Dresden Technical University

Survey
Cognitive Linguistics.
Worth a Professorial Position?

by

Kristin Prescher

Contents

1. Introduction  4

2. The traditional view  4

3. Categorization and Prototypes  5

3. 1. Categorization  5
3. 2. The Classical Approach  6
3. 3. Family Resemblance  7
3. 4. Colour Categorization  8
3. 5. Prototypes 9
3. 6. Basic Level Categories 10

4. Conceptual metaphors and Cognitive Models  11

4. 1. Conceptual metaphors  11
4. 2. Image schemas  13

5. Frames and Scripts  14

6. Conclusion 15

7. Summary  16

Bibliography 17

1. Introduction

The aim of this paper is to give a brief overview of the core ideas, approaches and the main representatives of Cognitive Linguistics and in which way this approach differs from the classical structuralistic view. The explanations will not be exhaustive at all, but should suffice to make clear how revolutionary the ideas of Cognitive Linguistics are and how it will hopefully influence linguistics in general in the future.

Cognitive Linguistics developed at the beginning of the 1980ies mainly in the United States as a completely new approach to the study of language and mind and how these two are related. According to cognitive linguist Gilles FAUCONNIER "perhaps for the first time a genuine science of meaning construction and its dynamics has been launched"¹. The representatives see language as one of the most significant characteristics of cognitive activities and therefore the aim is to describe and explain mental structures and processes which are important to the processing of human language. According to Gilles FAUCONNIER, language is only the "tip of a cognitive iceberg"². How does this view differ from the theories represented by structural linguistics?

2. The traditional view

Modern linguists have been unsatisfied with many traditional views, such as the classical approach to feature analysis, the postulate of language autonomy and compositionality and the arbitrainess of linguistic meaning. FAUCONNIER complains that in the traditional view linguists discover structure "for the sake of structure itself"³. He among other cognitive linguists critizises the sharply autonomous view of language structure as pointed out by the linguist Ferdinand DE SAUSSURE. According to the structuralistic view language consists of a system of relationsships between meanings and sounds. DE SAUSSURE also claimed that a signifier is arbitrarily attached to the signified concept: "Le signifiant (...) et le signifié (...) sont les deux élements composant le signe. Nous dirons donc: (...) Dans la langue le lien unissant le signifiant au signifié est un lien radicalement arbitraire."⁴ He holds the view that language is a self-contained, autonomous sytem that is to be studied and not the individual terms: "On ne peut prendre les mots isolément. C’est ainsi que le systeme (...) est une des sources de la valeur. (...) ce qui est dans le mot n’est jamais déterminé que par le concours de ce qui existe autour de lui. (...)"⁵ The meaning of a word is defined as the value of the sign within the sign system. "Ce n’est que par le différence des signes qu’il sera possible de leur donner une fonction, une valeur."⁶ In contrast to this theory, cognitive linguists have found out that the world outthere is not at all that independent from language as assumed by the structuralists. This has been proved by different representatives of cognitive linguistics and is going to be explained later on in this paper.

3. Categorization and Prototypes

3. 1. Categorization

[...]

1 Gilles FAUCONNIER in: Theo JANSSEN & Gisela REDEKER (ed.): Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope, and Methodology (1999: 96). Translation: "(…) wahrscheinlich erstmalig ist eine echte Wissenschaft der Konstruktion von Bedeutungen und ihrer Dynamik in Gang gekommen (...)".

2 Gilles FAUCONNIER in: JANSSEN/ REDEKER (1999: 96). Translation: [Sprache ist nur] "die Spitze des kognitiven Eisbergs".

3 Gilles FAUCONNIER in: JANSSEN/ REDEKER (1999: 95). Translation: [in der traditionellen Sichtweise erforschen die Linguisten Struktur] "um der Struktur selbst willen".

4 Ferdinand DE SAUSSURE: Troisieme cours de linguistique generale (1910-1911), d’après les cahiers d’Emile Constantin. Translated and edited by ROY HARRIS (1993: 93). Translation: „Das Bezeichnende und das Bezeichnete sind die beiden Elemente, die das Zeichen bilden. In der Sprache ist die Verbindung zwischen dem bezeichnenden und dem bezeichneten Element völlig arbiträr [=willkürlich].“

5 Ferdinand DE SAUSSURE in: HARRIS (1993: 136). Translation: „Man kann das Wort nicht isoliert betrachten. Das System (...) bildet eine Quelle für den Wert. (...) was das Wort beinhaltet ist immer einzig und allein durch das bestimmt, was um es herum existiert.“

6 Ferdinand DE SAUSSURE (1910-1911) in: HARRIS (1993: 142). Translation: „Einzig und allein die Unterschiede zwischen den Zeichen ermöglichen es, ihnen eine Funktion, einen Wert zuzuschreiben.“