Cognitive Linguistics and its Applications to Second Language Teaching
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COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING
INTRODUCTION
Traditionally language has been viewed as an autonomous system, separate from other cognitive and social abilities. In this view, the language system operates under a set of arbitrary and unmotivated rules and properties and the various subcomponents of the language system such as syntax, morphology, and lexis are independent of each other. The approach to language learning that accompanies this view of language emphasizes the need for the learner to learn vocabulary items separately, master the grammar rules and memorize their exceptions. A radically different view of the language system is found in a cognitive linguistic approach. Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is based on the assumption that meaning is embodied and attempts to explain facts about language in terms of other properties and mechanisms of the human mind and body. Meaning is therefore often motivated through metaphor, metonymy, and image schemas, not only at the lexical level, but also in syntax and morphology (see also Nation, Lexical Awareness in Second Language Learning, Volume 6; Sharwood Smith, Morphological and Syntactic Awareness in Foreign/Second Language Learning, Volume 6). Even though studies that apply CL theoretical insights to L2 learning and teaching are still relatively sparse, applied linguists such as Nick Ellis (cf. 1998 and 1999) have explicitly stated that CL has a lot to offer to SLA because it provides for meaningful learning, giving insight into the conceptual principles that may give rise to different forms. This chapter first gives a brief overview of how CL has developed and then after explaining CL in more detail, it shows what a CL view entails for second language development and how it may be used in raising language awareness in second language teaching. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
CL developed in the 1970s from the work of a number of different researchers and has been influenced by many influential linguists, but it would be safe to say that its “founding fathers” are Leonard Talmy (1981), George Lakoff (1987), and Ronald Langacker (1987).
J. Cenoz and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 6: Knowledge about Language, 79–91. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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Cognitive linguists hold that language is part of, dependent on, and influenced by human cognition, including human perception and categorization and that language develops and changes through human interaction and experiences in the world. In other words, language is part of and influenced by psychological, sociological, and cultural factors. CL does not make any claims about psychological reality, but it does strive to create analyses that are at least psychologically, biologically, and neurologically plausible. Langacker even goes so far as to say that “despite its mental focus, cognitive linguistics can also be described as social, cultural, and contextual linguistics” (1997, p. 240). In addition
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