Cognitive Linguistics and Language Teaching

Cognitive Linguistics and Language Teaching

Also by Randal Holme ESP Ideas Literacy: An Introduction Mind, Metaphor and Language Teaching Talking Texts

Cognitive Linguistics and Language Teaching Randal Holme Department of English, The Hong Kong Institute of Education

Randal Holme 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-53739-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-35918-9 ISBN 978-0-230-23367-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230233676 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

Contents List of Activities List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements ix xi xiii 1 Introduction 1 The linguistics applied approach: generative linguistics and second language learning 2 The applied linguistics of second language learning 4 Language as a social semiotic 5 The emergence of cognitive linguistics 6 Ending the LA AL divide 10 The purpose of the book 12 Part I Embodied Experience 2 The Problem of Linguistic Meaning 17 Introduction 17 The problem of meaning 17 Language learning as category learning 21 Conclusions 27 3 Conceptualisation, Embodiment and the Origins of Meaning 29 Introduction 29 Proprioception: how the body remains aware of its own position in space 31 Not seeing but conceptualising 32 Cognitive development and infant movement 33 Aplasic phantoms 34 Mirror neurons 35 The nature of language: image schemas and embodied cognition 36 Education and embodiment 39 Language teaching and embodiment: language as rhythm and movement 41 v

vi Contents Language teaching and embodiment: mime, enactment and movement 44 Language teaching and embodiment: rethinking TPR 48 Conclusions 52 4 Gesture 54 Introduction 54 The importance of gesture in communication 54 Gesture in education 56 Gesture and teaching prepositions 58 Gesture and English articles 60 Conclusions 62 Part II Conceptualisation 5 Language, Culture and Linguistic Relativity 65 Introduction 65 The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 67 Meaning and conceptualisation 69 Linguistic relativity: how different is different? 75 Experimental evidence for linguistic relativity 77 To learn new meanings, do we have to conceptualise the world differently? 80 Second language errors and linguistic relativity 81 Errors that use first language forms and meanings within the second language 84 Errors that over-generalise some acquired formal or semantic feature of the second language 86 False friends 88 The problem of separating meaning from conceptualisation 89 Can one change a conceptualisation? 90 Language, culture and conceptualisation in the classroom 92 Language, culture and learning 95 Different meanings for different languages 100 Conclusions 108 6 Conceptualisation and Construal 111 Introduction 111 Construal operations 112 Attention and salience 113 Attention, salience and enactive SLA 113 Metonymy: attention and salience 117

Contents vii Scope of attention 120 Scalar adjustment 123 Dynamic attention 125 Judgment and comparison 129 Category formation 129 Category formation and language teaching 130 Metaphor 134 Metaphor and language teaching 134 Metaphor analysis 135 Metaphor and target language differentiation 136 The explanatory power of metaphor and analogy 136 Using metaphor to learn second language lexis and grammar 138 Figure ground conceptual operations, force dynamics and action chains 142 Perspectives and situatedness 147 Deixis 150 Constitution/gestalt 152 Geometry 155 Conclusions 157 Part III Meaning and Usage 7 Teaching Encyclopaedic Meaning 161 Introduction 161 Word networks: hyponymy and schematicity 163 Word networks: meronymy 165 Crossing category borders 167 Knowledge types and encyclopaedic meaning 168 Finding the frame 169 Phonological sense relations 171 Conclusions 174 8 Usage and Grammatical Meaning 177 Introduction 177 Constructions 178 Type and token 179 Usage 181 Language learning as construction learning 183 Recognising constructions 183 Teaching constructions 184 Teaching filled constructions: idioms 185

viii Contents Teaching partially filled constructions: lexis, meaning and conceptualisation 186 Teaching partially filled constructions: bound morphemes, inflections and lexis 187 Teaching partially filled constructions: bound morphemes 188 Teaching partially filled constructions: lexis and morphemes 192 Teaching partially filled constructions: lexis 197 Teaching unfilled constructions 201 Routines for more advanced students: lexis, meaning and conceptualisation 205 Encountering constructions 205 Finding useful forms 206 Conclusions 212 Part IV Conclusions 9 Towards a Cognitive Linguistics Syllabus 217 Introduction 217 Product and process 217 Language teaching implications 218 Re-embedding linguistic form in the imagery and movement from which it emerged 219 Engage the learners in the explicit analysis of form and meaning 220 A forum for usage 226 Sequencing 227 Bibliography 231 Index 244

List of Activities 1 Stand your ground! 23 2 What I can t stand 23 3 Standing 24 4 On thin ice and in a situation 26 5 Feeling the stress 41 6 Chanting 42 7 Moving through language 47 8 Blindfold 49 9 What am I doing? 49 10 What am I? 49 11 Natural cycles 50 12 Move and talk: silent movies 50 13 Determined gesture 61 14 Surveillance 61 15 Culture game 96 16 Tracing it back 97 17 What we do with it 97 18 Collecting a culture as language 98 19 Cross-cultural meanings 100 20 Exacting movements 102 21 Furtive movement 104 22 Motion paths 107 23 Teaching the plural morpheme 114 24 Word building 116 25 The room 119 26 My what? 120 27 Through and over 124 28 The open road 127 29 Category building 131 30 Seeing time 132 31 Keeping it together 140 32 Switched histories 146 33 Construal 148 34 Someone else was there 151 35 Container or surface 156 36 Passed down? 164 ix

x List of Activities 37 What it really is 169 38 The basis of comparison 193 39 Pride and prejudice 194 40 Making constructions productive 196 41 Testing constructions to destruction 200 42 Identifying and exploring constructions 210

List of Figures and Tables Figures 1 The category relations for some of the meanings of stand 25 2 On versus in : an activity diagram 26 3 How cognitive blends work: counterfactuals, becoming another person 73 4 Complex and deictic time contrasted: using diagrams to help avoid schematic errors with tense 85 5 Why we do not use a determiner with abstract nouns that have a sole reference to what they describe 87 6 Up to and up on : furtive and prominent motion paths 105 7 Scope of attention in discourse: using diagrams to master discourse structure 122 8 Scalar adjustment: different construals with through and over 125 9 The building: using hyponym charts to explore categories 131 10 Visual analogues of the language content of English: continuous aspect 139 11 Three action chains (Langacker 1987) 144 12 Who is Moll Flanders? Epistemic deixis and the creation of different character perspectives 151 13 Rubin s face diagram 153 14 Using meronymy for information transfer tasks 167 15 Illustrating phonaesthemes set in a poetic metre 174 16 How a construction s productivity can increase in proportion to its schematicity 179 17 Representing the English past tense as a category meaning 192 18 Using hyponym charts to explore construction meanings 196 19 The present perfect: extending the time of speech 198 20 Construction conceptualisation: between one thing and another 209 21 Using a prototype chart to explore constructions 211 Tables 1 Using frame semantics tables to extend learners lexico-grammatical control: sell 170 xi

xii List of Figures and Tables 2 Using frame semantics tables: go 170 3 Using a substitution table to explore a transitive construction 207 4 Using a substitution table to explore a partially filled construction 209

Acknowledgements I would like to thank: Hong Kong Institute of Education for supporting this project; the English staff and students of Law Ting Pong Secondary school for allowing me to conduct a series of teaching interventions in their classrooms; my research assistant Kevinia Cheung for her help with compiling and analysing data used in a research project discussed here; Marek Koscielecki for his assistance with the Polish examples used in this manuscript; Karen Cheung, for her patience, tolerance and support. xiii