A broad view of cognitive linguistics

Abstract

Cognitive linguistics can offer an account not only of linguistic structure but also of a wide variety of social and cultural phenomena. The comprehensive account presented in this paper is crucially based and dependent on cognitive capacities that human understanders and producers of language possess quite independently of their ability to use language. By discussing the cognitive processes and the various linguistic, social and cultural issues they help us describe and explain, the author demonstrates that cognitive linguistics is far more than a theory of language; one can think of it as a theory of "meaning-making" in general in its innumerable linguistic, social and cultural facets.