lence and ambiguity regarding meaning. InSyntactic Structures,he noted that
transformational grammar “was completely formal and non-semantic” (1957,
p. 93). None of his work with grammar has considered language’s rhetorical di-
mension. As teachers, we need to be able to draw on theory and research to in-
form our work with students. We need tools that allow us to understand more
clearly how students use language, the nature of their errors, and how to help
them become more proficient readers and writers.
Language as a Social Action: Metaphor and Symbol
Cognitive grammar, much like rhetoric, views language as a social action.
Meaning, therefore, emerges out of language in a social context and is usage
based. More often than not, the language we use is metaphorical and symbolic,
for we rarely assign a literal meaning to our words.
This concept is not particularly difficult, but it creates significant problems
for the idea of compositionality, at least in its strict sense. Let’s take a simple
word likerun. Compositionality indicates that we form the word by combining
its constituent parts:r+u+n. The result is the wordrun,but nothing in the pro-
cess of composing the word or in the word itself tells us much about the word’s
meaning. Without a context, it can mean any number of things, as the following
short list of possibilities illustrates:
- the act of moving swiftly on foot so that both feet leave the ground during
each stride - a score in baseball
- a snag in a woman’s stocking
- a string of good luck
- a scheduled or regular route
- to move at a gallop on horseback
- to retreat
- to flee
- to emit pus or mucus
- to melt
On this basis, we see thatrunis both metaphor and symbol. Processing the
meaning ofrunrequires not only that we recognize its symbolism but also what
it signifies. Signification, in turn, requires a speaker/writer with an intention to
designate one thing in terms of another. Thus, we cannot separate the meaning
of the word from the person who uses the word. Equally important, we cannot
separate the meaning of the word from the audience.
200 CHAPTER 6