Abstract
Cognitive Linguistics started from the 1980s, and it has become a mainstream since the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, which has got widespread attention, with a nickname as the third revolution in linguistic circles after the Saussurean Revolution and the Chomskyean Revolution. According to the dialectical principle of “negation of negation”, theoretical research is always advancing, thus the linguists are beginning to think of the shortcomings of Cognitive Linguistics and new developments in the future. For instance, Dabrowska (2016) pointed out the seven deadly sins of Cognitive Linguistics, which, we think, are overstated and too radical. Cognitive Linguistics has its own historical significance and makes great contributions to the criticism of Saussurean “Linguistic Apriorism” and Chomskyean “Linguistic Nativism”, but Cognitive Linguistics also has its own weaknesses, which are to be exposed in brief in this paper. We have also tried to propose “Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics as a revision in order to emphasize the philosophical views of “materialism” and “humanism” as a basic start in linguistic research.
Highlights
Dabrowska (2016) has published a paper in Cognitive Linguistics, titled in Cognitive Linguistics’ seven deadly sins, which has sharply criticized CL and pointed out seven serious problems, namely:(1) Excessive reliance on introspection;(2) Not treating the cognitive commitment seriously.(3) Not enough serious hypothesis testing.(4) Ignoring individual differences.Gan (5) Neglecting the social aspect of language.(6) Assuming that we can deduce mental representations from patterns of use.(7) Assuming that distribution equals meaning.This has aroused great attentions from academic circles and caused a lot of controversies
If the Structural Linguistics raised by Saussure and the Transformational Generative Linguistics raised by Chomsky are regarded as two revolutions in the linguistics field of the 20th century, CL based on Embodied Philosophy, which is strongly against the theories of Saussure and Chomsky, can be regarded as the third one, leading a new direction of today’s linguistics research, and promoting linguistics once again to a new stage which becomes a forefront of current linguistic theory
Is Cognitive Linguistics deadly sinful? On the pros and cons of Cognitive Linguistics and its development order to reverse the situation in which Saussure, Chomsky and others have dominated the linguistics stage based on idealism for nearly a century
Summary
Dabrowska (2016) has published a paper in Cognitive Linguistics (shorted in CL), titled in Cognitive Linguistics’ seven deadly sins, which has sharply criticized CL and pointed out seven serious problems, namely:. This has aroused great attentions from academic circles and caused a lot of controversies. According to dialectics, everything has two sides, and so does language theory which has pros and cons. CL has made up for the shortcomings of previous language theories which is very remarkable, it’s undoubtedly flawed, but is not seriously like Dabrowska’s expressions of deadly sins. Her overheated rhetoric falls into the old mistake of some scholars of “overusing exaggerated words for novelty”
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