Cognitive Linguistics. Worth a Professorial Position

The aim of this paper is to give a brief overview of the core ideas, approaches
and the main representatives of Cognitive Linguistics and in which way this
approach differs from the classical structuralistic view. The explanations will not be
exhaustive at all, but should suffice to make clear how revolutionary the ideas of
Cognitive Linguistics are and how it will hopefully influence linguistics in general in
the future.
Cognitive Linguistics developed at the beginning of the 1980ies mainly in the
United States as a completely new approach to the study of language and mind and
how these two are related. According to cognitive linguist Gilles FAUCONNIER
"perhaps for the first time a genuine science of meaning construction and its
dynamics has been launched"1. The representatives see language as one of the most
significant characteristics of cognitive activities and therefore the aim is to describe
and explain mental structures and processes which are important to the processing of
human language. According to Gilles FAUCONNIER, language is only the "tip of a
cognitive iceberg"2.
How does this view differ from the theories represented by structural
linguistics?

1 Gilles FAUCONNIER in: Theo JANSSEN & Gisela REDEKER (ed.): Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations,
Scope, and Methodology (1999: 96). Translation: "(…) wahrscheinlich erstmalig ist eine echte
Wissenschaft der Konstruktion von Bedeutungen und ihrer Dynamik in Gang gekommen (...)".
2 Gilles FAUCONNIER in: JANSSEN/ REDEKER (1999: 96). Translation: [Sprache ist nur] "die Spitze des
kognitiven Eisbergs".