engleski

Repositioning Pragmatics in the Context of Cognitive Linguistics and Interdisciplinary Research

From its very beginnings Cognitive Linguistics has, as one of its main tenets, stressed the importance of Embodiment or the Embodied Mind in the sense of the fundamental notion as to how the Embodied Mind interacts with the environment, both physical and sociocultural (Lakoff 1987, Langacker 1987, Lakoff and Johnson 1999 ; Johnson 1987:175). Despite the proclaimed foundations of Cognitive Linguistics, this theoretical framework has seen language, to quite a large extent, primarily as a cognitive ability or a constellation of mental structures and processes. However, language is human interaction, determined both culturally and socially, and hence the need to incorporate especially pragmatics into the overall theoretical framework. It is precisely the importance of communication in the widest sense of the word which is of essential importance for understanding linguistic and social conventions. Language seen from this perspective is then a set of evolved social conventions within the total set of conventions we see as ‘culture’. If linguistic cognitive abilities are set within a strong ‘pragmatic framework’, then steps towards interdisciplinary research become healthy foundations for understanding what it means to be human. This opens up viable pathways to building on mirror neuron research as well as a wider neuroscience perspective that involves human communication.

pragmatics ; cognitive linguistics ; interdisciplinary research

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