2 Dirk Geeraerts, Gitte Kristiansen and Yves Peirsman
various contributions to the volume and positions them against the back-
ground of the scope of Cognitive Sociolinguistics as it emerges from the
first section. Given the series in which this book appears, the perspective
that we will take in this Introduction is specifically targeting scholars with a
background in Cognitive Linguistics. We envisage a mutually beneficial
interaction of both approaches, but in describing that bidirectionality, we
will start from the Cognitive Linguistics end. (Note also that we capitalize
‘Cognitive Linguistics’ because we think of it as a specific theoretical
framework – even if it is a multidimensional one – whereas uncapitalized
‘sociolinguistics’ refers primarily to a domain of research rather than a
specific theoretical outlook.)
- The nature and scope of Cognitive Sociolinguistics
Cognitive Sociolinguistics may be broadly defined as the attempt to
achieve a convergence of Cognitive Linguistics and the tradition of soci-
olinguistics. Two questions then arise: why would Cognitive Linguistics
turn to variationist research, and why would sociolinguistics bother about
Cognitive Linguistics? Let us try to answer both questions in brief.
1.1. The social perspective in Cognitive Linguistics
Reasoning from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics, there are two
defining aspects of the approach that lead towards the incorporation of so-
cial variation: the predominantly semantic perspective of Cognitive Lin-
guistics, and the usage-based nature of Cognitive Linguistics. Both aspects
(which are themselves interrelated in various ways) are defining features to
the extent that they lie at the heart of the cognitive linguistic enterprise, and
to a large extent determine the internal development of the approach. Pre-
senting each of the two features in detail is beyond the scope of the present
introduction, but a few references may help to bring the points to mind. For
each of the features, we will specify how they are inevitably linked up with
a social perspective.
- It hardly needs to be spelled out that the study of linguistic meaning con-
stitutes the foundational characteristic par excellence of Cognitive Linguis-
tics. In Geeraerts (2006), for instance, written as an introduction to a collec-