104 Justyna Robinson
few studies that put this perspective into practice and analyze the language
and environment of individual speakers (cf. Dąbrowska and Street 2006).
One of the reasons for this situation might relate to the fact that Cognitive-
Linguistic methods of investigation are not well-suited to tackle the social
aspects of language and Variationist Sociolinguistics struggles to capture
the complexity of meanings with the available tools. Therefore, combing
sociolinguistic and cognitive approaches fills these gaps by potentially
bringing beneficial solutions to language research at a methodological lev-
el.
Finally, this study also indicates the necessity of including external fac-
tors in exploring conceptual variation. The analysis of the adjective awe-
some shows that semasiological variation is not free but regularly struc-
tured in terms of the age, gender, and social class of speakers. This finding
contributes to observations of other scholars who demonstrate that the en-
trenchment of conceptual categories can be explained in relation to external
factors.
The investigation of polysemous awesome presented above contributes
to the discussion of the validity of an emerging field of Cognitive Sociolin-
guistic. The application of this interdisciplinary perspective appears to be
beneficial at a methodological and an analytical level. By employing varia-
tionist methods, the multiplicity of individual conceptualizations is success-
fully elicited, organized, and quantified. Consequently, the analysis within
a Cognitive Sociolinguistic paradigm achieves a better explanatory power
when accounting for complex phenomena that are conceptually, pragmati-
cally, and socio-culturally grounded. This orientation in research seems to
be a natural step forward in order to account for the multiple functions and
the flexibility of meaning.
Note
- I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments
on the earlier version of the manuscript. Calculations, reporting, and inter-
pretation of statistical analyses have been carried out in consultation with
Mrs. Jean Russel, a chartered statistician at the University of Sheffield, whom
I would like to thank for help.