Emancipation of Lexical Motivation and Second Language Teaching under the Framework of Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract

Unlike formal linguistic paradigm which starts from the assumption that language is basically arbitrary. Cognitive linguistics holds that motivation in language is both primary and pervasive. This paper intends to justify the necessity of explicit lexical instruction and an instruction methodology that is made possible by cognitive linguistics, namely, emancipation of lexical motivations which can facilitate the understanding and memorization of multi-words expressions and in-depth lexical knowledge and points out the challenges teachers may face in the conduction of the new language teaching approach.