Cognitive Linguistics, Psychology and Cognitive Science

Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is one of the principal branches of “second generation cognitive science”—the alliance of new approaches emerging from what has been called the “second cognitive revolution” of the last decade of the 20 century (Harré and Gillett, 1994). It is also the rightful inheritor of an older tradition, antedating the behaviorist ascendancy in mid-20 century psychology from which classical (first generation) cognitive science liberated the sciences of the mind (Gardner, 1985). This older tradition, centered in psychology but drawing heavily on biology, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology and sociology, was a kind of cognitive science avant la lettre. It is represented in the German Sprachpsychologie (psychology of language) tradition from Wundt, through Gestalt psychology, to Bühler; in Baldwin’s and Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology; in Bartlett’s socio-cognitive theory of memory; in Vygotsky’s and Mead’s socio-genetic theories of the development of language and cognition; and, of course, by social-psychologically oriented linguists in the United States (Boas, Sapir, Whorf) and Europe (Meillet, Bakhtin/Volosinov), as well as Prague School functionalism (Jakobson, Muka_ovsk_, Trubetzkoy) (see Ch. 41).