüística.

The paper explores the relationship of language and thought with respect to their mutual determination or influence. Two questions are considered crucial: how do we learn the meanings of conventional linguistic signs, including those for abstract concepts, and how do we express our original insights, thoughts and feelings through not-yet-conventional linguistic means. These are followed by succinct answers and extensive elaborations referring to opposite views and linguistic examples from the history of philosophy and cognitive linguistics. It is argued that linguistic expressions, including metaphors, mostly incorporate how people represent (or once represented) the world to themselves through imagination and present (or once presented) the world to others through language. Hence language neither directly shows how we conceive and understand the world nor how we construct it in our thoughts. On the other hand, symbolization through metaphor and metonymy, as well as innovative verbalization, enable our cognition to communicate novel as well as abstract and philosophically demanding meanings.

2002

It will not be an exaggeration to say that modern linguistic science is in a profound theoretical and conceptual tangle. It is especially obvious in semantics as "the theory of meaning'', where the chaos is striking (Devitt & Sterelny). It is because so far linguistics as a science has not succeeded in bringing together in a non-contradictory fashion the two concepts of language, language as a sign system for representing knowledge and language as a communicative activity. This is largely due to the methodological shortcomings of the traditional philosophy of mind based on Cartesian logic with its ontological distinction between mind and body (Priest; Schlechtman; Kim). The mainstream cognitive science approach to intelligence is largely computational: intelligent performance is viewed as certain symbolic processes involving representations (Fodor 1975, 1998; Newell; Pylyshyn; Fuchs & Robert, inter alia). These processes account for such cognitive capacities as perception, language acquisition and processing, planning, problem solving, reasoning, learning, and the acquisition, representation, and use of knowledge (Lepore & Pylyshyn). However, the concept of mental representation as used in contemporary literature is so fuzzy and elusive that its more or less consistent use unavoidably invokes one question that has to be answered prior to any productive discussion of the nature of cognition and cognitive capacities: What is a mental representation? In contemporary philosophical theory of knowledge by representations are understood certain mental structures including intentional categories (believe that p, wish that q) which constitute the content of linguistic (semantic) structures at the deep level. In psychology, representations are typically described as conceptual structures individuated by their contents (Margolis & Laurence) and defined in accordance with traditional methods of analytical philosophy, that is, by positing sets of necessary and sufficient conditions that have to be met. However, there is enough empirical evidence that refutes the very existence of rigid categories in a classical sense (Rosch 1973, 1977; Taylor; Margolis). Moreover, concepts, or knowledge structures rooted in intentional categorization, are much more complicated than what the traditional philosophical/semantic analysis claims them to be. Experimental data highlight the role experience plays in perception, categorization, and conceptualization. It has been shown that background knowledge affects categorial decisions (Palmeri & Blalock; Gelman & Bloom) and acquisition of new concepts (Nelson et al.; Matan & Carey), that meaning is specifically related to perception (Allwood & Gaerdenfors) which itself is influenced by categorization processes (Schyns; Albertazzi), and that object recognition and categorization is largely an ongoing process, affected by experience of our environment (Wallis & Bülthoff). It has become obvious that, despite a long history of discussion (Watson), there is no way out of the philosophical dead-end within the framework of the old rationalist paradigm, since traditional analytical philosophy is incapable of providing a reasonably consistent and empirically sound unified theory of mental representations (Stich; Croft; Sandra). Attempts to re

Journal for Research Scholars and Professionals of English Language Teaching, 2021

The present paper is an attempt to simplify and comprehend what Cognitive Linguistics deals. It helps the learners, students of linguistics and teachers of ELT understand the characteristics and phenomena of Cognitive Linguistics, providing a succinct overview of Cognitive Linguistics. It is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics and a cluster of overlapping approaches to the study of language as a mental phenomenon. Linguistics basically focuses on the sounds, words, grammar rules and rules of a language consisting of phonology (the sound system), morphology (the structure of words), syntax (the arrangement of words into sentences) and semantics (meanings). Cognitive linguistics is an integrated model-a collection of comprehensive investigations of a wide range of cognitive and linguistic phenomena.

In the thirty years since the appearance of Metaphors We Live By, cognitive linguistics has developed into a flourishing autonomous branch of inquiry. Interdisciplinary contacts, however, have largely been restricted to literary studies and the cognitive sciences and hardly extended towards the social sciences. This is the more surprising as, in 1970s anthropology, metaphor was seen as a key notion for the study of symbolism more generally. This contribution explores the cognitive linguistic view of social and cultural factors. Lakoff and Johnson appear ambivalent regarding the relation between culture and cognition; but they share the belief, elaborated in detail by Gibbs and Turner (2002), that cultural factors can be accounted for in terms of cognitive processes. This view runs into both methodological and philosophical difficulties. Methodologically, it assumes that cultural factors can be reduced to cognitive processes; philosophically, it boils down to a Cartesian emphasis on inner experience explaining outer phenomena. There are substantial anti-Cartesian strains both in contemporary philosophy and in a major current of Eighteenth- Century philosophy. The latter, in particular, emphasized the importance of embodiment and metaphor in cognition. As an alternative, I will sketch a more consistently semiotic- and practice-oriented approach that proceeds from linguistic practices to cognitive processes rather than the other way around. It takes practices as irreducibly public and normative; on this approach, so-called linguistic ideologies (Silverstein 1979) play a constitutive role in both linguistic practice and language structure. This alternative builds on recent developments in linguistic anthropology and the work of Peirce and Bakhtin. It suggests a different look at the relation between cognition, language, and social practice from that suggested in cognitive linguistics.

Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature

Journal of English Studies

The purpose of these notes is to contribute to the understanding of the intellectual and scientific origins of Cognitive Linguistics (CL); it is not, therefore, a history, even partial and incomplete, of CL; neither does it offer any exhaustive consideration of all the factors, influences, linguistic and psychological models, or of all the linguists that have contributed to the birth and development of the discipiline, an enterprise that is probably premature.