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Introduction published In: Beyond Corpus Data — Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by Anton Granvik, Veera Hatakka, Olli O. Silvennoinen, Riku Erkkilä and Eveliina Mäntylä
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 23:2] 2025
► pp. 327–344

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Introduction to the special issue

Beyond corpus data — complementary and alternative methods in cognitive linguistics

 | University of Helsinki
 | University of Helsinki
 | University of Helsinki | Åbo Akademi University
 | University of Helsinki | LMU Munich
 | University of Oulu
Published online: 28 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00236.gra
Abstract
This thematic section focuses on the methodology of cognitive linguistics. It explores ways of answering three types of research questions: those concerning the mental representations of linguistic categories, the linguistic representation of cognitive phenomena, and the connections between conceptual and linguistic structures. Methodologically, the thematic section focuses on corpora and going beyond their use in cognitive linguistic research. Two of the papers included in this section extend the corpus data to offer more compelling evidence for various empirical inquiries, whereas the third one uses video clips to elicit data given that corpus data is not available. The languages under investigation are Arabic, English, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Data, methods and research questions in cognitive linguistics
  • 2.Evidence in cognitive linguistics
    • 2.1Corpus evidence
    • 2.2Task-based evidence: Experimental and non-experimental
    • 2.3Converging evidence
  • 3.This section
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (67)
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