Читать книгу The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition - Zoltan Dornyei - Страница 7

Cognitive linguistics can be seen as a broad theoretical movement, subsuming different theories that share certain common features, the most important and most general of which being the commitment to work with constructs that have some psychological reality. (For SLA-specific overviews, see Achard and Niemeier 2004; Robinson and N. Ellis 2008b.) It is a relatively new area of linguistics, dating back to 1990, when the flagship journal of the approach, Cognitive Linguistics, was launched (N. Ellis and Robinson 2008).

Croft and Cruse (2004) list three major hypotheses that have guided the cognitive linguistic approach to language: (1) language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty; (2) grammar is conceptualization; and (3) knowledge of language emerges from language use. These principles are closely related to the usage-based theories of language acquisition discussed in Ch. 3 and, indeed, as Tomasello (2003) states, the new wave of usage/item/exemplar-based linguistic theories usually appear under the general banner of functional and/or cognitive linguistics.

The ‘cognitive’ label also reflects the general drive to make cognitive linguistic theories compatible with the main principles of cognition and, more specifically, with models in cognitive psychology, such as models of memory, perception, attention, and categorization. In the introduction to their recent comprehensive overview of the field, N. Ellis and Robinson (2008: 4) summarize this cognitive commitment:

The additional cognitive commitment of CL [cognitive linguistics] is to specify the interface of linguistic representation (grammatical factors), which can be used to communicative effect in producing utterances, with other aspects of conceptual structure (e.g. semantic factors, such as our concepts of time, and spatial location), as well as with the constraints imposed by the architecture of cognitive processes, and the structure of cognitive abilities (e.g. psychological factors, such as those involved in the allocation and inhibition of attention).

Most of the past research in cognitive linguistics has focused on semantics (Croft and Cruse 2004), but syntax and morphology have also been addressed, and as we will see in Ch. 3, cognitive linguists have recently made substantial progress in exploring issues related to (mainly first) language acquisition. The semantic emphasis has been a consequence of the central belief in cognitive linguistics that words reflect broader underlying conceptual systems, not unlike the tip of an iceberg; in Fauconnier’s (2003: 540) words: ‘Hidden behind simple words and everyday language are vast conceptual networks manipulated unconsciously through the activation of powerful neural circuits.’ This perspective explains the special significance attached to the study of metaphors in their role as powerful conceptual mappings that are central to both everyday language use and scientific terminologies. Metaphor theory, started by Lakoff and Johnson in the 1980s, proposes that by linking source domains of human experience to abstract concepts, metaphors contribute considerably to the development of thought. That is, except for talking about purely physical reality, our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature, and therefore unpacking the conceptual meaning behind metaphors offers unique inroads into the understanding of cognition. (For summaries of metaphors, see Cameron 2003; Kövecses 2005.)