Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics

A criticism that has been levelled against cognitive linguistics, particularly early on in the development of the enterprise, related to a perceived lack of empirical rigour. This criticism arose in response to some of the early foundational studies conducted under the banner of cognitive semantics. For example, while intuitively appealing, early research on lexical polysemy networks (see Brugman & Lakoff, 1988) and early research on conceptual metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) was largely based on speaker intuition and interpretation. The studies on over by Brugman ([1981] 1988; Brugman & Lakoff, 1988) and Lakoff (1987), for instance, were criticized for lacking a clear set of methodological decision principles (see Sandra, 1998), particularly given semantic network analyses of the same lexical item often differed quite radically from one theorist to another (see Sandra & Rice, 1995, for a review). In recent years, the empirical foundations of cognitive linguistics have become stronger. For example, experimental research (e.g., Gibbs, 1994; Boroditsky, 2000) and discourse analytic research (e.g., Musolff, 2004; Zinken et al., in press) have begun to provide an empirical basis for drawing conclusions about conceptual metaphor. Research by Seana Coulson (e.g. Coulson & Van Petten, 2002/this volume) has begun to provide an empirical basis for assessing conceptual integration networks. Research by psycholinguists Sandra and Rice (1995) and Cuyckens et al. (1997/this volume), together with cognitively oriented corpus studies as illustrated by Gries (2005) have begun to strengthen the empirical basis of cognitive approaches to lexical semantics, and research by Tyler and Evans (e.g. 2001/this volume), among others, has begun to provide a sound theoretical and methodological basis for investigating lexical polysemy. Finally, experimental work in the area of mental simulation (Zwaan et al., 2002; Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Bergen, to appear) offers experimental confirmation of the role of mental imagery in the construction of sentential meaning. With respect to cognitive approaches to grammar, William Croft’s (e.g. 1996/this volume, 2001) proposals concerning the integration of typological methods with cognitive linguistic theory has strengthened the empirical basis of constructional accounts of grammar.

Indeed, the last few years have witnessed an increase in the influence of empirical methods from neighbouring disciplines upon cognitive linguistics, including brainscanning techniques from experimental psychology. The increased concern with empirical methods is attested by Gonzales-Marquez et al. (to appear), a collection of papers emerging from a recent workshop entitled ‘Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics’.

Despite these advances, outstanding challenges remain. For example, Gibbs (2000, p. 349) observes that many psychologists complain that work in cognitive linguistics that attempts to infer ‘aspects of conceptual knowledge from an analysis of systematic patterns of linguistic structure leads to theories that appear to have a post hoc quality’. In other words, psychologists have argued that cognitive linguistic theories are not predictive but assume without adequate evidence that the conceptual system has certain properties in order to account for the properties of language.

For example, Blending Theory purports to be a theory about conceptual processes but is forced to posit underlying mental spaces and integration networks in order to account for linguistic expressions. In other words, it infers the conceptual structures that it attempts to demonstrate evidence for rather than seeking independent evidence for these conceptual structures (from psychology or psycholinguistics, for example). This means that the theory cannot be empirically falsified, since it does not make predictions about the properties of conceptual structure that can be empirically tested. Falsifiability is a necessary property of any theory that seeks to achieve scientific rather that purely ideological status. Accordingly, if cognitive linguistic accounts of conceptual structure are to achieve a theoretical status beyond ideology, it will be necessary for them to continue to develop the means by which they can be empirically tested.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1188