Abstract
Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is grounded in the view that language reflects conceptualization, with linguistic structure emerging from how speakers construe experience and coordinate meaning in use. Developed in the late twentieth century as an alternative to formalist models of grammar, CL adopts a meaning-centred approach in which meaning is encyclopaedic, grammar is inherently meaningful, and linguistic structure is shaped by usage. From this perspective, linguistic patterns reflect domain-general cognitive processes shaped by experience and language use.
This entry outlines CL’s core theoretical commitments and surveys major strands of research, including conceptual structure and construal, metaphor and metonymy, grammar and constructions, and usage-based approaches to learning and processing, before turning to interdisciplinary and applied developments. Across these areas, CL advances a unified account of language as a socially situated, usage-shaped, and meaning-driven component of human cognition.
This entry outlines CL’s core theoretical commitments and surveys major strands of research, including conceptual structure and construal, metaphor and metonymy, grammar and constructions, and usage-based approaches to learning and processing, before turning to interdisciplinary and applied developments. Across these areas, CL advances a unified account of language as a socially situated, usage-shaped, and meaning-driven component of human cognition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia |
| Editors | Kirsten Malmkjær |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 30 Mar 2026 |
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