How Language Reflects Thoughts

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The aim of this course is to introduce students into basic concepts of cognitive linguistics, and show them how language stems from, and constitutes and integral part of, our thinking patterns and processes. Thus, we will analyse certain linguistic patterns and tendencies in language and look beyond them in order to find out what conceptual (mental) mechanisms stand behind. We will take linguistic samples extracted from blogs, adverts, films, newspapers or social media in order to observe these mental processes and patterns. What will also be shown is that we tend to create certain frames and scenarios according to which we think, act and communicate.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

1. Language as a usage-based phenomenon
2. Construal operations and perspectivisation
3. Attention phenomena
4. Language-thought continuum
5. Categorisation
6. Prototype theory
7. Levels of schematicity
8. Image schemas
9. Conceptual Metaphor
10. Conceptual Metonymy
11. Frames, ICMs, Domains
12. Force Dynamics
13. Iconicity
14. Polysemy
15. Lexicon-grammar continuum

Reading list

Evans, Vyvyan and Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Geeraerts, Dirk (ed.). 2006. Cognitive linguistics: Basic readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gryuter.

Geeraerts, Dirk and Hubert Cuyckens (eds). 2007. The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Langacker, Ronald. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Radden, Günter and René Dirven. 2007. Cognitive English Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ungerer Friedrich and Hans-Jörg Schmid. 2006. An introduction to cognitive linguistics. Edinburgh: Pearson.