“Language is only the tip of a spectacular cognitive iceberg” (Fauconnier), and cognition is linked to how we bodily experience the world. Cognitive Linguistics is therefore concerned with how we make sense of the world, i.e. language is seen as a symbolic system for creating and storing meaning. Concepts and theories that are typically part of the cognitive enterprise are the following: - the formation of concepts and categories involving prototypes, gradience and fuzziness – and how this is linked both to specific language and culture (e.g. how many colour terms do we use, what are our ideas about the category BIRD); - basic figurative thought and language, esp. metaphor and metonymy (e.g. ANGER is hot liquid in a pressurized container, cf. he was boiling with rage); - the organisation of meaning into larger interconnected structures, both static and dynamic: frames (e.g. what belongs to a house), scripts (e.g. what happens typically at a restaurant), idealized cognitive models (e.g. stereotypes about MOTHER) etc.; - the degree of speaker presence in the discourse (subjectivity). |
