Cognitive Linguistics: Modelling language as an index of society and culture

It is through thought that we understand the world, yet one cannot think without language. Language, in turn, is structured by grammar. Therefore, grammar is the structure of the mind and the world it creates.

Contemporary theories of language hold that this grammar is motivated by meaning and structured by use. The success of this approach to language is evidenced by advances in applied linguistics, such as machine translation and artificial intelligence. However, just as the probability-based patterns derived from language use can be employed to produce “authentic” generated language like in automated translation (like DeepL) and Large language Models (like ChatGpt), using electronic corpora, the same approach can be used to model human behaviour, society and culture.

This course emphasises the practical skills needed in linguistic research (especially corpus linguistics), applied or theoretical. It focuses on current trends in language technology and social and cognitive science, especially with respect to socio-cultural variation. No prior experience in computing is expected, but an interest in how different people see and understand the world is essential.

The MA project examines a topic of the student’s choosing and includes data collection and analysis. If the student is interested, the presentation and / or publication of their results will be encouraged and facilitated. The research is performed on English, often in comparison with other languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian etc. Examples of previous studies include:

Multimodal (images) Boasting Strategies on Instagram

Multimodal (video) Expression of Irony in Stand-up Comedy and TikTok

Multimodal (images) Indication of Sarcasm in visual novels (manga)

Conceptualisation of the Body in 19C and 20C literature

Conceptualisation of Beauty on Internet forums

Conceptualisation of Shame

Metaphors of Anxiety

Metaphors of Happiness

Metaphors of Anger

Representation of Femininity in 20C fashion magazines

Representation of Women in Wikipedia

Representation of Immigrants in News Press

Future Grammatical Constructions

Benefactive Grammatical Constructions

Resultative Grammatical Constructions

Requirements
Computer with net access
Basic knowledge of linguistics

Programme
coming - discuss with students

Overal outline

a. Intro to Linguistics - to make sure we all are on the same page

- sigs, semiotics and sign theory

- phonemes and phonology

- morphemes and morphology

- lexemes and lexicology

- constructions, grammar and grammaticality

- sociolinguistics and discourse analysis

b. Cognitive Linguistics

- usage-based model of language and entrenchment

- categorisation

- construal and framing

- constructions and frames

- linguistic relativity and culture

c. Scientific methodology

- study design and data

- corpus methods and collocations

- corpus methods and profiles

Evaluation

S1M1 - Annotated TOC of thesis

S2M1 - data sampled and / or detailed description of study design

S1M2 - Method and Introduction chapters of thesis

S2M2 - Presentation of thesis and question in defence

Slides

coming

Links - Commandes pour R

R- Commands - First steps

R-Commands - MCA

R-Commands - HCA

R-Commands - LogReg

Links - learning data

Destiny in English and Russian

Happiness in English, Czech, and Polish

Women is Vogue, Cosmo and Closer

Future Constructions - will vs. BGT

Epistemic stance - think and believe 

Links - apps

R: https://www.r-project.org/

Mac Only - BBEdit (free version) : https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

Win Only - NotePad++ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Bibliography - coming

Geeraerts & Glynn 2026 - Cambridge Handbook of Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: CUP

Baayen 2008 - Analyzing Linguistic Data. A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: CUP

Glynn & Robinson 2014 - Corpus Methods for Semantics. Quantitative studies in polysemy and synonymy. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Glynn & Fischer 2010 - Quantitative Cognitive Semantics. Corpus-driven approaches. Berlin: Mouton

Gries 2021 - Statistics for Linguistics with R. A practical introduction. Berlin: Mouton.

Gries & Stefanowitch 2006 - Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton.

Stefanowitch & Gries 2006 - Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy. Berlin: Mouton

Goldberg

Schmid 

Lakoff 1987 - Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. CUP

Langacker 1987 - Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. SUP.

Geeraerts