The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

by Dirk Geeraerts (Editor ), Hubert Cuyckens (Editor )

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied.
The first twenty chapters give readers the opportunity to acquire a thorough knowledge of the fundamental analytic concepts and descriptive models of Cognitive Linguistics and their background. The book starts with a set of chapters discussing different conceptual phenomena that are recognized as key concepts in Cognitive Linguistics: prototypicality, metaphor, metonymy, embodiment, perspectivization, mental spaces, etc. A second set of chapters deals with Cognitive Grammar, Construction Grammar, and Word Grammar, which, each in their own way, bring together the basic concepts into a particular theory of grammar and a specific model for the description of grammatical phenomena. Special attention is given to the interrelation between Cognitive and Construction Grammar. A third set of chapters compares Cognitive Linguistics with other forms of linguistic research (functional linguistics, autonomous linguistics, and the history of linguistics), thus giving a readers a better grip on the position of Cognitive Linguistics within the landscape of linguistics at large.
The remaining chapters apply these basic notions to various more specific linguistic domains, illustrating how Cognitive Linguistics deals with the traditional linguistic subdomains (phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, text and discourse), and demonstrating how it handles linguistic variation and change. Finally they consider its importance in the domain of Applied Linguistics, and look at interdisciplinary links with research fields such as philosophy and psychology.
With a well-known cast of contributors from around the world, this reference work will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in (cognitive) linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and anthropology.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, Philosophy

Hardcover

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Dirk Geeraerts holds the chair of theoretical linguistics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is the founder of the research unit Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL). His main research interests involve the overlapping fields of lexical semantics, lexicology, and lexicography, with a theoretical focus on cognitive semantics.

His involvement with cognitive linguistics dates from the 1980s, when in his PhD thesis he was one of the first in Europe to explore the possibilities of a prototype-theoretical model of categorization. As the founder of the journal Cognitive Linguistics and as the editor (with Hubert Cuyckens) of the Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, he played an instrumental role in the international expansion of cognitive linguistics.

Geeraerts is one of the outspoken advocates of the implementation of empirical methodologies, such as corpus linguistics in cognitive linguistic research and also argues for the involvement of more pragmatic elements such as contextual factors that influence the construal of word meanings and the choice of 'names' for concepts and the historical implications these have in relation to etymology and lexicology.