Introduction

A rough guide to Cognitive Linguistics

Dirk Geeraerts

So this is the first time you visit the field of Cognitive Linguistics, no? You may
need a guide then. Sure, when you move through the following chapters of this
volume, you get to see a top twelve of sights that you should not miss: a delightful
dozen of articles written by authorities in the field that each introduce one of the
conceptual cornerstones of the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics.
Still, to give you a firm reference point for your tour, you may need some initia-
tion to what Cognitive Linguistics is about. That’s what the present chapter is for:
it provides you with a roadmap and a travel book to Cognitive Linguistics. It’s
only a rough guide, to be sure: it gives you the minimal amount of background
that you need to figure out the steps to be taken and to make sure that you are
not recognized as a total foreigner or a naïve apprentice, but it does not pretend
to supply more than that.
To understand what you may expect to find in this brief travel guide, we need
to introduce one of the characteristic ideas of Cognitive Linguistics first – the
idea, that is, that we should not just describe concepts and categories by means
of an abstract definition, but that we should also take into account the things that
the definition is about, if we are to achieve an adequate level of knowledge. Take
birds: you can define birds as a certain type of animal with certain characteristics
(like having wings, being able to fly, and being born from eggs), but if you want
to get a good cognitive grip on what birds are, you will want to have a look at
some typical birds like robins and sparrows and doves, and then maybe also at
some less typical ones, like chickens and ostriches.
It’s no different when you are dealing with linguistic theories. You have to
know about the scientific content of the theory, that is to say, the abstract defi-
nition of the approach: the topics it deals with, the specific perspective it takes,
and the observations it makes. But you also have to know about the sociology
of the theory: the people it involves, the conferences where they meet, the chan-
nels in which they publish. Introductions to linguistics tend to focus on the first
perspective only, but the present guide will take the second into account just as
much as the first.
2 Dirk Geeraerts

1. What is so special about this place?

Theories in linguistics tend to be fairly insular affairs: each theoretical frame-

work tends to constitute a conceptual and sociological entity in its own right, with
only a limited number of bridges, market places or even battlegrounds shared
with other approaches. Cognitive Linguistics, when considered in the light of
this metaphor, takes the form of an archipelago rather than an island. It is not
one clearly delimited large territory, but rather a conglomerate of more or less
extensive, more or less active centers of linguistic research that are closely knit
together by a shared perspective, but that are not (yet) brought together under
the common rule of a well-defined theory. The present volume contains an intro-
duction to twelve fundamental parts of that theoretical conglomerate – a tour of
twelve central islands, if you wish: Cognitive Grammar, grammatical construal,
radial network, prototype theory, schematic network, conceptual metaphor, image
schema, metonymy, mental spaces, frame semantics, construction grammar, and
usage-based linguistics.
We will define in a moment what links hold these concepts together and why
each of them separately is important, but at this point, the chief thing is to real-
ize that there is no single, uniform theoretical doctrine according to which these
research topics belong together: Cognitive Linguistics is a flexible framework rather
than a single theory of language. From the point of view of category structure (one
of the standard topics for analysis in Cognitive Linguistics), this recognition is
again one way in which Cognitive Linguistics illustrates its own concepts. As we
mentioned a moment ago, Cognitive Linguistics emphasizes the fact that defin-
ing a category may involve describing some of its principal members rather than
just giving an abstract definition. But it also stresses that the abstract definition
need not consist of a single set of defining characteristics that belong uniquely
and distinctively to that category. Think of birds again: when we describe the
features of birds, we soon notice that the features we would like to think of as
definitional for birds are not shared by all members of the species: we may even
find birds like the penguin or the kiwi, that have no wings to speak of, cannot
fly, and don’t have feathers but that are rather covered with some kind of fluff. In
such cases, we say that a category has a family resemblance structure: different
types of birds resemble each other like the members of a family would, but there
is no single set of attributes that necessarily shows up in all the members of the
family. Again, it is no different with a linguistic framework like Cognitive Lin-
guistics: it constitutes a cluster of many partially overlapping approaches rather
than a single well-defined theory that identifies in an all-or-none fashion whether
something belongs to Cognitive Linguistics or not.
Then again, the recognition that Cognitive Linguistics has not yet stabilized
into a single uniform theory should not prevent us from looking for fundamental
同样，像认知语⾔学这样的语⾔学框架也是如此：它由许多部分重叠的
⽅法组成，⽽不是⼀个单⼀的定义明确的理论，以⼀种⾮此即彼的⽅式
确定某些东⻄是否属于认知语⾔学。
不过，认知语⾔学尚未形成统⼀的理论这⼀事实并不妨碍我们
在认知语⾔学这⼀标签下的多种研究形式中寻找基本的共同特
征和共同视⻆。⼀个显⽽易⻅的问题与认知语⾔学的 "认知 "⽅
⾯有关：认知语⾔学究竟在什么意义上是⼀种研究语⾔的认知
⽅法？
 Introduction: A rough guide to Cognitive Linguistics 3

common features and shared perspectives among the many forms of research that
come together under the label of Cognitive Linguistics. An obvious question to
start from relates to the ‘cognitive’ aspect of Cognitive Linguistics: in what sense
exactly is Cognitive Linguistics a cognitive approach to the study of language?
Terminologically speaking, we now need to make a distinction between Cog-
nitive Linguistics (the approach represented in this reader), and uncapitalized
cognitive linguistics – referring to all approaches in which natural language is
studied as a mental phenomenon. Cognitive Linguistics is but one form of cogni-
tive linguistics, to be distinguished from, for instance, generative grammar and
many other forms of linguistic research within the field of cognitive science.
What, then, determines the specificity of Cognitive Linguistics within cognitive
linguistics?
There are a number of characteristics that need to be mentioned: one basic
principle that is really, really foundational, and four tenets that spell out this
fundamental notion. The foundational point is simply that language is all about
meaning. As it says in the Editorial Statement of the very first issue of the jour-
nal Cognitive Linguistics, published in 1990, this approach sees language ‘as an
instrument for organizing, processing, and conveying information’ – as something
primarily semantic, in other words. Now, it may seem self-evident to you that
a ‘cognitive’ approach to language focuses on meaning, but if you are familiar
with generative grammar (i.e. Chomskyan linguistics), you will know that this
is a theory that thinks of language primarily in formal terms: as a collection of
formal, syntactic structures and rules (or constraints on such structures and rules).
And generative grammar is definitely also a ‘cognitive’ conception of language,
one that attributes a mental status to the language. So we have to be careful with
the term cognitive in Cognitive Linguistics. It does not only signal that language
is a psychologically real phenomenon (and that linguistics is part of the cogni-
tive sciences), but also that the processing and storage of information is a crucial
design feature of language. Linguistics is not just about knowledge of the language
(that’s the focus of generative grammar), but language itself is a form of knowl-
edge – and has to be analyzed accordingly, with a focus on meaning.
Conversely, Cognitive Linguistics is not the only linguistic approach focusing
on meaning: there are diverse forms of functional approaches to language that
go in the same direction. And further, formal semantics is clearly a semantically
oriented approach as well. It lies beyond the scope of this introduction to provide a
systematic comparison with these other semantic approaches, but you will certainly
be interested in what is particular about the way in which Cognitive Linguistics
deals with meaning. So that brings us to the four specific characteristics that we
announced earlier: each of them says something specific about the way Cognitive
Linguistics thinks about meaning. (By the way, the captions we use to introduce
the features may sound formidable, but don’t worry: an explanation follows.)
4 Dirk Geeraerts

LINGUISTIC¬MEANING¬IS¬PERSPECTIVAL
Meaning is not just an objective reflection of the outside world, it is a way of shap-
ing that world. You might say that it construes the world in a particular way, that it
embodies a perspective onto the world. The easiest way to understand the point is
to think of spatial perspectives showing up in linguistic expressions, and the way
in which the same objective situation can be construed linguistically in different
ways. Think of a situation in which you are standing in your back garden and you
want to express where you left your bicycle. You could then both say It’s behind
the house and It’s in front of the house. These would seem to be contradictory
statements, except that they embody different perspectives.
In the first expression, the perspective is determined by the way you look: the
object that is situated in the direction of your gaze is in front of you, but if there
is an obstacle along that direction, the thing is behind that obstacle. In this case,
you’re looking in the direction of your bicycle from the back garden, but the house
blocks the view, and so the bike is behind the house.
In the second expression, however, the point of view is that of the house: a
house has a canonical direction, with a front that is similar to the face of a per-
son. The way a house is facing, then, is determined by its front, and the second
expression takes the point of view of the house rather than the speaker, as if the
house were a person looking in a certain direction. Such multiple perspectiviza-
tions (and not just spatial ones!) are everywhere in the language, and Cognitive
Linguistics attempts to analyze them.

LINGUISTIC¬MEANING¬IS¬DYNAMIC¬AND¬mEXIBLE
Meanings change, and there is a good reason for that: meaning has to do with
shaping our world, but we have to deal with a changing world. New experiences
and changes in our environment require that we adapt our semantic categories
to transformations of the circumstances, and that we leave room for nuances and
slightly deviant cases. For a theory of language, this means that we cannot just
think of language as a more or less rigid and stable structure – a tendency that is
quite outspoken in twentieth century linguistics. If meaning is the hallmark of
linguistic structure, then we should think of those structures as flexible. Again,
we don’t have to look far for an example. Think back to what we said about birds:
there is no single, rigid set of defining features that applies to all and only birds,
but we have a flexible family resemblance structure that is able to deal with mar-
ginal cases.

LINGUISTIC¬MEANING¬IS¬ENCYCLOPEDIC¬AND¬NON AUTONOMOUS
If meaning has to do with the way in which we interact with the world, it is natu-
ral to assume that our whole person is involved. The meaning we construct in
 Introduction: A rough guide to Cognitive Linguistics 5

and through the language is not a separate and independent module of the mind,
but it reflects our overall experience as human beings. Linguistic meaning is not
separate from other forms of knowledge of the world that we have, and in that
sense it is encyclopedic and non-autonomous: it involves knowledge of the world
that is integrated with our other cognitive capacities. There are at least two main
aspects to this broader experiential grounding of linguistic meaning.
First, we are embodied beings, not pure minds. Our organic nature influences
our experience of the world, and this experience is reflected in the language we
use. The behind/in front of example again provides a clear and simple illustration:
the perspectives we use to conceptualize the scene derive from the fact that our
bodies and our gaze have a natural orientation, an orientation that defines what
is in front of us and that we can project onto other entities, like houses.
Second, however, we are not just biological entities: we also have a cultural
and social identity, and our language may reveal that identity, i.e. languages may
embody the historical and cultural experience of groups of speakers (and indi-
viduals). Again, think of birds. The encyclopedic nature of language implies that
we have to take into account the actual familiarity that people have with birds: it
is not just the general definition of bird that counts, but also what we know about
sparrows and penguins and ostriches etc. But these experiences will differ from
culture to culture: the typical, most familiar birds in one culture will be different
from those in another, and that will affect the knowledge people associate with
a category like ‘bird’.

LINGUISTIC¬MEANING¬IS¬BASED¬ON¬USAGE¬AND¬EXPERIENCE
The idea that linguistic meaning is non-autonomously integrated with the rest
of experience is sometimes formulated by saying that meaning is experientially
grounded – rooted in experience. The experiential nature of linguistic knowledge
can be specified in yet another way, by pointing to the importance of language
use for our knowledge of a language.
Note that there is a lot of abstract structure in a language: think for instance
of the pattern Subject – Verb – Direct Object – Indirect Object that you find in a
sentence like Mary sent Peter a message. In many languages, such structures are
not directly observable: what we do observe, i.e. what constitutes the experiential
basis for our knowledge of the language, is merely a succession of words (and even
that is not entirely without problems, but let’s pass over those). So the question
arises: how does this more concrete level of words relate to the abstract level where
you find functional categories like Subject and Direct Object? In more traditional
terms, the question reads: how does the lexicon relate to the syntax?
But if we think of grammatical patterns as having an experiential basis in
concrete, observable strings of words, there is yet another step we have to take:
the ‘observable strings of words’ do not exist in the abstract; they are always part
6 Dirk Geeraerts

of actual utterances and actual conversations. The experience of language is an

experience of actual language use, not of words like you would find them in a
dictionary or sentence patterns like you would find them in a grammar. That is
why we say that Cognitive Linguistics is a usage-based model of grammar: if
we take the experiential nature of grammar seriously, we will have to take the
actual experience of language seriously, and that is experience of actual language
use. Again, from the point of view of mainstream twentieth century linguistics,
that is a fairly revolutionary approach. An existing tradition tended to impose
a distinction between the level of language structure and the level of language
use – in the terms of Ferdinand de Saussure (generally known as the founder of
modern linguistics), between langue and parole. Generally (and specifically in
the tradition of generative grammar), parole would be relatively unimportant: the
structural level would be essential, the usage level epiphenomenal. In a usage-
based model that considers the knowledge of language to be experientially based
in actual speech, that hierarchy of values is obviously rejected.