The International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA) fosters and promotes research within the perspective of cognitive linguistics. This perspective subsumes a number of concerns and broadly compatible theoretical approaches that share a common basis: the idea that language is an integral part of cognition that reflects the interaction of cultural, psychological, communicative, and functional considerations; that language can only be understood in the context of a realistic view of conceptualization and cognitive processing; and that any theoretical conception of language must be compatible with what is known about neurological organization and function.
Topics of interest for cognitive linguistics include the structural characteristics of natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, metaphor, mental imagery, and cognitive models), the explicit characterization of linguistic meaning in terms appropriate to its nature (such as trajector/landmark or figure/ground organization, profiling, grounding, viewpoint, scope of predication, etc.), the functional principles of linguistic organization (such as iconicity and naturalness), the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics, the experiential and pragmatic background of language-in-use, the nature and description of linguistic constructions, the conceptual basis and structural organization of signed languages, the relation of language to thought and to human culture(s), the nature of language in its evolutionary and historical perspectives, the way that language is acquired via cognitive, communicative and general social experience, and the relationship between language and non-linguistic aspects of communication such as gesture.
See About Cognitive Linguistics for more on the history, intellectual relations, and assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics. (This part of the site can be built up as desired by the membership under the leadership of the President. Contact the current President if you would like to offer text for the site.)