Cognitive Models in Language and Thought

Book excerpt: The volume offers a number of representative papers on cognitive models that are invoked when people deal with questions of social identity, political and economic manipulation, and more general issues such as the genomic discourse. In line with the well-known volume Cultural Models in Language and Thought by Holland and Quinn (1987), the volume shows that Cognitive Linguistics has further explored the idea that we think about social reality in terms of models - 'cognitive/cultural models' or 'folk theories'. As in cultural models, the present volume demonstrates that the technical apparatus of Cognitive Linguistics can be used to analyze the various ways our conception of social reality is shaped by underlying cognitive and/or cultural models or patterns of thought, and also looks into how this is done. The new inroad the volume wants to pursue is the deliberate and explicit orientation towards a cognitive sociolinguistics, or more generally, a cognitive semiotics.