In recent years, linguists have increasingly turned to the cognitive sciences to broaden their investigation into the roots and development of language. With the advent of cognitive-linguistic, usage-based and complex-adaptive models of language, linguists today are utilizing approaches and insights from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, social psychology and other related fields. A key result of this interdisciplinary approach is the concept of entrenchment-the ongoing reorganization and adaptation of communicative knowledge. Entrenchment posits that our linguistic knowledge is continuously refreshed and reorganized under the influence of social interactions. It is part of a larger, ongoing process of lifelong cognitive reorganization whose course and quality is conditioned by exposure to and use of language, and by the application of cognitive abilities and processes to language. This volume enlists more than two dozen experts in the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurology, and cognitive psychology in providing a realistic picture of the psychological and linguistic foundations of language. Contributors examine the psychological foundations of linguistic entrenchment processes, and the role of entrenchment in first-language acquisition, second language learning, and language attrition. Critical views of entrenchment and some of its premises and implications are discussed from the perspective of dynamic complexity theory and radical embodied cognitive science.

This volume, which has textbook character, is intended to provide an in-depth introduction to different theoretical and methodological research frameworks concerned with the role of item-specific grammatical and lexical behaviour.

Speakers tend to compose their utterances in such a way that the message they want to get across is hardly ever fully encoded by the meanings of the words and the grammar they use. Instead speakers rely on hearers adding conceptual and emotive content while interpreting the contextually appropriate meanings and intentions behind utterances. This insight, which is of course particularly relevant in all kinds of indirect, figurative or humorous talk, lies at the heart of the linguistic discipline of pragmatics. If pragmatics is the study of meaning-in-context, then cognitive pragmatics can be broadly defined as encompassing the study of the cognitive principles and processes involved in the construal of meaning-in-context. While it would seem only natural that pragmatics as such should have addressed such cognitive issues anyway, it has mainly been due to the historical rooting of this discipline in the philosophy of language that psychological aspects have not been in the pragmatic limelight to date. Being part of the 9-volume-series Handbooks of Pragmatics, this volume is the first to systematically survey this terrain from a wide range of perspectives. It collects state-of-the-art contributions by leading experts from the fields of pragmatics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, clinical linguistics and historical linguistics. The volume is divided into four parts which tackle the following questions: Part I: The cognitive principles of pragmatic competence What are the general cognitive principles underlying pragmatic competence, i.e. the skill to arrive at context-dependent meanings of utterances? What are the cognitive underpinnings of language users' ability to compute or infer intended meanings in the role of hearers and to give hints as to how to decode intended meanings in the role of speakers? Part II: The psychology of pragmatics What are the actual cognitive processes taking place during online construal of meaning-in-context on the basis of encoded messages? How is pragmatic competence acquired in childhood? What are the types, sources and effects of pragmatic disorders, i.e. impairments of pragmatic competence? Part III: The construal of non-explicit and non-literal meaning-in-context What are the cognitive principles and processes involved in the construal of meanings of non-explicit and indirect utterances? How do we process figurative meanings, humour and gestures? Part IV: The emergence of linguistic structures from meaning-in-context What are the repercussions of the (repeated) construal of context-dependent meanings on linguistic structures and the linguistic system? How does the system change under the influence of the construal of meanings in social situations? Reduced series price (print) available! > For orders, please contact [email protected].

Cognitive linguists are convinced that the nature of linguistic structures is strongly influenced by the way we experience and perceive the world and by how we conceptualize and construe these experiences and perceptions in our minds. At the same time, the study of linguistic structure and usage is credited with the potential to open windows to how our minds work. The present volume collects papers investigating linguistic phenomena that reflect the key cognitive processes of metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blending, which have proven to be highly influential in linguistic conceptualization. Theoretical and methodological issues, such as metaphor identification and the relevance of the target domain for children's understanding of metaphor, are focused on in the first section. The second and third parts are devoted to the application of the theoretical frameworks of the conceptual theory of metaphor and metonymy and the theory of conceptual blending to linguistic data. The contributions critically explore the explanatory potential of these theories, build bridges between them, link them with other approaches and notions (such as construction grammar, common ground and stance/evaluation), and uncover conceptual regularities and cognitive models that underlie and shape our language use in specific domains. The linguistic structures under consideration span the range from compounds and premodified noun phrases to constructions and texts such as jokes and political speeches. Methods applied include psycholinguistic experiments, analyses of data culled from authentic language corpora and discourse-analytical approaches.

The volume presents an up-to-date collection of methodologically sensitive contributions providing mainly enthusiastic, at times also critical support for the cognitive-linguistic enterprise. The book is important for the advancement of cognitive linguistics because the contributions demonstrate the seriousness of its ambitions to develop into a set of testable linguistic approaches. For the same reason, the volume is a contribution to our understanding of language in general, since it puts a promising modern approach on firmer ground. Assets of the book include the wide range of linguistic phenomena studied (individual concepts, fundamental semantic problems like vagueness and polysemy, grammatical issues incl. gender and tense, collocations, constructions and speech acts) and the scope of applied perspectives including lexicographical, computational, developmental and critical discourse ones. The languages investigated are English, German, Dutch, Polish and Italian. Common to the contributions is the desire to bring together observed patterns of linguistic usage with concepts and models established in cognitive linguistics. In addition, all contributions have an empirical basis and emphasize the need to rely on a sound methodology. The linguistic phenomena investigated span the range from the lexico-conceptual and collocational level to constructions, grammatical categories and functions. Two complementary perspectives of language and cognition are represented in the volume: In one group, the established methods of psycholinguistic experimentation, quantitative corpus analysis and computational simulation are exploited to demonstrate the viability and to increase the plausibility of cognitive-linguistic thinking. The second group tests well-known cognitive-linguistic approaches like Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models and Construction Grammar against authentic data demonstrating their applicability and explanatory potential. Both groups include contributions reaching beyond the scope of traditional cognitive-linguistic topics, e.g. by taking a critical stance of reductionist cognitive thinking. The volume is of interest to cognitive linguists, psycholinguists, theoretical linguists, lexicologists, and lexicographers.

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

This open access book addresses, for the first time, Islamic social work as an emerging concept at the interface of Islamic thought and social sciences. Applying a multidisciplinary approach it explores, on the one hand, the discourse that provides religious legitimisation to social work activities and, on the other hand, case studies of practical fields of Islamic social work including educational programmes, family counselling, and resettlement of prisoners. Although in many cases, these activities are oriented towards Muslim clients, more often than not they go beyond the boundaries of Muslim communities to benefit society as a whole. Muslim actors are also starting to professionalise their services and to negotiate the ways in which they can become fully recognised service-providers within the welfare state. At a more general level, the volume also shows that in contrast to the widespread processes of secularisation of social work and its separation from religious communities, new types of activities are now emerging, which bring back to the public arena both an increased sensitivity to the religious identities of the beneficiaries and the religious motivations of the benefactors. The edited volume will be of interest to researchers in Islamic Studies, Social and Political Sciences, Social Work, and Religious Studies. This is an open access book.

This open access book addresses, for the first time, Islamic social work as an emerging concept at the interface of Islamic thought and social sciences. Applying a multidisciplinary approach it explores, on the one hand, the discourse that provides religious legitimisation to social work activities and, on the other hand, case studies of practical fields of Islamic social work including educational programmes, family counselling, and resettlement of prisoners. Although in many cases, these activities are oriented towards Muslim clients, more often than not they go beyond the boundaries of Muslim communities to benefit society as a whole. Muslim actors are also starting to professionalise their services and to negotiate the ways in which they can become fully recognised service-providers within the welfare state. At a more general level, the volume also shows that in contrast to the widespread processes of secularisation of social work and its separation from religious communities, new types of activities are now emerging, which bring back to the public arena both an increased sensitivity to the religious identities of the beneficiaries and the religious motivations of the benefactors. The edited volume will be of interest to researchers in Islamic Studies, Social and Political Sciences, Social Work, and Religious Studies. This is an open access book.

This volume outlines a model of language that can be characterized as functionalist, usage-based, dynamic, and complex-adaptive. The core idea is that linguistic structure is not stable and uniform, but continually refreshed by the interaction between three components: usage, the communicative activities of speakers; conventionalization, the social processes triggered by these activities and feeding back into them; and entrenchment, the individual cognitive processes that are also linked to these activities in a feedback loop. Hans-Joerg Schmid explains how this multiple feedback system works by extending his Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, showing how the linguistic system is created, sustained, and continually adapted by the ongoing interaction between usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. Fulfilling the promise of usage-based accounts, the model explains how exactly usage is transformed into collective and individual grammar and how these two grammars in turn feed back into usage. The book is exceptionally broad in scope, with insights from a wide range of linguistic subdisciplines. It provides a coherent account of the role of multiple factors that influence language structure, variation, and change, including frequency, economy, identity, multilingualism, and language contact.