Vyv Evans, PhD

Language is not an abstract, autonomous system. It doesn’t live in a sealed module of the mind, nor is it reducible to a set of formal rules divorced from meaning, culture, and experience. Language fundamentally is a vehicle to facilitate meaning, and meaning is for minds in bodies, situated in worlds. Any theory that ignores this is not merely incomplete; it is fundamentally misguided. Meaning is Primary The central function of language is the expression and negotiation of m

One of the most significant contributions of Cognitive Linguistics to language teaching has been a conceptual shift — a reorientation away from viewing grammar as an arbitrary set of rules to be memorised, and toward understanding it as a meaningful, motivated system grounded in human experience.

When Cognitive Linguistics first coalesced as a recognisable movement in the late twentieth century, it did so around several core domains of inquiry that were, at the time, intellectually radical. Those domains continue to define the field — though they have matured, diversified, and, in some cases, been substantially refined. One foundational domain is Conceptual Metaphor Theory, most famously articulated in Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The cent

What fundamentally differentiates a linguist working within a Cognitive Linguistic framework is not simply the technical apparatus they employ, but the assumptions they bring to the very nature of language. The divide begins with ontology — with what one believes language is.