An overview of cognitive linguistics

This chapter provides a survey of cognitive linguistics (CL). It presents the historical and intellectual context leading to its emergence as a reaction against generativism and extreme modularism. The chapter describes the main theoretical and methodological tenets of CL (non-modularism, non-objectivist, blueprint view of linguistic meaning, emphasis on prototype categorization, the inseparability of experience-based encyclopedic knowledge from linguistic knowledge, embodiment, emphasis on constructions as form-meaning pairings), its main research areas (construction grammars, lexico-semantic networks, and conceptual metaphor and metonymy and blending), its impressive results and applications in these areas, and its main problems and possible future development (greater integration with current research on cognition, giving weight to actual use and to the social and cultural dimension of language, among others).