Awesome insights into semantic variation
Justyna Robinson
Abstract
This paper demonstrates the benefits of employing a Cognitive Sociolinguistic
approach in the investigation of lexical polysemy. The discussion is based on the
usage-based analysis of the adjective awesome in a speech community. The results
indicate that polysemy is far from a stable phenomenon, both at the conceptual
level and at the sociolinguistic level. This work also suggests that combining cog-
nitive and sociolinguistic analytical methods provides helpful insights into the
flexibility of a polysemous category.
Keywords: semantic variation, semantic change, awesome, polysemy, apparent
time
- Introduction
The need for a socio-cognitive orientation in linguistic research has recent-
ly been advocated within Cognitive Linguistics (see Geeraerts 2005, Kris-
tiansen and Dirven 2008). It is argued that both disciplines - Cognitive
Linguistics and Sociolinguistics – share a common ground. With regard to
the subject matter, both are interested in learning about the motivation for
speakers’ linguistic choices. From the point of view of methodology, both
take a usage-based, empirical approach to the analysis of language data.
This chapter* constitutes a contribution to the discussion of the validity
of Cognitive Sociolinguistics in language research, with a special focus on
semasiological variation. I demonstrate that the socio-cognitive approach
provides further insights into the flexibility of a polysemous category, es-
pecially in the context of diachronic changes of meaning.
The discussion revolves around the analysis of semantic variation of the
adjective awesome. The analysis on the conceptual level is further comple-
mented with information on the speakers’ age, gender, and socio-economic