Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

Are (Polish) Politicians Out of this World? 61

Figure 1. From embodied cognition to language.

Cognitive linguists do not eschew references to the role of culture as a
concept-shaping factor. The way people think and construe reality, which
is to a large extent evident in language, draws from the fact that language
itself carries certain well-established patterns. Geeraerts (2006: 27)
appropriately notes that conceptualizations expressed in natural language
“have an experiential basis, i.e. they link up with the way in which human
beings experience reality, both culturally and physiologically.”
Cultural constructs, such as that of aliens, have a strong hold on the
public imagination. In the imagery of humans in outer space, image
schemas of SPACE, LOCOMOTION, CONTAINMENT and BALANCE are of
primary importance. Applied in political discourse, they express and
structure the perception and assessment of abstract notions linked with
public activity, e.g. ideological and psychological distance, social
hierarchies, purposefulness (and purposelessness) of action, emotional
balance (or imbalance), inclusion (or seclusion), importance (centrality)
vs. marginality etc. Reasoning relies heavily on categorization (Rosch
1975), contrasting things and people, and manifests itself in a variety of
domains^5 (Langacker 1987), including that of space. For instance,
“physical closeness in social relationships is further associated with
physical warmth and therefore indicates a positive social contact” (Schnall
2014: 226).
To sum up, the basic theoretical assumptions of the CMT and
embodiment include the following:

(^5) Langacker (1987: 488) defines domain as “a coherent area of conceptualisation
relative to which semantic units maybe characterized.”