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67 results in Cognitive linguistics

Page 1 of 4

Genes, Brains, Evolution and Language
  • The Innateness Debate Continued
  • Harry van der Hulst
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • Half a century ago, Noam Chomsky posited that humans have specific innate mental abilities to learn and use language, distinct from other animals. This book, a follow-up to the author's previous textbook, A Mind for Language, continues to critically examine the development of this central aspect of linguistics: the innateness debate. It expands upon key themes in the debate - discussing arguments that come from other disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, criminology, computer science, formal languages theory, neuroscience, genetics, animal communication, and evolutionary biology. The innateness claim also leads us to ask how human language evolved as a characteristic trait of Homo Sapiens. Written in an accessible way, assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, the book guides the reader through technical concepts, and employs concrete examples throughout. It is accompanied by a range of online resources, including further material, a glossary, discussion points, questions for reflection, and project suggestions.

The Language of Memes
  • Patterns of Meaning Across Image and Text
  • Barbara Dancygier, Lieven Vandelanotte
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • Internet memes have been studied widely for their role in establishing and maintaining social relationships, and shaping public opinion, online. However, they are also a prominent and fast evolving multimodal genre, one which calls for an in-depth linguistic analysis. This book, the first of its kind, develops the analytical tools necessary to describe and understand contemporary 'image-plus-text' communication. It demonstrates how memes achieve meaning as multimodal artifacts, how they are governed by specific rules of composition and interpretation, and how such processes are driven by stance networks. It also defines a family of multimodal constructions in which images become structural components, while making language forms adjust to the emerging multimodal rules. Through analysis of several meme types, this approach defines the specificity of the memetic genre, describing established types, but also accounting for creative forms. In describing the 'grammar of memes', it provides a new model to approach multimodal genres.

The Cambridge Handbook of Language and Brain
  • Edited by Edna Andrews, Swathi Kiran
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • The topic of language and brain is a large and significant area of research and study, and this Handbook provides a state-of-the-art survey of the field. Bringing together contributions from an interdisciplinary team of internationally-renowned scholars, it focuses on important theoretical positions that have changed the study of language and brain in the first two decades of the 21st century. It is split into seven thematic parts, covering topics such as theoretical foundations of language and brain, neuroimaging studies of brain and language, language and cognitive development, building cognitive brain reserve and the importance of proficiency, aphasia and autism spectrum disorders, brain, language and music, and new directions and perspectives. Representing the most powerful trends in the field, it will inform new directions in the study of language and brain, cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, and scholars and advanced students will find this compilation an invaluable resource for years to come.

Modality in Mind
  • Jan Nuyts
  • Published online:
    25 March 2025
    Print publication:
    27 March 2025
  • Modality – the ways in which language can express grades of reality or truth – is the subject of a vast and long-established body of research. In this book, field-leader Jan Nuyts brings together twenty years of his research to offer a comprehensive, fully integrated view on areas of contentious debate within modality, from a functional and cognitive perspective. The book provides an empirically grounded, conceptual reanalysis of modality and related categories including evidentiality, volition, intention, directivity, subjectivity and mirativity. It argues for the dissolution of the category of modality and for an alternative division of the wider field of semantic notions at stake. The analysis also reflects on how to model the language faculty, and on the issue of language and thought. It is essential reading for researchers interested in the semantics of modality and in the implications of this domain for understanding the cognitive infrastructure for language and thought.

The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar
  • Edited by Mirjam Fried, Kiki Nikiforidou
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • Construction Grammar is one of the fastest-growing branches of functional syntax. Bringing together an international team of scholars, this handbook provides a complete overview of the current issues and applications in this approach. Divided into six thematic parts, it covers the fundamental notions of Construction Grammar, its conceptual origins and the basic ideas that unite its various branches, its solid empirical grounding and affinities with corpus linguistics, and the diverse perspectives in constructional scholarship. It highlights advances in discourse-related topics and applications to various domains, including multimodal communication, language learning and teaching and computational linguistics, and each chapter contains numerous illustrative examples and case studies involving a variety of languages. It also includes in-depth, empirically-grounded analyses of diverse theoretical, methodological, and interdisciplinary issues, alongside step-by-step introductions to the theory, making it essential reading for both researchers and students working in functional and cognitive approaches to linguistic analysis and syntactic theory.

Language, Image, Gesture
  • The Cognitive Semiotics of Politics
  • Christopher Hart
  • Published online:
    08 January 2025
    Print publication:
    13 February 2025
  • Politics is an inherently symbolic practice. This innovative book advances a framework for the critical analysis of political texts and talk based in cognitive linguistics. Through detailed analyses of attested semiotic practices, it provides a current, comprehensive and authoritative statement on the paradigm of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (Cognitive CDA). The ideological effects of dominant conceptualisations and their implications for the legitimation of social action are explored with reference to political topics that have defined the last decade, including immigration, the rise of nationalism, the right to protest, Brexit and Covid-19. A range of conceptual phenomena are addressed, including image schematic patterning, attentional distribution, viewpoint and metaphor, as they feature in various contexts, genres and modes of political discourse. In a major advancement of the paradigm, the book extends Cognitive CDA to images and gesture to consider the role played by multiple semiotic modes in the discursive performance of politics.

Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency
  • Edited by Eva Duran Eppler, Nikolas Gisborne, Andrew Rosta
  • Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    02 January 2025
  • Established in the early 1980s, Word Grammar is the first theory of grammar that was cast in the terms of cognitive linguistics. This book surveys the groundbreaking contribution of WG to a number of disciplines both within and outside of linguistics. It illustrates the benefits of thinking beyond traditional phrase-structural notions of syntax, and beyond encapsulated theories of cognition, by exploring how key problems in theoretical linguistics and historical linguistics can be approached from alternative perspectives. It provides examples of how theoretical linguistic notions and constructs of WG can be applied to bilingual language use, as well as a variety of typologically different languages including English, Chinese, German and Swedish. It also explores the relationship between language and social cognition and dependency distance as a universal measure of syntactic complexity. It is essential reading for linguists seeking creative ideas on how to advance explanations of language, language variation and change.

The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies
  • Edited by Alan Cienki
  • Published online:
    01 May 2024
    Print publication:
    18 April 2024
  • The study of gesture-the movements people make with their hands when talking-has grown into a well-established field and research is still being pushed into exciting new directions. Bringing together a team of leading scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of gesture studies, combining historical overviews as well as current, concise snapshots of state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary research. Organised into five thematic parts, it considers the roles of both psychological and interactional processes in gesture use, and considers the status of gesture in relation to language. Attention is given to different theoretical and methodological frameworks for studying gesture, including semiotic, linguistic, cognitive, developmental, and phenomenological theories and observational, experimental, corpus linguistic, ethnographic, and computational methods. It also contains practical guidelines for gesture analysis along with surveys of empirical research. Wide ranging yet accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in linguistics and cognitive sciences.

Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Theories and Applications
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Lihong Huang, Carl Polley
  • Published online:
    01 February 2024
    Print publication:
    08 February 2024
  • Although cognitive processes are fundamental in shaping the language that we speak, they are often overlooked in language teaching and learning. This groundbreaking book addresses how to use key cognitive linguistic (CL) concepts to analyze the Chinese language and to advance L2 Chinese teaching and learning. It presents an overview of the most prominent CL research published in both Chinese and English and explores how it applies to L1 and L2 Chinese studies. Including sample lesson plans and classroom activities, it demonstrates to language teachers how to use CL-based approaches to explain and teach a wide range of linguistic phenomena to their students. Researchers will also gain new insights from the summaries of recent advances and contrastive analyses between English and Chinese. Covering up-to-date research, yet written in a clear and engaging style, it will foster a new understanding of teaching and learning Chinese.

The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context
  • Edited by Jesús Romero-Trillo
  • Published online:
    30 November 2023
    Print publication:
    14 December 2023
  • For more than a decade, linguistics has moved increasingly away from evaluating language as an autonomous phenomenon, towards analysing it 'in use', and showing how its function within its social and interactional context plays an important role in shaping in its form. Bringing together state-of-the-art research from some of the most influential scholars in linguistics today, this Handbook presents an extensive picture of the study of language as it used 'in context' across a number of key linguistic subfields and frameworks. Organised into five thematic parts, the volume covers a range of theoretical perspectives, with each chapter surveying the latest work from areas as diverse as syntax, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, conversational analysis, multimodality, and computer-mediated communication. Comprehensive, yet wide-ranging, the Handbook presents a full description of how the theory of context has revolutionised linguistics, and how its renewed study is crucial in an ever-changing world.

Time, Metaphor, and Language
  • A Cognitive Science Perspective
  • Sarah E. Duffy, Michele I. Feist
  • Published online:
    09 November 2023
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023
  • Across languages, time tends to be understood in terms of space. For instance, we might think of time as an unstoppable train heading towards us when we hear 'holidays are coming', or we might imagine time as a landscape that we move across as we 'approach the moment of truth'. In this pioneering book, Duffy and Feist bring together research from across disciplines to provide a more nuanced understanding of what metaphor is and how it underpins our conceptualizations of time. Illustrated with a wide range of authentic examples from natural language, the book offers a holistic understanding of metaphors for time, encompassing the varied ways in which people draw on spatial experiences, as well as the broader variety of 'human experience' on an individual level. In doing so, it highlights the importance of variation across cultures, across contexts, and across individuals for metaphoric conceptualization.

A Mind for Language
  • An Introduction to the Innateness Debate
  • Harry van der Hulst
  • Published online:
    13 October 2023
    Print publication:
    21 September 2023
  • How does human language arise in the mind? To what extent is it innate, or something that is learned? How do these factors interact? The questions surrounding how we acquire language are some of the most fundamental about what it means to be human and have long been at the heart of linguistic theory. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to this fascinating debate, unravelling the arguments for the roles of nature and nurture in the knowledge that allows humans to learn and use language. An interdisciplinary approach is used throughout, allowing the debate to be examined from philosophical and cognitive perspectives. It is illustrated with real-life examples and the theory is explained in a clear, easy-to-read way, making it accessible for students, and other readers, without a background in linguistics. An accompanying website contains a glossary, questions for reflection, discussion themes and project suggestions, to further deepen students understanding of the material.

Construction Grammar
  • Thomas Hoffmann
  • Published online:
    20 September 2023
    Print publication:
    28 July 2022
  • What do speakers of a language have to know, and what can they 'figure out' on the basis of that knowledge, in order for them to use their language successfully? This is the question at the heart of Construction Grammar, an approach to the study of language that views all dimensions of language as equal contributors to shaping linguistic expressions. The trademark characteristic of Construction Grammar is the insight that language is a repertoire of more or less complex patterns – constructions – that integrate form and meaning. This textbook shows how a Construction Grammar approach can be used to analyse the English language, offering explanations for language acquisition, variation and change. It covers all levels of syntactic description, from word-formation and inflectional morphology to phrasal and clausal phenomena and information-structure constructions. Each chapter includes exercises and further readings, making it an accessible introduction for undergraduate students of linguistics and English language.

Referring in Language
  • An Integrated Approach
  • Lise Fontaine, Katy Jones, David Schönthal
  • Published online:
    22 June 2023
    Print publication:
    25 May 2023
  • Referential expressions include terms such as determiners, proper names, noun phrases, pronouns, and all other expressions that we use to make reference to things, beings, or events. The first of its kind, this book presents a detailed, integrated account of typical and atypical uses of referential expressions, combining insights from discourse, cognitive, and psycholinguistic literature within a functional model of language. It first establishes a foundation for reference, including an overview of key influences in the study of reference, the debates surrounding (in)definiteness, and a functional description of referring expressions. It then draws on a variety of approaches to provide a comprehensive explanation of atypical uses, including referring in an uncollaborative context, indefinite expressions used for definite reference, reference by and for children, and finally metonymic reference with a special focus on metonymy in medical contexts. Comprehensive in scope, it is essential reading for academic researchers in syntax, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics.

Systemic Functional Grammar
  • A Text-Based Description of English, Spanish and Chinese
  • J.R. Martin, Beatriz Quiroz, Pin Wang
  • Published online:
    15 June 2023
    Print publication:
    08 June 2023
  • Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a usage-based theory of language, founded on the assumption that language is shaped entirely by its various functions in the contexts in which it used. The first of its kind, this book advances SFL by applying it comparatively to English, Spanish and Chinese. By analysing English alongside two other, typologically very different major world languages, it shows how SFL can effectively address two central issues in linguistics – namely typology and universals. It concentrates in particular on argumentation, carefully explaining how descriptions of nominal group, verbal group and clause systems and structures are motivated, and draws on examples from key texts which display a full range of ideational, interpersonal and textual grammar resources. By working across three world languages from a text-based perspective, and demonstrating how grammar descriptions can be developed and improved, the book establishes the foundations for a groundbreaking functional approach to language typology.

Communicative Efficiency
  • Language Structure and Use
  • Natalia Levshina
  • Published online:
    03 November 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022
  • All living beings try to save effort, and humans are no exception. This groundbreaking book shows how we save time and energy during communication by unconsciously making efficient choices in grammar, lexicon and phonology. It presents a new theory of 'communicative efficiency', the idea that language is designed to be as efficient as possible, as a system of communication. The new framework accounts for the diverse manifestations of communicative efficiency across a typologically broad range of languages, using various corpus-based and statistical approaches to explain speakers' bias towards efficiency. The author's unique interdisciplinary expertise allows her to provide rich evidence from a broad range of language sciences. She integrates diverse insights from over a hundred years of research into this comprehensible new theory, which she presents step-by-step in clear and accessible language. It is essential reading for language scientists, cognitive scientists and anyone interested in language use and communication.

Talking in Clichés
  • The Use of Stock Phrases in Discourse and Communication
  • Stella Bullo, Derek Bousfield
  • Published online:
    27 October 2022
    Print publication:
    03 November 2022
  • For decades, social perspectives, and even academic studies of language, have considered clichés as a hackneyed, tired, lazy, unthinking and uninspiring form of communication. Authored by two established scholars in the fields of Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Discourse Studies and Pragmatics, this cutting-edge book comprehensively explores the perception and use of clichés in language from these complementary perspectives. It draws data from a variety of both written and spoken sources, to re-interrogate and re-imagine the nature, role and usage of clichés, identifying the innovative and creative ways in which the concepts are utilised in communication, interaction, and in self-presentation. Observing a rich, complex layering of usage, the authors deconstruct the many and varied ways in which clichés operate and are interdependently constructed; from the role they play in discourse in general, to their functions as argumentative strategies, as constructs of social cognition, as politeness strategies, and finally as markers of identity.

Feeling, Thinking, and Talking
  • How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication
  • L. David Ritchie
  • Published online:
    08 September 2022
    Print publication:
    15 September 2022
  • The way the brain, body, and mind interact with social structure to shape communication has so far not received the attention it deserves. This book addresses this gap by providing a novel account of communication as a social, biological and neurological force. Combining theories from communication studies and psycholinguistics, and drawing on biological and evolutionary perspectives, it shows how communication is inherently both biological and social, and that language and the neural systems that support it have evolved in response to a complex social environment. It introduces a clear set of terms based on current research, and illustrates key concepts using real-life examples from everyday conversation - speaking to a number of current debates around the evolutionary and biological basis of language, and the relationship between language, cognition, and environment. Thought provoking and engaging, it will change the way we think about the relationship between communication and cognition.

The Cambridge Handbook of Childhood Multilingualism
  • Edited by Anat Stavans, Ulrike Jessner
  • Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022
  • Childhood multilingualism has become a norm rather than an exception. This is the first handbook to survey state-of-the-art research on the uniqueness of early multilingual development in children growing up with more than two languages in contact. It provides in-depth accounts of the complexity and dynamics of early multilingualism by internationally renowned scholars who have researched typologically different languages in different continents. Chapters are divided into six thematic areas, following the trajectory, environment and conditions underlying the incipient and early stages of multilingual children's language development. The many facets of childhood multilingualism are approached from a range of perspectives, showcasing not only the challenges of multilingual education and child-rearing but also the richness in linguistic and cognitive development of these children from infancy to early schooling. It is essential reading for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of the multiple aspects of multilingualism, seen through the unique prism of children.

The Grammar of Hate
  • Morphosyntactic Features of Hateful, Aggressive, and Dehumanizing Discourse
  • Edited by Natalia Knoblock
  • Published online:
    30 June 2022
    Print publication:
    14 July 2022
  • Hate speech continues to be an issue of key social significance, yet while its lexical and discursive aspects have been widely studied, its grammatical traits have been hitherto overlooked. This book seeks to address this gap by bringing together a global team of scholars to explore the morphosyntactic features of hateful and aggressive discourse. Drawing on thirteen diverse cross-linguistic case studies, it reveals how hate is expressed in political discourse, slang, and social media, and towards a range of target groups relating to gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic identity. Based on ideas from functional and cognitive linguistics, each thematic part demonstrates how features such as morphology, word formation, pronoun use, and syntactic structures are manipulated for the purpose of expressing hostility and hate. An innovative approach to an age-old problem, this book is essential reading for researchers and students of hate speech and verbal aggression.

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