The problem of universalism in (diachronic) cognitive linguistics

Abstract

AbstractModern cognitive science and cognitive linguistics are characterized by a universalist perspective, i.e., they are investigating features and principles of cognition which can be found in all members of the human species. This in turn means that they should not only be relevant for present-day cognizers and language users, but also historically. This theoretical, programmatic paper first explores this notion of universalism in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics and suggests that the notion of cognitive universalism should be supplemented by perspectives from cognitive sociology and social cognition. These offer a middle ground in that they look at cognition as it is socially and culturally grounded, and hence inter-individual, but yet not universal. A final section on diachronic cognitive linguistics shows that in language history all three perspectives, individual, social, and universal, can have their place, and that one line of future research should explore this new perspective of social cognition in language history in order to arrive at a fuller picture of historical language users and their cognition.