Introduction 9for meaning – and that, needless to say, is not an obvious matter. The prob-
lem is methodological in a high-level sense: in what ways can we push
semantic description beyond intuitive interpretation? But the problem is
also methodological in a very practical sense: in what ways can we achieve
a method of semantic interpretation – and more specifically, synonym iden-
tification – that works efficiently enough to allow for an easy demarcation
of a large set of concepts? Getting a good grip on the interrelations between
FOV, COV and SSV cannot be achieved unless we can study a sufficiently
high number of concepts, but that ideally requires a method of semantic
analysis that is as fast as it is trustworthy.
Within the field of sociolinguistics, the methodological problem of se-
mantic equivalence was recognized early on by Beatriz Lavandera. She
argued that ‘it is inadequate at the current state of sociolinguistic research
to extend to other levels of analysis of variation the notion of sociolinguis-
tic variable originally developed on the basis of phonological data. The
quantitative studies of variation which deal with morphological, syntactic,
and lexical alternation suffer from the lack of an articulated theory of
meanings’ (Lavandera 1978: 171). In the mainstream development of soci-
olinguistics, however, the question of semantic equivalence, as a methodo-
logical prerequisite for the sociovariationist study of lexis and grammar,
was not systematically pursued. What we may suggest as a preferred area
of investigation for Cognitive Sociolinguistics, then, is to have a renewed
look at Lavandera’s question: for one thing, the question is still relevant
within sociolinguistics, and for another, if there is one type of theoretical
linguistics that has sufficient affinity with semantics to tackle the question,
it must surely be Cognitive Linguistics – which does not equal saying that
it has already solved the question.
- As natural as it is for Cognitive Linguistics to study the variation of
meaning, is it just as natural to study the meaning of variation, i.e. the way
in which language users make sense of linguistic variation, the way in
which linguistic variation is meaningful to them. In a usage-based concep-
tion of language, we assume that language users have a cognitive represen-
tation of the communicative interactions in which they participate: thát –
rather than some genetic endowment – is their ‘knowledge of the lan-
guage’. But as their interactive horizon includes linguistic variation, they
also have a representation of that diversity. They categorize social reality as
reflected in language use and differences of language use, and such a cate-
gorization process is typically one of the phenomena that Cognitive Lin-