Patterns ‘We’ Think By? Critical Cognitive Linguistics Between Language System and Language Use

Abstract

Taking the interrelationship of language and thought as starting point, Cognitive Linguistics considers language as providing central insights into cognitive structures and processes as well as into their experiential basis. In its role as a gateway for exploring and describing phenomena at the interface between the individual and society by means of public language use, Cognitive Linguistics thus ranges between the poles of trans-situational, overarching language structures and situated, specific language use. But how exactly are system and use to be distinguished and related to one another? What range has, for example, a particular political frame detected from a sample of media coverage with regard to ‘its’ audience? When can we reliably label several instances of individual language use as an overarching language pattern or a frame? The paper aims to address these and further questions in reference to Critical Cognitive Linguistics concerning, for one thing, its own theoretical and methodological assumptions and, for another, its social role in light of current social and political phenomena and developments.

Editorial: Bias, Subjectivity and Perspectives in Natural Language Processing

“…The easiest way in which this pervasiveness of subjectivity can be observed is at the lexical level: the choice of words definitely reflects social and personal perspectives, opinions, and stances (Lin et al, 2006 ). Other work has shown that more subtle ways of expressing perspectives in discourse can be found at the syntax-semantic interface (Horst, 2020 ; Te Brömmelstroet, 2020 ; Pinelli and Zanchi, 2021 ; Minnema et al, 2022 ). While most work in Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing still focuses on language phenomena on which humans agree to a large extent, there is a growing interest in modeling people's perspectivization of a shared event or language phenomenon by taking into account their own interests, agenda, and how that influences the way in which communication is perceived.…”