Substance and Methods of Cognitive Approach in Linguistics

Abstract

In recent decades in linguistics are increasingly used terms “cognitive”, “cognitive science” Some researchers writing about the emergence of a new, “cognitiv” paradigm in linguistics. Maslova in her book named “Cognitive Linguistics” defines cognitivism as “the direction of science, which is the object of study of the human mind, thinking and those mental processes and conditions that are associated with them”. By interpretation of Demyankova and Kubryakova, cognitive linguistics studies language as a cognitive mechanism that plays a role in encoding and transforming information. Its recognition in Russia, according to Kubryakova, cognitive researches are required primarily to the fact that they refer to “the themes, which always excited domestic linguistics: language and thought, the main function of language, the role of man in the language and the role of language for the people”. Reflections about the participation of language in knowledge of the world can be found in the works of thinkers of different times and peoples from antiquity to the present day. One of the subject of the research of cognitive linguistics is culture forming function of language. As part of the research on linguoculturing and ethnolinguistics studying features of assimilation, processing and storage of information in people's minds, and means of mental representation of knowledge through language. Thoughts about the role of language in the formation of the “spirit of the people” go back to the ideas of the German philosopher-idealist Gerder. Following to Gerder on the interaction between language and national spirit wrote Humboldt. In the Russian linguistics of XIX century. Humboldt's ideas was developed by Potebnya, who showed the role of language in the process of formation and development of human knowledge about the world.