10 - The contextual basis of cognitive semantics

Summary

Introduction

In presenting the theory of cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987, 1990a, 1991), I have often encountered the misconception that cognitive linguistics is unconcerned or even incompatible with the study of language in its social, cultural, and discourse context. My description of conceptualization as the locus of meaning and the basis for grammar is commonly taken as implying that contextual factors are unimportant, if not excluded altogether. While it is understandable how this impression comes about, my stated position is actually quite the opposite (1987: chs. 2, 4, 10). My purpose here is thus to explain just why and to what extent a conceptual view of meaning can nonetheless be contextually grounded. The topic raises a variety of fundamental theoretical issues: the location and nature of linguistic knowledge; the relationship among language, cognition, and culture; the place and role of the conceptualizer in semantic structure; and the degree of compositionality exhibited by complex expressions.

Language and minds

Assuming that it is useful for certain purposes to talk about ‘a language’, the question arises as to where such an entity might be located. Could it be, for example, that a language resides entirely in individual minds? This is one way to interpret a basic notion of generative theory, which regards the ‘grammar of a language’ as a discrete module of psychological organization (the output of the ‘language acquisition device’).