Ten Lectures on Cognitive Sociolinguistics

343 Pages·2018·5.255 MB·English

by  Dirk Geeraerts

Ten Lectures on Cognitive Sociolinguistics
Distinguished Lectures in
Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by
Fuyin (Thomas) Li (Beihang University, Beijing)
Guest Editors
Weiwei Zhang (Shanghai International Studies University)
Yuan Gao (Beihang University, Beijing)
Editorial Assistants
Jing Du, Hongxia Jia and Lin Yu (doctoral students at Beihang University)
Editorial Board
Jürgen Bohnemeyer (State University of New York at Buffalo) – Alan Cienki
(Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam, Netherlands and Moscow State
Linguistic University, Russia) – William Croft (University of New Mexico at
Albuquerque, USA) – Ewa Dąbrowska (Northumbria University, UK) –
Gilles Fauconnier (University of California at San Diego, USA) – Dirk Geeraerts
(University of Leuven, Belgium) – Nikolas Gisborne (The University of
Edinburgh, UK) – Cliff Goddard (Griffith University, Australia) – Stefan Gries
(University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) – Laura A. Janda
(University of Tromsø, Norway) – Zoltán Kövecses (Eötvös Loránd University,
Hungary) – George Lakoff (University of California at Berkeley, USA) –
Ronald W. Langacker (University of California at San Diego, USA) – Chris Sinha
(University of Portsmouth, UK) – Leonard Talmy (State University of New York
at Buffalo, USA) – John R. Taylor (University of Otago, New Zealand) –
Mark Turner (Case Western Reserve University, USA) – Sherman Wilcox
(University of New Mexico, USA) – Phillip Wolff (Emory University, USA)
Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics publishes the keynote lectures series given by
prominent international scholars at the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics
since 2004. Each volume contains the transcripts of 10 lectures under one theme given by an
acknowledged expert on a subject and readers have access to the audio recordings of the lectures
through links in the e-book and QR codes in the printed volume. This series provides a unique
course on the broad subject of Cognitive Linguistics. Speakers include George Lakoff, Ronald
Langacker, Leonard Talmy, Laura Janda, Dirk Geeraerts, Ewa Dąbrowska and many others.
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/dlcl
Ten Lectures on Cognitive
Sociolinguistics
by
Dirk Geeraerts
LEIDEN | BOSTON
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017018983
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 2468-4872
isbn 978-90-04-33683-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-33684-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2018 by Dirk Geeraerts. Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke
Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive,
Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
Note on Supplementary Material vii
Preface viii
How to Use This Text ix
About the Author x
1 The Social Turn in Cognitive Linguistics 1
2 Types of Semantic and Categorial Variation 31
3 Diachronic Prototype Semantics 63
4 Stereotypes, Prototypes and Norms 101
5 The Cultural History of Metaphors 125
6 Cultural Models of Language Variation 161
7 Lexical Variation as a Sociolinguistic Variable 195
8 Measuring Lexical Variation and Change 229
9 Multivariate Models of Linguistic Variation 263
10 The Linguistic System in a Usage-Based Model of Language 293
Further Reading 325
Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers 328

Note on Supplementary Material
All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material such as any
hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been
made available online and are referenced via unique DOI-numbers on the
website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via a QR code for the print
version of this book, in the e-book both the QR code and dynamic links will be
available which can be accessed by a mouse-click.
The material can be accessed on figshare.com through a PC internet browser
or via mobile devices such as a smartphone or tablet. To listen to the audio-
recording on hand-held devices, the QR code that appears at the beginning of
each chapter should be scanned with a smart phone or tablet. A QR reader/
scanner and audio player should be installed on these devices. Alternatively,
for the e-book version, one can simply click on the QR code provided to be
redirected to the appropriate website.
This book has been made with the intent that the book and the audio, are
both available and usable as separate entities. Both are complemented by the
availability of the actual files of the presentations and material provided as
hand-outs at the time these lectures have been given. All rights and permission
remain with the authors of the respective works, the audio-recording and sup-
plementary material are made available in Open Access via a CC-BY-NC license
and are reproduced with kind permission from the authors. The recordings are
courtesy of the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics (http://
cifcl.buaa.edu.cn/), funded by the Beihang University Grant for International
Outstanding Scholars.
The complete collection of lectures by Dirk Geeraerts can be accessed
through scanning this QR code https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3784517
© Dirk Geeraerts. Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke
Brill nv, Leiden, 2018 | doi 1�.6084/m9.figshare.c.3784517
Preface
The present text is a transcribed version of the lectures given by Professor Dirk
Geeraerts in 2009 as the forum speaker for the 7th China International Forum
on Cognitive Linguistics (CIFCL7). The text is published, accompanied by its
videodisc counterpart and Chinese guide, as one of the Eminent Linguists
Lecture Series.
CIFCL provides a forum for eminent international CL scholars to interact
with Chinese audiences. It is a continuing program organized by six presti-
gious universities in Beijing. The main organizing institution for CIFCL7 is
Beihang University (BUAA); its co-sponsors include Tsinghua University, Peking
University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing Language and Culture
University, and Beijing Forestry University. Professor Geeraerts’s lecture series
was supported by the Beihang Grant for International Outstanding Scientists for
2009 (Project number: Z0959, Project organizer: Thomas Fuyin Li).
The transcription of the video, proofreading of the text, and publication
of the work in its present book form, have involved many people’s strenuous
inputs. The initial drafts were done by the following: Weiwei Zhang, Yan Ding,
Wenjuan Yuan, Shuying Yin, Yanan Hu, Jie Yang, Liqin Xiong, Lingyan Zheng,
Sai Ma, and Lingmin Li. Then we editors did the word-by-word and line-by-
line proofreading work. To improve the readability of the text, we deleted the
false starts, repetitions, fillers etc. The published version is the final version
approved by the speaker.
Fuyin (Thomas) Li
[email protected]
Weiwei Zhang
[email protected]
Yuan Gao
[email protected]
How to Use This Text
Two important points need to be kept in mind when using the following texts.
In the first place, the most important part of the book consists of the repro-
duction of the PowerPoint presentations. The presentations were crucial for
the original lectures, and the transcripts of the lectures cannot easily be fol-
lowed unless you keep an eye on the presentations. Many references in the
transcripts (including deictic expressions like ‘here’ and ‘this’) relate directly to
the presentation slides. In this respect, it’s better to think of the text as eluci-
dating the handouts than the other way round. To facilitate reading, the tran-
scribed text is structured on the basis of the presentation slides. For instance,
[3.5] indicates where the explanation of the fifth slide of the third lecture
begins. The slides in the handouts are numbered accordingly.
In the second place, the transcripts are not pure transcripts. Although they
still follow the narrative and rhetorical flow of the original oral delivery of the
lectures, they have been adapted to facilitate reading: hesitations, mistakes,
repetitions and occasional unclarities have been removed to ensure a higher
readability.