Archive for August, 2018

Beijing Forum Lectures, October 2018

From 8 till 12 October, 2018, I will be speaking in the 10 Lectures series of the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics. Starting with the basic scientific and cognitive commitments that characterized cognitive linguistics from the start, and building on my own work as well as that of several previous speakers in the series, I will make explicit in what way the different perspectives within cognitive linguistics can be seen as contributing to a coherent, unified view of human communication (“Cognitive Linguistics 2.0”). The biological perspective plays a crucial role in this endeavour. First, in terms of content, we can begin to understand in what way human ways of communicating, including the use of language, share properties with animal communication, as well what makes human communication, linguistically and otherwise, biologically special. Second, in terms of methodology, in grounding the scientific commitment of cognitive linguistics in that of biology. The points will be illustrated with specific case studies from different languages, different historical periods, and different genres (from conversation to written narratives).