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What does it mean for cognitive linguistics to be a usage-based discipline?

 | The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
Published online: 12 June 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00223.gle
Abstract
The problem of metalanguage and the basic methodological principles underlying empirical analysis represents one of the most pressing challenges in contemporary Cognitive Linguistics. The article examines this problem addressing Ronald W. Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar. It reveals significant discrepancies between the fundamental theoretical claims posited by Langacker and the methodology that underlies his examination of specific linguistic material. Notably, despite the assertion that Cognitive Grammar is a usage-based approach, a direct analysis indicates that his “working” methodology is based on a system of abstract basic categories, from which more complex constructions, close to real communicative situations, are deductively derived. Such a methodology is arguably not representative of a usage-based approach. A broader concern that emerges from the examination of Langacker’s framework is the relationship between neuro-level analysis and sociocultural analysis. The article argues that the perspective which reduces the entirety of linguistic processes to the activation of neural groups in the cerebral cortex exemplifies a specific form of reductionism, and that data analysis at the neural level and sociocultural analysis require distinct metalanguages and methodologies.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Langacker’s construal of language and language theory
  • 3.Basic principles of Langacker’s analysis of specific linguistic data
  • 4.Methodological challenges for a usage-based perspective in cognitive linguistics
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (82)
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