Book review

Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives.

Kristiansen, Gitte, Michel Achard, Rene Dirven, and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibañez (eds.). 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Reviewed by Eloy JM Romero-Muñoz, Université Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium

Over the past thirty years, Cognitive Linguistics has established itself in linguistics departments worldwide and has consequently developed a substantial body of findings (see for instance Wolf et al.'s expansive Cognitive Linguistics Bibliography). The rate at which readers (see for instance Evans et al. 2007, Geeraerts 2006) and introductory textbooks (see for instance Evans and Green 2006, Ungerer and Schmid 2006, Geeraerts and Cuykens 2007) are being published further indicates that Cognitive Linguistics has now come of age. Or has it? Few would question that investigations within the various cognitive linguistics frameworks have until recently remained rather traditional in nature insofar as they 'have rested mainly on the methodologies already standard in the field of linguistics overall: introspection in conjuction with theoretical analysis'(Talmy, 2007: xi). So much so in fact that some prominent researchers, mostly in the field of cognitive psychology, now consider a more empirical focus in cognitive linguistics research as a necessary evolution to ensure scientific credibility to the whole cognitive linguistics enterprise (Gibbs 2006, Sandra 1998, see also the contributions by Geeraerts and Veale in the book under review). The new series Applications of Cognitive Linguistics (ACL), which the present volume inaugurates, contributes to this 'empirical revolution' (2). More specifically, as is clear from the comprehensive introduction, it posits a relationship between theory and applications in Cognitive Linguistics that is not parallel or contingent, but directly constitutive.

Part one: The cognitive base (pp. 21-115)

Geeraerts opens part one with an almost programmatic section; he emphasizes the need for a more positivist approach in linguistics in order to 'bring about an intertheoretical level of comparability' (28). Geeraerts provides a detailed account of why and how CL needs to 'embrace the empirical turn' (44). CL represents a usage-based approach to language and, as such, it can only benefit from a more systematic and context-based study of actual language use (29). Taylor's contribution on 'Polysemy and the lexicon' offers an illustration of how language in use can be investigated within a CL framework. His 'corpus-based study of (some of the uses of) the expression all over' (52) problematizes the very notion of polysemy which he traces back to the so-called words and rules model (60). He concludes that knowing a word means understanding its 'established usage patterns and associated practices' (75). In contrast, Broccias's 'critical appraisal of four cognitive approaches to grammar' (81) does not as much contribute to 'the empirical revolution', but instead offers a comparison of Langacker's Cognitive Grammar, Goldberg's Construction Grammar, Croft's Radical Construction Grammar, and Fauconnier and Turner's Blending theory.

Part 2: The conceptual leap (pp. 117-208)

Rohrer's article dovetails with part one in that it explores a fundamental tenet of Cognitive Linguistics - the embodied nature of metaphorical knowledge - from a cross-linguistic, 'cross-methodological' (139) perspective. Rohrer starts by exposing 'three false dogmas of embodiment' (120): embodiment as an eliminative reductionism of language to the biophysical (120-1), embodiment as temporally static (121-2), and finally embodiment as consciousness (or unconsciousness) (122-4). He concludes a) that language is both a biophysical and sociocultural activity, b) that brain structure evolves, and so does embodiment, and c) that 'mental processes are in principle accessible to consciousness' (123), or as Rohrer prefers to call it, 'awareness' (124). Panther's contribution on 'Metonymy as a usage event' brings us back to an empirical discussion of metaphor and metonymy in the vein of C.S. Peirce. The difference between metaphor and metonymy, Panther contends, 'resides in the type of semiotic relation between their respective source and target [...]: metaphor is as an iconic relation and metonymy an indexical relation' (148, Panther's emphasis). In his two case studies, Panther convincingly argues that if usage lies at the center of the semiotic experience, it means the interpretation of new expressions depends more on context than on 'preexisting metonymic principles' (179). Seana Coulson's article equally comes within the scope of cognitive semantics. Coulson states that conceptual blending and conceptual metaphor are interdependent, because 'conventional mappings [i.e. metaphors] provide speakers with an infrastructure to support the more dynamic ... mappings that underlie ... particular instances [i.e. blends]' (188). Her discussion of political humor and absurdity in connection with ideology is reminiscent of Eagleton (2007), especially when it views supposedly subversive cultural artifacts as 'part of the larger social negotiation of the proper application of cultural models' (205).

Part 3: The psychological basis (pp. 209-60)

This chapter tries to do justice to the fundamental contribution of cognitive psychology to the cognitive enterprise. Gibbs and Perelman's piece restates the idea that cognitive linguists need to pay more attention to methodology. More specifically, Gibbs and Perelman problematize the CL notion of conceptual metaphor by referring to the general 'skepticism that many scholars have about drawing inferences about the nature of thought from linguistic analysis' (214). They go on to point to the many limitations of CMT, namely the absence of explicit criteria to recognize metaphorical language or even conceptual metaphors, let alone to understand them (215-6). The numerous methodological suggestions that follow echo Geeraerts' article in part one and likewise revolve around the necessity for a more context-based, systematic and thereby replicable approach (216-7). Gibbs and Perelman also highlight the role of external 'forces' such as 'historical convention, cultural norms, and social context' in metaphor understanding (217). All this (constructive) criticism does not preclude Gibbs and Perelman from providing empirical evidence from psycholinguistics to support some of the theoretical principles underlying CMT, especially the importance of embodiment. Özçalişkan and Goldin-Meadow's thorough discussion of 'X IS LIKE Y' constructions provides even more empirical proof for the embodied nature of proto-metaphorical utterances. Their data confirm that 'gesture-speech combinations expressing a similarity relation clearly [precede] the 'X IS LIKE Y' construction in speech, signaling a child's readiness to make similarity-based mappings in appropriate syntactic packaging' (253).

Part four: Go, tell it on the mountain (pp. 261-355)

Palmer's contribution highlights the congruence between cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology on the basis of much empirical data from Western and non-Western languages. One sub-section stands out: Language as culture (264-7). Palmer first points to the limitations of the notion of embodiment which only accounts for patterns that are 'innate or 'emergent'' throughout the world (264). The truth about language is that 'most [categories] are woven into the web of cultural patterns ... and take meaning from their cultural loci' (265), a view consistent with claims in Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. In the same chapter, but on a completely different subject altogether, Boers and Lindstromberg detail current cognitive approaches to L2 acquisition and go on to explicate how L2 pedagogy could benefit even more from CL insights. Of special interest to education-oriented applied linguists, then, is the section on semantic motivation. As Boers and Lindstromberg put it, the view that 'important segments of language are motivated rather than arbitrary' should change the way we approach learning in ways that make the learning process more palatable to students (313). All this may be true for relatively advanced students and fewer 'exceptions' is always a good thing; it remains to be seen, however, how one could implement a CL-inspired approach to, say, polysemy or so-called 'dead metaphors', that would suit lower level classroom settings. I would be inclined to teach using CL insights (for instance Rudzka-Ostyn's (2003) textbook on phrasal verbs), but not to try to make the abstract reasoning that underpin it too explicit.

Part five: Verbal and beyond: Vision and imgination (pp. 356-428)

Janzen's article is reminiscent of Özçalişkan and Goldin-Meadow's in part three in that it explicitly deals with the conceptual potential of signs. Where Özçalişkan and Goldin-Meadow restrict their discussion to the role of gestures in early conceptual utterances, Janzen underscores the importance of signs when trying to understand the very nature of language, for signed language seems to be 'the epitome of embodied language' (372). He describes signs as an interface between conceptual space and articulation with clear iconicity at all levels of abstractness, a view that does away with the idea that signed languages are but non-verbal mimicry of their spoken counterparts. Consequently, Janzen suggests that we develop a cognitive iconicity on the basis of cognitive grammar. In his contribution, Forceville also sets out to test the boundaries of CMT. More specifically, he '[adopts] the view that metaphor can assume non-verbal and multimodal appearances' (381). Janzen further urges cognitive semanticists to pay closer attention to multimodal metaphors and other ubiquitous tropes, and to develop tools for the critical evaluation of 'persuasive discourse in the broadest sense' (395). One can only lament that Janzen saves 'new insights' - and hopefully more empirical data - for subsequent publication. Freeman's contribution offers a look at multimodal expressions of which literary texts are a clear instance. Her detailed close reading of Frost's 'Mending Wall' reminds us that 'poetic iconicity bridges the 'gap' between mind and world' by conjuring up a synesthetic representation of the world (408). Her aim is to exemplify the relevance of cognitive linguistics to literature. Yet it can be questioned whether the way she does it - literally running through a checklist of CL concepts - best serves her project of facilitating an interpretation of the text as a whole.

Part six: Virtual reality as a new experience (pp. 429-83)

This chapter deals with the challenges posed by computational linguistics to cognitive linguistics and vice versa. Both contributions indeed put some fundamental CL findings to the test in ways that 'can confirm the viability of a proposal but can also reveal new problems and issues, or put existing ones into sharper relief' (431). Barnden's piece very much echoes Panther's criticism of CMT earlier in the volume in that it questions the validity of domains and, as a corollary, of the very distinction between metaphor and metonymy. Veale on the other hand problematizes an even more fundamental aspect of the CL enterprise: the object of study (cognition as expressed in language) is also the medium through which we study it. Wittgenstein is just around the corner. Computational models, Veale contends, can helps us overcome the problem of the metalanguage and bring CL desirable properties of scientific theories, especially falsifiability (466).

Conclusion

This book is an authoritative review of current applications and future perspectives within the CL framework. It brings together researchers from all disciplines who convincingly demonstrate how and why CL can and should become methodologically more stringent. All in all, the volume under review will prove useful to junior researchers and graduate students either as an overview of CL-oriented research or as a solid theoretical foundation on which to base future research of their own.

References

Eagleton, T. 2007. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Longman.

Evans, V., Bergen, B. K., and Zinken, J (Eds). 2007. The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London: Equinox.

Evans, V, and Green, M. 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Geeraerts, D. (Ed.). 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Geeraerts, D., and Cuykens, H. (Eds.). 2007. Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gibbs, R. W. 2006. Just why should cognitive linguists care about empirical evidence, much less want to go to the trouble of gathering it? In M. Gonzalez-Marquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson & M. J. Spivey (eds), Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rudzka-Ostyn, B. 2003. Word Power: Phrasal Verbs and Compounds. A Cognitive Approach. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Sandra, D. 1998. What linguists can and can't tell you about the human mind: A reply to Croft. Cognitive Linguistics, 9(4), 361–478.

Talmy, L. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics (2 volumes). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Talmy, L. 2007. Foreword. In M. Gonzalez-Marquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson & M. J. Spivey (eds), Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ungerer, F. and Hans-Jorg Schmid (eds.). 2006. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Longman.

Wittgenstein, L. 1979. On Certainty. London: Blackwell.

Wolf, H.-G., Dirven, R., Yu , Smieja, B., De Knop, S., Chen, R, Cognitive Linguistics Bibliography (Cogbib). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006 (CD-version).

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